I just tested them and it looks okay to me. Could you elaborate a bit? I used it to romajinate those words for this post. I don’t see any bugs here.

Sorry for the late reply. Either I was hallucinating, or there was some sort of formatting issue when I last logged in. The katakana words “project” and “method” were swapped. I swear! Looks fine now, though …

When I was taking Japanese lessons, my Chinese classmates could understand the meanings of kanji very quickly, whereas the teacher would have to use examples in context and/or synonyms to get the Western students to see the light. When it came to katakana words, however, the tables were turned. While most of the Westerners could work out the meanings for themselves, the teacher would struggle to think of kanji to help make things clear for the Chinese students.

Vitaly asked

What does character 学 mean in Japanese?

学 means “study” or “learning”. It’s read as “gaku” in compounds, or as 学ぶ “manabu” in the form of a verb.

…the Japanese are funky like that

I’ve always liked how when rice is served in a bowl with chopsticks, it’s called ご飯, but when it comes on a plate, along with a fork, it’s written on the menu as ライス.

There’s a joke that without those compound words Japan exported to China, there would have been no Cultural Revolution: both 文化 and 革命 were loaned from Japan.

Didn’t they have the word “science” before borrowing it from English?

“科学”–the Chinese compound for “science” is a “return graphic loan” according to Lydia Liu’s book “Translingual Practice” (highly recommended). What that means is that the Japanese originally borrowed the classical Chinese compound “科学” in order to translate the modern European “science” into Japanese. The Chinese then “re-imported” 科学 from Japan to mean “science” in modern Chinese.

Before the reintroduction from Japanese, I think 塞因斯 (sāīyīnsī) was used, but that’s just a transliteration–one that probably implies the degree to which “science” was investigated seriously.