Rick's b.log - entry 2014/05/31

Microwave egg cooker translation!

My mother knows a few words in Japanese, but can read exactly none of it.

So I scanned the box, and then worked through the instructions but by bit, photographing the Japanese directly off the screen using my mobile phone and Google Translate, followed by a lot of head scratching as Google returned around 50% sensible responses and 50% gibberish. That said, it was often enough to get the gist of what was being said. My translations are based upon that, and worded to sound better to a native English speaker (the instructions provided by the Amazon vendor are fairly terse and refer to the "doneness" of the eggs!). It is a translation designed to make sense, rather than be a literal word-for-word translation.

It was kind of a headache, but it was kind of fun to do nonetheless.

Here you go:

Your comments:

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Alexander, 1st June 2014, 05:48

Nice job, but 1. does not say "warm water" at all. That would be お湯. Even though they specify 25-degree water, I still wouldn't write that as "warm". Right now your translation implies that one has to boil some water in advance before putting it in the device.   4. does not say "maximum power" either. That would entirely depend on the type of microwave; mine is 1000W so I wouldn't have it at maximum. :P

Rick, 1st June 2014, 09:58

I probably would heat up some water; given from-the-tap ambient is about 10C in summer and can be as low as 1C in winter. It seems strange to specify a water temperature below, but not mention that in the step by step part, given that I can imagine it affecting the cooking time.  Oh, and what egg falls out of a fridge at 10C?!  The power, according to Google, implies variable power mode but our oven at 500W would spend a lot of time off and the eggs would not cook. This seems to be supported by the 10%/100W calculation.  While your microwave is unusually powerful, the calculation implies that you would have a soft boiled egg in about 2 min and hard boiled in about 3 1/2 ish. ;-)  Thanks for your comments and the correct translation of "warm". Useful to try to remember that one.

GAVIN WRAITH, 1st June 2014, 15:13

This is a charming blog. Things seem to have moved on as far as manuals are concerned since I bought my first Japanese goods - a printer. The manuals in Japanese nowadays are probably more intelligible than the old ones were in "English".

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