Is it even sensible to translate non-English/Chinese vocabularies into Japanese?


I suppose the average Japanese does not know another alphabetical language
other than English, so even I if I managed to use katakana to match the
pronunciation perfectly it would not be understood. That means it must either
be translated into another language first or left alone as it is. Is there any
other suggestion? (note:not a translator, just curious)




Turning this around, do you need to know Japanese to use the words like
“sushi” or “kimono” in English?

There are plenty of words borrowed with their (mostly) original pronunciation
into Japanese from languages other than English or Chinese and are widely
used. A few examples:

パン (bread) - from Portuguese (pão)

タバコ (tobacco) - from Portuguese (tabaco)

イクラ (salmon roe) - from Russian (икра)

イワシ (sardines) - from Russian (иваси)

ガラス (sheet glass) - from Dutch (glas)

Whether to use a native Japanese word or transliteration depends on
circumstances. Don’t expect the Japanese to know any specific original
language but if there’s no good match you can definitely use the
transliteration with an accompanying explanation of what it means. If the word
becomes commonly used it might well be added to the dictionaries some years
later, as happened with the words listed above.

