If you could give 'Just starting Japanese' you one piece of advice, what would it be

Japanese
#103

I am sorry for your lost :wink:

But I do agree: 99,99999% anime sucks. I don’t watch really anymore. I like some mangas though (another example is Berserk). I think I miss-represented myself by giving learning from anime as example. I would not do that. I prefer books (from visual ones good one but probably with too hard Japanese is: Narcissu)

We are going to deep into of-topic I think. We can start this conversation in new thread but I would not bother: “Tastes are not debatable” (no idea how to say it not in Latin xD)

#104

You might have a different problem but I’ve always found the the wildly inconsistent tone of anime to be nearly intolerable. You start out watching something like Full Metal Alchemist because so many people love it, and you think it’ll be serious because two children almost die trying to resurrect their mother, then people start having nose bleeds looking at pretty girls and cartoonishly shouting at people for calling them short.

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#105

Yeh that is definitely one of the reasons in my “against” pile :stuck_out_tongue:

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#106

Or you read the manga and know reference to philosophy and what kind of spin author tries to give to them.

“Made is abyss” even better example of that. Reference is so damn obvious:

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”

― Friedrich W. Nietzsche

I am always a little bit surprise people can enjoy it without knowing reference and understanding what it imply to the story. But that pretty much how good storytelling works: it try to bypass your rational understanding of reality.

i don’t claim all anime is like that. Most are not. Only semi-good ones which are rare as hell.

#107

I thought I recall hearing from native Japanese that the translation from Eng to Jp for Harry Potter was not always great (at least those fluent in English to know). But I haven’t read it to even have an opinion.

Here’s the rub, it’s very hard from a learner’s perspective (me learning Japanese) to judge the artistic translation choices for a fantasy novel of the target language I’m learning even if I know the story…it’s much easier the other way around, I can get picky on original Jp into Eng translation all day long. It’s not to say there aren’t good translators (there are many talented ones in fact) but I think I’d rather read original material if possible. For translated Eng-> Jp novels, you are two layers deep trying to get the essence and mood of the writing style in vastly different cultures which is beyond literal translation accuracy so alot is dependent on the translator to bridge this gap.

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#108

Having familiarity with text already is of huge benefit though. I know HP from two languages already and I spent probably over 1000h with that story (I some point I was even writing some stories in this universe - helps a lot to learn to write but that was not the intend obviously). Knowing what roughly could happen at given moment is helpful at my stage in my view.

And I have sentiment to that story as biggest story of my teen years and that helps a lot i guess.

Btw: no translation can be worst than my Japanese if made by professional xD

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#109

I believe it was very popular on the FloFlo (now Koohi) for learners that want to read HP w/ SRS, here are the links if interested. I haven’t used it but I’m sure other here could comment. I like the Reader tool within Kitsun which appears to do a similar thing.

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#110

I have missed that optimistic note 0_o

If that the case I am starting to get some hopes again xD

#111

When I was taking Japanese classes in college, I was the only student in my classes who didn’t like anime. It was a surreal position to be in. A few shows have grown on me since then, but it’s more out of my interest in character design and animation than the quality of the shows themselves.

I would recommend that any student of Japanese use live-action recordings for immersion practice instead. Watching native speakers’ lips move makes a big difference.

This is how I feel too. Part of learning Japanese is learning how a Japanese person would see things and how they’d express what they’d see.

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#112

Well Harry Potter is still wildly popular in Japan, and nearly everyone I know (regardless of English ability) has read the books and seen the movies. So even if the translation is a little off, it’s certainly still entertaining, and enough to hold peoples interest.

Actually, just to edit this. I have a funny story from when I was learning Swedish. When I was confident enough to start reading, the first series of books I read in Swedish was Eragon. To be honest, I thought they were great! BUT, the writing style of the third and fourth book was sooo different. I found out later that a different translator did the third and fourth book, than the first and second. Even their vocabulary choice was so much different. The story was the same, but it was like I was reading the story through the lens of a whole new narrator, and that was trippy. That experience was what made me realize just how different each individual persons vocabulary can be.

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#113

Often when people say translation is bad, they just mean “it is translation” but are not aware it has to be that way by nature of that work.

I think word “interpreter” and “interpretation” would solve this problem because translation is just that :hugs:

#114

I am not talking about interpretation. I am talking about the literal vocabulary of the translators. If some people see a bright sun in the sky, they might say the sun is ‘blinding’, if another person sees it, they would say the sun is ‘piercing’. This isn’t a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of that persons preferred/known vocabulary choice in relation to certain experiences.

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#115

I understand. I just added an opinion where the part of the reason for that is: it is personal interpretation of a translator to make a judgement what will best convey his understanding of the meaning of the source in his opinion.

Evolution of our understanding of how translation works is quite surpassing. I know that for long time there was an approach that properly translated sentence has to have the same amount of words. Pure madness from modern point of view :scream:

A lot misunderstanding about Bible was created because of that.

(If I remember correctly this is usually prime example of that approach: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgate I am not believer so I didn’t bother to look into too much - not interesting to me)

#116

If i ever get passed the first few topics on Duolingo and actually get into Swedish, the first thing I want to read is Steig Larsson :sunglasses:

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#117

I just found out something that made me laugh: people translating spoken language in real time do call themselves interpreters. They probably were tired of accusation like “This is not what I meant! why you translate it like that?!” so it is like them telling: “I know that but (1) I have no way to read your mind and (2) there is probably no way to make the same nuance in targeted language anyway. So I have to add my interpretations to make up for it. If you don’t like that then master the language yourself…” xD

I in fact don’t really like that fact. That my main motivation actually :hugs:

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#118

To add onto the Harry Potter thing, there is a cool podcast (in Japanese) where 2 girls who are native Japanese speakers and fluent in English discuss the differences between the English and Japanese versions chapter by chapter. I don’t think they finished the first book, but the bits I listened to were interesting.

http://mugglesgiggles.com/wordpress/

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#119

This has been one of the more pivotal learning points in my Japanese language journey so far!

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#120

Hmm… Let me guess…Cure Dolly have sent you on this path? xD

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#121

I actually have not, until now, known of Cure Dolly. Unfortunately, I’m terrible sheltered Japanese culture-wise.

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#122

“don’t”

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