Introduction

I don’t read Japanese, but occasionally I need to do some administrative work on a Japanese Windows 2008 R2 server. In this particular example I needed to add the server to a domain controller. Unfortunately there was a problem and the error message was in Japanese. Even with the correct keyboard it would have taken me years to type the Japanese characters into the Google Translator.

Figure 1: I do Shotokan Karate and I can count to ten in Japanese, but reading Japanese characters is out of my league

PowerShell to the rescue

PowerShell has the Add-Computer cmdlet that lets you add a machine to a domain. I ran this cmdlet

Figure 2: PowerShell error in Japanese

But this time I was able to copy the error into the Google Translator.

Figure 3: Japanese error message translated into English by the Google Translator

With this information I was able to add the machine to the domain.

The backslash character for Japanese Windows

Here is a little tip on the side: When you are using an English keyboard on a Japanese Windows OS and you need to type the backslash character, which is actually displayed as the Yen symbol just type ALT(Holding down) and then 92.

Ausblick

If Windows gives you a hard time, then try PowerShell.