How to count zombis in Japanese?

``I don't know how to count zombies in Japanese.'' I voluntarily translate mathematics exercises in Khan academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/) from English to Japanese/German. You can learn anything on Khan academy.

When I translate the following question:

Liliana used 4 dark power crystals to raise 14 zombie soldiers. She wants to know how many zombie soldiers (z) she can raise with 10 dark power crystals...

In Japanese, when you count, you added postfix depends on what you count. I know how to count people: 1人，2人, 3人. But, is a zombie a person? A zombie could be an animal, then, I should count them 1匹，2匹, 3匹. Wait, is a zombie a dead body? Then I should count them 1体，2体, 3体. A zombie could be a novel ghost, then 1柱，2柱... The question told me they are zombie soldiers. Soldiers are the same as the people, then 1 人，2人, 3人. In the end, I decided to translate them as 1人，2人, 3人, this means a zombie is a person.

I like translation work like this, quite interesting. You can join the Khan academy internationalization for your own language. (https://www.khanacademy.org/contribute)

Comments

Why parallelogram area is |ad-bc|?

Here is my question. The area of parallelogram is the difference of these two rectangles (red rectangle - blue rectangle). This is not intuitive for me. If you also think it is not so intuitive, you might interested in my slides. I try to explain this for hight school students. Slides: A bit intuitive (for me) explanation of area of parallelogram (to my site, external link) .

Geometric Multiplicity: eignvectors (2)

If eigenvectors of a matrix A are independent, it is a happy property. Because the matrix A can be diagonalized with a matrix S that column vectors are eigenvectors of A . For example, Why this is a happy property of A? Because I can find A's power easily. A^{10} is not a big deal. Because Λ is a diagonal matrix and power of a diagonal matrix is quite simple. A^{10} = SΛ^{10} S^{-1} Then, why if I want to compute power of A ? That is the same reason to find eigenvectors. Eigenvectors are a basis of a matrix. A matrix can be represented by a single scalar. I repeat this again. This is the happy point, a matrix becomes a scalar. What can be simpler than a scalar value. But, this is only possible when the matrix S's columns are independent. Because S^{-1} must be exist. Now I come back to my first question. Is the λ's multiplicity related with the number of eigenvectors? This time I found this has the name. Geometric multiplicity (GM): the number of in...

Tezuka Osamu's Black Jack, "Shrinking"

I like several novel authors. My first favorite author is probably Teduka, Osamu. I still love him. The list grows by adding Hoshi, Shinichi, Agatha Christie, Hermann Hesse, and so forth. My first favorite article of Tezuka was Atom as most of the (boy's) Tezuka fans did. But my favorite is Black Jack. I try to summarize one story, it is still quite vivid in my memory. I first read this story when I was 13 - 15 years old. I re-read it at least several times since Black Jack is composed of many short episodes. The title should be "ちぢむ (SHRINKING)" or it might be "縮む(Shrinking)". (It is not so convenient to translate this to English, since English does not have a system to say the exact same word in several ways. So I just simulate it with capital letters.) Black Jack is a genius surgeon, but he does not have the license. In short, his medical activity is illegal. His skill is top level in the world, but, the fee is also out-of-law expensive. In the story ...

Lx=d: SundayResearch

Search This Blog