Yahoo! Japan Auctions, now in English

[omae mona]

Asiajin noticed that Yahoo! Japan is now running their auction service in English. While it's tied to the main auction site, apparently items are only available if the seller explicitly clicks a checkbox to make their item available to the English site.

Descriptions seem to be in English, and I can't figure out whether this is being done through machine translation or whether the sellers are writing by themselves. I went searching for ladies' shoes (my favorite!!) and found this:

It is with old clothes leather long boots western black
The size is 40cm in length (from sole), about 9cm in width of the out sole with about around 24.5cm (in the biggest place). A state, form are perfect together. The belt of the ankle is pretty with oar black. It is time great activity in the future. Thanking you in advance.

There have been lots of discussions on FG in the past where users wanted to purchase or sell on Yahoo! Japan Auctions, but were frustrated by the language barrier.
Wanted: J-Yahoo Auctions Middle-Man
Yahoo auction sucks
Yahoo auctions question! Help please
Before you buy: KAKAKU

Maybe this new service will help folks in this situation in the future.

[GomiGirl]

I was going to post this but I am a bit too busy at work today.

The site went to English in October I think. It is only showing items that the seller has given the English translations and clicked on the "show listing in English" button.

So only a very small percentage of the items are on the English site but it is still very useful and I am sure it will grow as more vendors learn about it or see the value for their products to go the extra step and give English descriptions.

[omae mona]

I just found this instruction page in Japanese. It explains to sellers how to make their pages available in English and what the restrictions are. Indeed, as GomiGirl said, they have to write the title and descriptions themselves in English. There are a lot of restrictions, though. Certain items can't be sold (automotive categories), a lot of payment options aren't available, and lots of information (item's condition, etc.) aren't displayed unless the seller explicitly adds that information to the main English description.

To a Japanese-language seller, English-language buyers have a special icon next to their names, and Yahoo! asks that the seller correspond with the buyer using English.

[FG Lurker]

To a Japanese-language seller, English-language buyers have a special icon next to their names, and Yahoo! asks that the seller correspond with the buyer using English.

I can see this working reeeeeeeeally well.

[Captain Spaulding]

you have to finish the auction in japanese anyway so what's the purpose?

[omae mona]

you have to finish the auction in japanese anyway so what's the purpose?

I haven't tried it yet, but what do you mean by "you have to finish the auction in Japanese"? Do you get redirected to pages written only in Japanese? You may be the first person here to have actually given this service a try.

[Captain Spaulding]

[HTML]but what do you mean by "you have to finish the auction in Japanese"?[/HTML]

I mean even if the listing is in English, the seller is still most likely going to be a Japanese person and you'll still have to communicate with that person in Japanese in order to make payment, arrange for shipping...etc.

[omae mona]

[HTML]but what do you mean by "you have to finish the auction in Japanese"?[/HTML]

I mean even if the listing is in English, the seller is still most likely going to be a Japanese person and you'll still have to communicate with that person in Japanese in order to make payment, arrange for shipping...etc.

Oh, I see what you are saying now. But I think that's kind of unlikely. As I wrote above, participation in the English portion is "opt-in", and Yahoo explicitly asks the seller to communicate with the buyer in English. If the seller couldn't speak English, I don't understand why they'd explicitly choose the English option and risk the whole auction going down the tubes.

[Captain Spaulding]

understood. I overlooked the point that you made in an earlier post.