Re: [Lingo] Terminology help

[Jim Breen <jimbreen@example.com>]

On 1 September 2016 at 11:07, David J Iannucci
<jlinux@example.com> wrote:
> I need to get some advice on usage from those who are closer to the
> source than I have been for quite a while.

I don't claim to be close to the source, but I have some stats
that are interesting. I have access to the Google n-gram corpus,
which was built from a monster WWW crawl in 2007. Getting a
bit dated now, but very valuable for checking relative frequencies
of all sort of terms.

> I am doing an E > J translation and need to check on some
> "technical terms".
>
> * Web site. Last I was aware, ホームページ was the usual vernacular for a web
>   site, but I know that ウェブサイト is now also out there. I guess my sense
>   of the first one being standard derives from an era when even in
>   English there were a lot of people using "home page" for this meaning.
>   How about フロントページ for what used to be "home page"? Has usage of these
>   terms settled into a firm pattern by now?

Well, the n-gram counts are:

ホームページ  45159484
ウェブサイト    4757372
フロントページ 39967

I suspect ウェブサイト has caught up a lot in the last few years. A smaller
corpus from 2004 had ウェブサイト at about 5% of ホームページ. As you can see
above in 2007 it was over 10%. Raw Googits, which are chronically unreliable,
now have it at 90%.

> * For visitors/users of a web site, how does 閲覧客 strike you? I ran
>   across the term 閲覧, and sorta "guessed" the existence of the former
>   from that. When I googled it, it seems it does exist in the wild.
>   Seems very precise, but if "no one" really uses it and it strikes
>   people as weird, then what instead...

閲覧客  147
閲覧者  1366160

EDICT's entry for 閲覧者 is "(n) reader; (website) visitor", with that
second meaning
added in 2011.

> * If I want to refer to the "office" where I work, meaning sorta both
>   the physical place and also the people and functions we perform, is
>   オフィス normal for that, or....事務室？ Latter feels archaic to me.

オフィス  8798064
事務室  264289

I'm not sure whether オフィス extends to meaning colleagues as well.

> * For clicking on a link, just クリック（する）, right? I've also used リンクを辿る,
>   just to add some variety.

Certainly クリックする.

Jim

-- 
Jim Breen
Adjunct Snr Research Fellow, Japanese Studies Centre, Monash University