I'm not sure if could explain welll, but...
> Is this process irreversible ?
>
> I.e. will words like "mirku" or "taikin katchuretchu" (if i remember
> correctly my reading form an old dictionary, these were imported words
> for "milk" and "chicken cutlets") never get "kanji" characters ?
I guess "mirk" --> "mi-ru-ku" (3 katakana), "taikin katchuretchu" -->
"chi-ki-n ka-tsu-re-tsu" (3 + 4 katakana).
I don't think it's not irreversible. For example, we have kanji
characters "gyuu nyuu" (2 kanji characters) having same meaning as
milk = miruku, but we cannot interchange "gyuu nyuu" with "miruku" in
most cases.
> BTW, it seems that even with 3 bytes/char tai-kin is shorter than
> chicken ;)
Depends. For example, "pu-ro-se-su" (= process) will be totally 12
bytes in UTF-8.
--
Tatsuo Ishii