He giggles with embarrassment because he can't understand a word of English. You'd like to say a friendly Japanese goodbye to him, but how do you do that?
Well, here's your chance to get a flavour. Imagine you arrive at the airport, equipped with a print-out of your Internet booking for your stay at a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn.
New novel The City and its Uncertain Walls gives its two narrators different words for “I” in Japanese – a nuance that is difficult to translate to English.
Here, we exhibit a system that generates sign language CG from input Japanese news sentences. The challenge is reproducing the essential linguistic elements of sign language in CG animation ...