A couple years ago I attempted to chat with JP party members using freetranslation.com and using Ctrl-V to copy into chat from my clipboard. I would translate basic phrases like "Hello. How are you doing today?" and paste it into party chat. The problem with this is that the JP party members assumed I was fluent in Japanese, and that I knew kanji/romaji and responded with that those characters (not sure, is that kanji?) So then I had to try and explain that I was using a translate function and that I didn't really know the language. It worked all right I guess, I'd greet new party members, congratulate people on levelling up, etc. and I praised myself for at least giving a shit enough to make an effort to be friendly with Japanese players. Around that time I also bought a few introductory "Learn Japanese" books from the bookstores and started the painstaking process of learning each symbol which represents a syllable. I don't think this is exactly right but basically the word hello which is kohnnichiwa is composed of the symbols for koh - n - ni - chi- wa... so to translate it you'd have to figure out what the symbols sound like phonetically, and then translate that word into english. So it was like learning 3 different languages lol.
On a side note about freetranslation.com... it isn't 100% accurate. I have a decent understanding of the Spanish language and just playing around with translations to and from Spanish, I noted that the translations were sometimes wrong... (For example, when I translated "My wife is very hot" the translation it gave me more closely meant "My wife is a slut..." So be careful when using this website to communicate with people in a language you don't understand. You might end up insulting them or making a fool of yourself lol.

Guess I'll just have to try and learn the language... The translate function has been severely limited for this long, I doubt if its going to be changed in the life of FFXI. (Maybe FFXIV, who knows... FFXI might outlive FFXIV lmao...)

Does anyone here have experience learning Japanese? I was thinking about buying Rosetta Stone to have another go at it. I'd be interested in learning Japanese, not only because of FFXI (would be kinda silly to learn a new language just to enhance the playing quality of the game) but because I am interested in Japanese culture. I visited Japan when I was in the Navy and it was really awkward being a tourist in a country and not knowing the language. Someday I'd like to go to Hiroshima and visit the atomic bomb memorial. But I refuse to be an ignorant tourist that doesn't know the language of the country I'm visiting. Sasebo, Japan was very cool - visiting the temples, castles, the downtown shopping district... the sake factory lol...
I really enjoyed visiting Japan though and I'm really interested in its people and its culture, it would be really cool to be able to conversate with Japanese players once the game is back online and ask them how they are doing, and offer condolences for their losses in the recent events.