Japanese vertical writing (tategaki) aligned with English

What this example shows

猫が魚を食べた stands as a vertical column on the right, the way Japanese appears in books and newspapers. Its English translation stands as a second column on the left, and colored connectors run horizontally between matching words. The two columns cross in the middle, because Japanese puts the verb last and English puts it in the middle.

Each language keeps its own setting inside the shared column layout. The Japanese characters stack one under another. The English words stay horizontal and simply sit one under another as whole boxes, which keeps them readable.

Word by word

Each Japanese word and the English it links to:

猫 the cat

The subject. It links to both English words, since English needs an article where Japanese does not.

が (subject marker)

A particle that marks 猫 as the subject. English marks the same thing by word position, so this box stays unlinked.

魚 the fish

The object, again linking to an article plus a noun.

を (object marker)

The object particle. Unlinked for the same reason as が.

食べた ate

The verb, in past tense. It sits last in Japanese and third in English, so its connector crosses the others.

Particles with no English word

が and を carry grammatical work that English does through word order. Leaving them unlinked is the point: an empty box is a visible statement that the target language expresses this some other way. The same technique works for case endings, classifiers, and evidential markers.

Why the connectors cross

Japanese is subject-object-verb, English is subject-verb-object. The verb 食べた sits at the bottom of the Japanese column while "ate" sits in the middle of the English one, so its connector runs past the connector for 魚. Crossing lines are the clearest picture of reordering that a diagram can give, and they are the reason the two sentences stay on separate columns instead of being folded into one interlinear line.

The same reordering in horizontal layout:

• Japanese, Chinese, and English word order

Set it up yourself

Open the example, then in the Style tab switch Direction to Columns and tick the Japanese line under Stack characters. Leave the translation line unticked so its words stay upright. The first line sits leftmost, so put the translation first if you want the Japanese column on the right.

Japanese is written without spaces, so type spaces between the units you want to align, or use the split character in the Tokens settings. The tool never guesses word boundaries for you.

More on the layout:

• aligning vertical writing systems