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(Archived) Search Problems: Japanese in quotation marks


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  • Level 5*

Have we always been unable to search for Japanese in quotation marks and English together?

(1) Japanese + English

Web: 田原 tawara = 49 hits

Web: "田原" tawara = 0 hits

iOS: 田原 tawara = 49 hits

iOS: "田原" tawara = 0 hits

(2) Japanese only

Web: 田原 = 665

Web: "田原" = 132

iOS:田原 = 665

iOS: "田原" = 132

The problem here, as the search numbers suggest, is that without the quotation marks we have to search for every instance of each character. This is the equivalent of looking for every instance of "t", "w", and "o" in your account when you look for "two". So, I put the Japanese in quotation marks to focus the searches. That still results in a lot of hits. By pairing the Japanese with English I can focus the searches even more to stuff that I have written. On the iPad, though, it pays to further restrict your search results, but trying to do this with quotation marks fails.

Maybe I have never tried this before, but it seems to me that quotation marks around a term in any language + and english word ought to work the same as quotation marks around an English word or phrase + an English word.

I will test this on Mac and Windows sometime when I have a chance.

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  • Level 5*

This is not at all what I expected... What is happening with the searches? I hope someone can explain to me why I get such wildly different search results. Which one of these is "correct"?

(1) Japanese + English

Web: 田原 tawara = 49 hits

iOS: 田原 tawara = 49 hits

Windows: 田原 tawara = 51 hits

Mac: 田原 tawara = 51 hits

Web: "田原" tawara = 0 hits

iOS: "田原" tawara = 0 hits

Windows: "田原" tawara = 58 hits

Mac: "田原" tawara = 51 hits

(2) Japanese only

Web: 田原 = 665

iOS:田原 = 665

Windows: 田原 = 667

Mac: 田原 = 665

Web: "田原" = 132

iOS: "田原" = 132

Windows: "田原" = 1234

Mac: "田原" = 665

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  • Level 5

Totally off topic, and I don't want to downplay the importance of the search problem, but

1.) the Japanese symbols look like a Window followed by the Hangman game.

2.) Google translate comes up with tahara as the English translation of 田原

3.) Google translate converts tawara to 俵

By the way, my knowledge of the Japanese language is similar to my knowledge of Swahili.

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  • Level 5*

Totally off topic, and I don't want to downplay the importance of the search problem, but

1.) the Japanese symbols look like a Window followed by the Hangman game.

Hahaha.

2.) Google translate comes up with tahara as the English translation of 田原

Yep. That is one reading. You could also read it as tabaru. It is a proper name, and because it is from Kyushu, I think the local dialect would lean towards Tabaru. I have gone with the generally accepted reading for the family name in scholarship on the sixteenth century.

3.) Google translate converts tawara to 俵

Yep. And, Google translate will probably render 俵 as a bale (like a bale of hay). 364 notes have 俵 in them on my Mac. Only 74 on my iPad :( I hope this issue gets resolved before I have torn all of the hair out of my head.

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  • Level 5

Thank you. I have even more respect of dual-dialect folks after reading your response.

OK, back to business.

Those differences in search results are certainly a serious issue. I often have said Search is Evernote's lifeblood.

All those other issues involving bullet points, tabs, colored notebooks, photo editing, etc. pale in comparison to a defective search engine.

"A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."

Especially when the two watches are a local Evernote Mac client and Evernote web.

Throw in a 3rd watch (iOS) and it gets even worse.

And you approach chaos with the 4th watch (Windows).

I hope a solution is reached quickly for you.

And on a personal level, I hope Evernote does some serious investigative research before prematurely releasing the Windows upgrade.

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  • Level 5*
"A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."

Nice :)

I hope that a solution is reached soon, but... around this time last year I ran into plenty of problems with searches http://discussion.ev...ms/page__st__20 and I have actually been reporting on this problem with Japanese now for months http://discussion.ev...-ios-441261773/

I know I have more threads about this, but the holiday season is for tears of joy, not tears of despair!

Why is this causing me so much consternation now? Even relatively simple searches are failing. intitle:term1 term2 fails to find notes now on the iPad. No Japanese. Just English. Japanese, of course, has now become impossible to reliably locate, and since my notes contain quite a bit of Japanese (maybe75% of my roughly 10,000 notes are in Japanese), it means I am not just up a creek without a paddle, but coming apart at the seams like that poor guy at the beginning of the movie Prometheus.

I consider this to be a very serious issue, but as for a resolution... I just don't know what to think. I'm sure the developers have been working on this day and night throughout the year, because I have been reporting this stuff for a very long time in numerous places, but this just might be something they cannot solve. Perhaps Evernote has pushed the envelope too far, and the best we can hope for with the searches will be inconsistent results. After all, few developers have come up with anything as robust as Evernote's search. BB Edit comes to mind, but it is limited to a single platform.

Weta_Engineer_prometheus.jpg

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  • Level 5*

I hope someone can explain to me why I get such wildly different search results. Which one of these is "correct"? I know that Spotlight apparently failed to catch the PDFs, so it is almost certainly off by at least two or three in all cases. I have no idea, though, why I am getting such wildly divergent numbers.

(1) Japanese + English

Web: 田原 tawara = 49 hits

iOS: 田原 tawara = 49 hits

Windows: 田原 tawara = 51 hits

Mac: 田原 tawara = 51 hits

Mac Spotlight: 田原 tawara = 48 hits

Web: "田原" tawara = 0 hits

iOS: "田原" tawara = 0 hits

Windows: "田原" tawara = 58 hits

Mac: "田原" tawara = 51 hits

Mac Spotlight: "田原" tawara = 48 hits

(2) Japanese only

Web: 田原 = 665

iOS:田原 = 665

Windows: 田原 = 667

Mac: 田原 = 665

Mac Spotlight: 田原 = 556 hits

Web: "田原" = 132

iOS: "田原" = 132

Windows: "田原" = 1234

Mac: "田原" = 665

Mac Spotlight: "田原" = 556 hits

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