Meanings and Sentences general gripe

Bunpro
#1

I’m getting through N3, and… while I’m learning stuff I also feel like tearing my hair out because a lot of times the first sentence I encounter has a ton of n2/n1 words, or basically words I haven’t studied yet. This also changes the meaning of words that I had initial thought were correct, trending towards what I think are fringe meanings.

Also, every word I encounter now as like 10+ meanings. I know even in English some words can be used differently, but there is essential a core meanings to many that, if you stick to, you can’t ever get lost. Perhaps this is just a frustrating quirk of Japanese, but I feel like there’s a better way to teach these without needing to remember 10+ meanings. There has to be a ‘core’ meaning that ties everything together. To be honest, I don’t care if that core meaning doesn’t translate well in English sentences. I’m not studying English here, I’m studying Japanese.

Furthermore, the translations on a lot of sentences are smoothed out WAY too much. I get that translating from Japanese to English isn’t always direct, but the smoothing that goes on sometimes completely overwrites the meanings/usages of other words to the point where I get extremely confused. Sometimes I understand the Japanese sentence better than the English, not because the English is bad, but because the translation was smoothed to the point that their intents don’t match anymore.

If I had it my way, English sentences should have little to no smoothing. Yes, broken English is even acceptable as long as it’s understandable according to the Japanese. Because I’m learning Japanese here, not English. One day maybe I’ll do interpretations or translations, but I feel like that’s almost a completely different skill. I realize that maybe not many people feel the same way I do. But I just needed to vent a little of my frustrations because I’m having a hard time learning 10+ meanings for every word I study. Does anyone have any general advice for dealing with that?

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#2

I’m only beginning to work my way through N4 myself, but I agree especially that the smoothing out of translations is definitely something I’ve noticed even at that level and earlier.

I’ve often found myself asking a friend or even plugging the sentence into chatgpt to try to get a more literal translation, which is something that I’d really prefer not to have to do on the latter point.

#3

i personally failed N3 and thought i’d go back and try N4, and upon reuse of bunpro i also found that the vocab / sentence structure sometimes feels quite advanced for N4. Not all the sentences, and in the info section theres usually shorter less intense examples, but I do agree that target words seem to be thrown into any level and just put in that study group for sake of.

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#4

I will say the ten meanings for a word thing gets worse with level 2, and it’s my biggest challenge. That said, I’m not sure there is a better way, necessarily. It’s hard for me because when I am first learning it and get completely different meanings, I don’t always recognize it, or I’ll remember one or two really well, and there’s one meaning I never get right.

That said, it’s going to be frustrating no matter what. You’ll either have to learn one meaning and then learn another completely different meaning, or you’ll have to learn them at the same time. English also has a fair share of words that have multiple, disparate meanings, but we don’t often think about it because we just know it and get it in context.

I often try to look for a base meaning to the word that I can associate it all with. But sometimes the meanings don’t seem to have a good connection, and in some cases one word can have completely opposite meanings. It’s a frustrating thing to learn, but at the end of the day, I don’t know that there’s a non-frustrating way to learn it. When I see one of those words, I know it’s going to be one that I end up with ghosts for a lot, and I just accept it and know that the repeated exposure means I’ll eventually get it.

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#5

When I do reading reviews, if I recognize a word but am taken by surprise by the translation, I hit the info button, check if it’s the word I thought, and slam the ‘correct’ button if I was right.

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#6

This is what I’ve been doing as well. I do go for exact translations, but sometimes the meanings are so different that, even if I got a meaning that was apart of the word correct it would be incorrect for the sentence. For example: 納得 is ‘consent/agreement’, but it can also mean ‘comprehend’.

先生による文法の説明を聞いて納得する。If you try to pigeonhole ‘agreement/consent’ here, it may work, but it loses the nuance of comprehension. But when you read the summary, it actually makes way more sense.

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#7

I agree that I wish the translations were more literal, with maybe a smooth explanation attached.

Words having multiple meanings is frustrating, but learning them in the context of a sentence is the best way to learn them. かける can mean so many different things based on the context.

But keep at it, there’ll always be a lot of words you won’t understand. Try to get comfortable with that and you’ll be able to learn fill in the gaps later. I think the transition around N3/N2 is the hardest because the number of words used in a given topic widens significantly, so you’re constantly encountering new words you weren’t familiar with.

#8

I also agree that the translations are bad. Or rather, they are often not helpful.

They would be more useful if, to the extent possible each grammar point had one (or more, if necessary) anchor words that are used consistently with that grammar point.

Just today, I was studying がたい. Bunpro defines it as “Hard to, Difficult to”. Yet the example sentence was “I wouldn’t exchange anything in the world for what was said (to me).”

The hell? Sure, in hindsight I can squint and see how this kinda, sorta works, but this is not a useful test of my Japanese. The use of ‘would not’ sounds far more like a question of volition than difficulty to me as a native English speaker. And there’s just far too much like this in Bunpro.

And, to the extent possible, anchor words should not be shared with other grammar points. I should not have to guess which of ten possible grammar points a particular key word is trying to lead me to. I don’t care if it makes the example sentence a little clunky; I’m trying to learn how to express concepts in Japanese, not enjoy fine literature.

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#9

I have to agree that I’m not always a fan of the translation style. I too would rather have more literal ones and do the analyzing / smoothing work myself.
What would be even better would be some kind of explanations related to specific usages, “how Japanese people think in this case”, similar to what Satori Reader does, but that would be an enormous amount of work for the team with the thousands of sentences available.

On the other hand, I also find some translations too literal, or with odd word choices.
Recently I came across something like “I heard his brother is international”. What does that even mean?

It’s hard to balance between literal and free natural translations, and that’s an ongoing debate I’ve seen here on Bunpro and elsewhere, with different preferences for different people.

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#10

I agree. That’s why I keep coming back to the point that the easiest thing to do would be to allow us to edit the hints in some way. This could be a direct edit to the entry, or a creating secondary entry that pops up along with the original.

It’s a one and done solution that can be applied to all cards, and it allow each person to select the anchor words that work for them, rather than have someone else’s anchor words foisted on them.

#11

I think it’s a fundamental issue with the Cloze system. Simply put there’s multiple ways to say the same thing.

I’ve done all the grammar points with reading, but am doing them again with Cloze to be able to master the grammar structure. This helps a lot because I’m already familiar with the grammar, I’m just applying it, but I still run into half my answers being valid but incorrect synonyms.

I don’t think Bunpro (or any SRS app) is necessarily a great tool for practicing output. But it’s a good stepping stone at understanding what grammar structures should look like and having “correct” grammar.

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