Congratulations to Barbara!

LindaH · **Posted:** Tue May 01, 2012 3:14 am

Happy Birthday!!! I hope you had a wonderful day!!! :cake:

bdlrnzi · **Posted:** Tue May 01, 2012 4:17 am

Thanks, everyone. It wasn't a bad day and I intend to spread my celebration over the week. I heard from friends in Japan! Cool!

Lilliane · **Posted:** Tue May 01, 2012 5:15 am

[quote="bdlrnzi"]I'm impressed, Lilliane! I could read the Happy Birthday (the first half of the Japanese script) because it is in katakana, the phonetic script used for foreign words. They are read as Ha-ppii Bah-su-deh! The other script is a mixture of kanji (ideograms) and hiragana, a phonetic script used in Japanese as well. I had to copy them down and look them up in my dictionary. That means I count the strokes and go through all the words containing the same number of strokes in my elementary dictionary. I miscounted and took a while to find the first words. [I am far from fluent in written Japanese -- in any kind of Japanese, really!]. The second phrase is pronounced Tokubetsu o tanashimu. That means enjoy the special (occasion). Your translation was perfect.

LOL, I entered the English words into the translator thingie-bob and whoosh !!!!!out came the Japanese characters which I copied and pasted

bdlrnzi · **Posted:** Tue May 01, 2012 6:02 am

Actually, I forgot a part of the second sentence. It should read tokubetsuna hi o tanoshimu or enjoy your special day. :oops:

Glad the translator function did such a good job. I have Facebook friends in Japan and when I translate what they have written into English, it makes absolutely no sense.