By Philip Pendleton

DESIGNED AS THE ULTIMATE easy-to-use Japanese software application for non-Japanese users, Tsunami Notebook from Neocor Tech boasts an array of advanced features normally found in more expensive products. Indeed, Tsunami Notebook inherits many of its features from its big brother Tsunami MT, the premier English-to-Japanese translator, which at $695 is aimed squarely at the professional translator.
Notebook, meanwhile, is aimed at small businesses and students, hence the more modest asking price.
Using an advanced artificially intelligent translation engine with a 130,000 word dictionary you can perform sentence level draft translations. Simply prepare the document to be translated, taking care to check for both spelling and grammatical errors. Because Notebook examines the whole sentence to determine the best translation into Japanese, the software "only "knows" exactly what it is told". In other words, garbage in, garbage out.
Translation settings allow you to affect the translation output and the formality of the Japanese. More formal Japanese is appropriate for business correspondence, while the less formal settings are intended for letters to family and friends. Approach with caution!
Also included is a Front End Processor for editing Japanese text. Although not as flexible as a dedicated Japanese word processor, its ideal for adding or removing Japanese katakana, hiragana and kanji from your translations.
You can also read, write and send Japanese email (Notebook handles the JIS, Shift-JIS, EUC, and Unicode text formats) with ease.
Translation software has certainly come a long way in the last few years and the quality of Notebook's translation is superb. Put simply: Notebook is a joy to use. If you take the time to learn to write in a sympathetic style, your efforts will be well rewarded. This is an essential piece of software for anyone who corresponds in Japanese.
Highly recommended.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
U.S. Windows 95 or NT (or any other non-Japanese Windows 95/NT), 8MB RAM, 20 MB hard disk space.

Philip Pendleton is the editor of Neo-Tokyo Magazine.

Copyright © 1997 Philip Pendleton and Neo-Tokyo Magazine. All rights reserved.