I have a simple program that allows users to choose what date format they want to see.
In English I ask something like this:
Day/Month/Year or Month/Day/Year
Abbreviated would be this:
DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY
How would you present this question in Japanese? Is it acceptable to use the Roman letter abbreviation or is there a better way?
Similarly, 12 or 24 hour time preference. Should I say 十二 or 二十四 versus English numerals?
Answer
Practically speaking, the only format used and understood in Japan is "year/month/day" (e.g., 2018/6/21 or 18/06/21). So you don't have to let users choose. "British style" (21/6/2018) and "American style" (6/21/2018) are both out of the question, especially when you target only at older Japanese people who are unlikely to understand easy English words. But if you really want to make it configurable, a reasonable choice will look like 年/月/日 or 日/月/年, where the kanji 年 means "year", 月 means "month" and 日 means "day".
If you really want to allow users to choose between "15:00" and "3:00 PM", the word for "24-hour system" is 24時間制, and "12-hour system" is 12時間制. Rest assured that everyone understands AM and PM. Numbers themselves should be Arabic numerals, not kanji.
No comments:
Post a Comment