Museum audio guides in Japanese

How to provide an audio guide in Japanese

A Japanese guide is added to a guide that already exists rather than built from nothing. The English stops are translated, reviewed by someone who reads Japanese, and narrated, and the Japanese version then sits behind the same QR code the English version already uses. Nothing on the wall changes, and no second sign is printed.

In practice a venue works through it in this order, and the review step is the one most often skipped and most often regretted.

• Settle the regional variant and register before any translation starts
• Translate the English stops, keeping the source text locked while that happens
• Have a Japanese reader review it, ideally someone who knows the collection
• Narrate the reviewed text, checking proper nouns and place names first
• Publish it behind the QR codes already on the wall, with no reprinting

What Japanese needs from your layout

Japanese is more compact than English in character count, though the characters themselves need more vertical room to stay legible.

Japanese has no spaces between words and wraps almost anywhere, so line breaks can fall in places that read awkwardly. Small text is a particular problem because kanji become unreadable before Latin letters do.

Politeness level is the first decision

Japanese encodes formality in the grammar, so there is no neutral option. Visitor-facing interpretation normally uses the polite desu and masu forms, and a guide written in plain form reads as abrupt to a Japanese visitor regardless of how warm the content is.

That decision has to be made before translation begins rather than corrected afterwards, because it affects every sentence rather than a few word choices.

Getting the Japanese narration right

Narration in Japanese raises questions that do not exist in English, and they are far cheaper to answer before a voice records anything than after.

• Kanji readings are ambiguous, and proper nouns are where synthetic narration fails most often. Every name needs checking.
• Pitch accent distinguishes words and is frequently wrong in generic voices.
• Foreign names rendered in katakana need an agreed form before recording.

Where Japanese fits in your language plan

Across the New Zealand museums using Journey Pal, between 50% and 60% of guide use is in English. That is our own usage data, and it is worth knowing before committing to a long list of languages: local-language listening is usually the largest share, and translations extend a guide rather than being the reason for one.

That makes Japanese an addition to a working guide rather than a prerequisite for launching. Get the source script right, publish it, then add Japanese where your visitor numbers justify the translation and, just as importantly, where you have someone who can review it.