Reference Materials and Resources of Japanese Language and Japanese Translation

The Japanese names for Japan are Nippon (にっぽん) and Nihon (にほん). Both Nippon and Nihon literally mean "the sun's origin" and are often translated as the Land of the Rising Sun. This nomenclature comes from Imperial correspondence with the Chinese Sui Dynasty and refers to Japan's eastward position relative to China. Before Nihon came into official use, Japan was known as Wa (倭) or Wakoku (倭国) as shown in Chinese old documents.

The Japanese language is written with a combination of three scripts: Chinese characters called kanji, and two syllabic scripts made up of modified Chinese characters, hiragana and katakana. The Latin alphabet, romaji, is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising, etc.

Currently Japanese is spoken by over 140 million people in Japan and overseas. There are about 400,000 Japanese patents filed at Japanese patent office annually. There are about 6,800 journals or magazines published in Japanese in science and technology areas. Japan is the 3rd largest economy in the world. Therefore, translation to and from Japanese to English and to other languages is very important.

Below are some useful reference about Japanese and Japanese translation:

Japanese translation of People's Name
Japanese translation of State Names
Japanese translation of City Name
Japanese writing system
Most Frequently Used Japanese Characters / Kanji and corresponding Translation