maxiewawa

关于日本的英词汇

环太平洋火山地带 / the Pacific Ring of Fire / ring of fire The areas that border the Pacific (California, Chile, New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan etc) have a lot of seismic activity (volcanos, hot springs, earthquakes etc); since they form a circular shape and these things that they produce are hot, they got the name 环太平洋 (…) / the Pacific (…).

9 on the Richter scale / 里氏9级 The Richter scale is used to measure the strength of an earthquake.

Sendai / 仙台市 / 仙台

Miyagi / Miyagi prefecture / 宮城縣 / 宮城县 Japan uses the English word “prefecture” to describe their largest governmental subdivision.

iodized salt / iodised salt / 含碘食盐

cesium / 铯

iodine / 碘 These last two entries refer to two radioactive elements released from the following entry.

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant / 福島第一核电站 The “Daiichi” comes from the Japanese name. It literally means “number one” or “first”; I suspect that the first person to translate it mistook it for a proper noun. Also, note that there are two “i” in “Daiichi”, each with the value of a separate syllable. Therefore, “Daiichi” has four syllables (I have heard English reports dropping it down to only two!).

The International Atomic Energy Agency / IAEA (eye-ayeee-aye) / the IAEA (thee-yai-aye-ee-aye) 国际原子能机构 The acronym can come out as a blur when it is spoken very quickly!

reactor / 反应堆

Chernobyl / 切而诺贝尔 The worst nuclear accident in history occurred here in 1986.

spent fuel storage pond / 存储核废料池子 When fuel is used up, it needs to be stored here.

Tokyo Electric Power Company / Tokyo Electric / 东京电力公司

sievert /西弗 / 希沃特 A unit of measurement. Used to measure radiation.

meltdown / 熔毀 / 融化 Nuclear fuel is usually solid; if it gets too hot it starts to melt. Note that the English word is only ever used to refer to a nuclear accident.

zirconium / 锆 Another element. Every elementary metal has a 金字旁 (the left part of the Chinese character). Doesn’t that make sense? One (kinda) exception is gold / 金 which doesn’t need one.

That’s all for today. Let me know if you can think of any improvements or useful words that have been omitted. Next time: something for the monolinguals out there.