japanese help needed

[arethinn]

edit: Answered; thanks!

Can someone please tell me what the text next to the two dates (2004 and 2010) near the top of this pub. info block says?



Is there any mention there or elsewhere of this being a new edition, second edition, etc. sort of thing? Alternatively, does it say second printing (which for my purposes may be different) or similar?

Comments

[charcoalfeathers]

I can't read the three kanji to the right, but next to the dates it has #1 and #5. Well, they're counters .. so first and fifth something.

My Japanese is sadly rusty these days...

[charcoalfeathers]

I'm gonna go with "printing". I found this under "printing" in a dictionary: 刷り

[charcoalfeathers]

I guess I might be being captain obvious here, too, but the dates are Feb 2004 and May 2010.

[arethinn]

Specifically what the dates are is not important; I'm looking for evidence that this is some kind of later edition, made in 2010, which updates/changes the 2004 edition (since I have other reasons from the bibliographic record to suspect it may be so, but the English language pub data did not go into detail).

[charcoalfeathers]

Unfortunately I don't think my digging above can really say one way or another for sure about if it's a revision or just a new printing. It's possible that "printing" is part of some compound word that actually means revision :)

[valkyriur.livejournal.com]

My Japanese is rusty, but it looks like the symbol after 2004 and 2010 are there as an indicator that the numbers are in fact years. The symbols after 2 and 5 are an indication of the month.

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

Confirmed, the parts that say ２００４年２月 and ２０１０年５月 mean "February 2004" and "May 2010", respectively. To be specific:

年 ("nen" or "toshi") means "year"
月 ("getsu", "gatsu", "tsuki", and a few other pronunciations) means "moon" or "month"

I thought Arethinn was asking about the rest of those lines, though. I had to look up three of those kanji online, and so you should take my translation with a fair bit of salt, but yeah, it does look like those things means "1st edition" and "5th edition" — where I think "edition" may mean something like "printing and shipping run". Here's the breakdown:

第 ("dai") is effectively an ordinal prefix, like "#1" or "No. 1"
刷 （"satsu", "haku", "zuri", and a few other pronunciations) has to do with printing, and is used in words and compounds such as "printing", "reprint", "stencil", "(to be) hot off the press", and so on.
発 can be pronounced about a dozen different ways, and has meanings so diverse, I'm just going to quote from the online dictionary: "discharge; departure; publish; emit; start from; disclose; counter for gunshots". That last bit about "counter for gunshots" is a bizarre peculiarity of the Japanese language which I'll explain if you ask, but I won't bother to inflict it on you otherwise.
行 has even more pronunciations than 発, but its meaning is very firmly connected with travel. It's pretty much the kanji for "to go" (by which I mean "the infinitive form of the verb in 'please go away'", not "I plan to take my food out of the restaurant").

So these things are definitely "1st thingy" and "5th thingy", where "thingy" seems to indicate something like "print it and then make it go somewhere".

I hope that helps.

[iro-liyulio.livejournal.com]

"Toshi" reminds me of these YouTube vids friends were showing me in which this lady is giving English lessons to Japanese people and they're all about prostituting. She keeps saying "C'mon, Toshi!" throughout them.

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

Note that Japanese has a whole lot of homonyms. The language only has about 108 syllables in it, so sounds get re-used a lot. If you go to http://www.edrdg.org/cgi-bin/wwwjdic/wwwjdic?1C and enter "@toshi" in the search field, you'll see what I mean. (That does a search for Japanese words pronounced "toshi".)

Also, I think it can be a male name, but don't quote me on that. Japanese naming trends change pretty quickly.

[iro-liyulio.livejournal.com]

Both of the above are true. Relearning Japanese is on my list for language study, but is behind studying Greek (known, just need practice) and Latin (relearn).

[arethinn]

it does look like those things means "1st edition" and "5th edition" — where I think "edition" may mean something like "printing and shipping run".

Thank you - this comment is quite informative. "Edition" and "printing" mean something different and it makes a difference what I do with the bib record. It's especially tricky on foreign-published books because sometimes "edition" gets used where I would consider "printing" to be proper, or vice-versa, or the word used to translate "printing" falsely looks like "edition", etc...

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm so glad I didn't overwhelm you with useless information. I was worried that I was running on a bit too long.

[arethinn]

It's hard to overwhelm me with fiddly details, especially on language, heh.

[arethinn]

Yes, I figured such from context, but what I'm interested in is what (if anything) substantial happened to the content of the book in the meantime. Hence wondering if the word "edition" or "printing" or anything like that appears anywhere.

[valkyriur.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. Sorry I couldn't be more help than that. :(