Once you are subscribed to the list, you can post messages for distribution to everyone by sending email to honyaku@googlegroups.com.

You must send your post from the same email address at which you subscribed to Honyaku.

Also, please follow the guidelines below when posting to Honyaku. Although we refer to them as “guidelines,” that does not mean that they are optional. Please consider them rules to be followed in ensuring that postings are easy to read and respond to. Following these guidelines also helps prevent redundant content in the archives. Honyaku has a reasonably high volume of daily traffic, and it is in every one's best interests that messages be as readable as possible. To do otherwise is to risk having your questions or comments ignored. Your first thought in posting to Honyaku should be: What can I do to ensure that I am not wasting the time of other professionals who read my message?

1. Act responsibly and professionally

The Honyaku mailing list comprises a diverse membership of professionals, who demographically represent a wide range of language skills, and nationalities, not to mention religious or political affiliations. Please avoid making comments that could be construed as offensive by other people. Humor, especially if sarcastic in nature, is easily misunderstood, especially when the medium in which it appears is an open forum such as Honyaku. In other words, please think before you post.

The list owners and moderators neither read nor approve individual messages before they are distributed to the list. Messages from first-time posters are reviewed to ensure that the post is not spam, but once a member has been approved to post, his or her messages go straight to the list. Accordingly, individual posters are responsible for the content of their posts.

Acting responsibly and professionally also includes keeping messages on topic. Honyaku is a list for discussing translation issues. It is fine to make reference to other topics in discussing these issues, but please refrain from posting messages devoted entirely to off-topic issues. Moreover, please avoid tit-for-tat exchanges that do not further the discussion. If you find yourself repeatedly irritated by a list member's comments, try contacting that person off list to explain your concerns. If you are still dissatisfied even after that, contact a moderator or owner at honyakumods!@yahoogroups.com. (delete the ! in the address)

2. First, search the Honyaku archive at http://www.honyaku-archive.org/

In many cases, it is quite likely that your question has been asked before on Honyaku. It is always a good idea to check the archives first, since doing so could save yourself and everyone else time. Try searching the archive of posts maintained by Ryan Ginstrom at http://www.honyaku-archive.org/.

3. Use New Message rather than Reply to initiate a new discussion

The New Message command in your email client or web interface is the proper way to ask a new question or introduce a new subject. Please do not use the Reply button to start a new discussion; use it only when replying to a message.

The Reply function was not created as a shortcut for inserting the mailing list address in your email. When you use Reply in this way, your message will appear for people using threaded email clients as part of the thread of the message you are replying to. You therefore risk having your message ignored since people might not realize that your message contains a new topic. Reply means just what it says; please use it only when replying to messages.

4. Use meaningful subject lines; Don't use Japanese-only subject lines

Choose subject lines that reflect the content of your email. Many subscribers scan subject lines to identify which notes to read and respond to. A note with a meaningful subject line is more likely to receive a meaningful response than one simply titled "Help." Also, not everyone can read Japanese-only subject lines, even some people with Japanese-capable computers. If you want your email to be read, you will want to use subject lines that are legible to all. Romaji or English is best for subject lines.

5. Use either JIS or Unicode, but not Shift JIS Japanese 

JIS Japanese or Unicode is more widely compatible with Internet email; shift JIS contains control characters that can cause problems, and is therefore better avoided. If using a MIME-capable email client when sending Japanese, make sure your Content-Type header appears as charset=iso-2022-jp or charset=UTF-8, not charset=iso-8859-1. The latter Content-Type will make Japanese illegible for some people (the Japanese will be converted into European characters). The best way to send email with Japanese is to use a mailer that is Japanese aware. If you use a Web interface for email, you should expect problems with receiving and/or sending Japanese text, and you should expect that some subscribers will not be able to read your Japanese. You can find more information on posting Japanese at http://www.fumizuki.com/mojibake.html.

Occasionally, messages to Honyaku will contain a mixture of alphanumeric, Japanese, Chinese, and other characters, some of which will appear as moji-bake if not encoded properly. Such messages should, however, appear as intended if composed in UTF-8 Unicode. Please take care when responding to such messages to ensure that your response is also encoded in UTF-8.

6. Ask questions with sufficient context

Omitting context is like asking a doctor to diagnose an illness without giving a full medical history, and is something that incurs the risk of a critical misjudgment. Please remember that knowledge of the document’s format, subject matter, target reader, illustrations, and even the identity of the author can provide important clues about the intended meaning. Honyaku subscribers will know nothing of these things, however, unless you tell them. Providing sufficient context helps make it possible for other people to give good advice.

7. Wrap your lines at 70 characters

Add a hard carriage return after every 70 characters or so. Many email clients can be set to do this automatically. The advantage of doing this is that your text won't break in strange places (like in the middle of a word) and people can quote portions of your note without creating ugly alignment problems.

8. Quote email judiciously and not in entirety

When quoting, don't quote entire messages, only the relevant portions of the email. Be nice to people reading your notes. Don't make them hunt for what you want to say. It should never be necessary to quote the entire email you are replying to, unless you are trying to save yourself some time at the expense of everyone else in the list. Consider the impression you make when you reply to email by quoting it in entirety. While it has become common practice in the business world to leave entire quoted messages at the end of email as a virtual paper trail of the preceding discussion, this practice is not appropriate for mailing lists where messages are duplicated and distributed to hundreds of subscribers.

9. Include your full name in the body of your post

Please conclude messages with your full name, or otherwise ensure your full name is visible in the body of messages to the list. Some host systems strip out email headers, but you can ensure that everyone knows who the sender is from by concluding it with your name. As a list for professional translators and people who use the services they provide, Honyaku is simply not the place for people who wish to discuss things anonymously. Concealing one’s name or using only a handle name is viewed by some as unprofessional, and could have a direct effect on the kind of response your message receives.

10. Respect other people's confidentiality and privacy as well as your own

The Internet is a critical part of a professional translator's life and work, and for that reason spam, confidentiality, and privacy are paramount issues. Honyaku policy is that list members retain copyright to their messages. What this means is that, in theory, you should get permission from the original poster before copying a message elsewhere.

We all know that messages are sometimes cross-posted without authorization, but our official stance is that doing so without permission of the original poster is not acceptable. If you have a legitimate reason for cross-posting without permission, you should do everything possible to protect the privacy of others and at the very least remove extraneous material, including the name and email address of the original poster.

Another thing to be careful about is posting information that can harm you as a translator. Many clients are very sensitive about information leaks, and there have been times where a client—or even a government—has investigated information leaks from translators to a mailing list or online forum. Any perceived violation of trust could not only cost you a client, if you are bound by an NDA, it could cost you a lot more. Please think carefully about what you are revealing, and whether or not you should rephrase your question. Also, bear in mind that messages are delivered individually to all members, which means that it is impossible to delete a message after it has been posted.

With the advent of the "Information Era," handling confidential information has become an important skill for all of us. At times it might seem like more trouble than it is worth, but if you just think twice about how you handle other people’s information, you shouldn’t have any problems.

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If you have any questions or comments, please send them to the list owners/moderators at honyakumods!@yahoogroups.com (delete the ! in the address)

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