Vocab - rewritten translations/highlighted words

[I-k-d]

Hi I’m studying for the Jlpt N5 in July, and I’m on track for kanji and grammar, but a bit far behind on vocab. I was going through Bunpros vocab lists, since I find flashcards like Anki difficult to remember so I needed a program that I would have to type in the answer. However, I’ve found that in the example sentances, the highlighted word doesn’t always reallly make sense.

For example(not the best cause I forgot the screenshot the better examples)

I didn’t have the hint available when I answered, but I feel like the english sentence should be rewritten to include the keywords for to vocab.
For example, “My backpack has a keyring attached to it”
I feel like that translation would be easy to write, is there a reason why you wouldn’t include the word ‘attatched’?
For this example, I would have got it if I had the hint visable, but some of them don’t make sense with the hint either.

Is there a feature where we can rewrite the example sentance translations or add a note that’s visable on the front of the card, or is that possible to add? Or could the team recheck the translation sentances and include the keyword in the highlight? Even if it sounds a bit unnatural in english, it would really help to have the right word included and highlighted.

And does anyone have any websites to help learn vocab in a type the answer style? Even if its just the word in english and you type the japanese or vice versa? Or any tips so that I can actually retain information from flashcards? What sites doyou guys use?

Any help is appreciated TT
Thanks

[I-k-d]

More examples

[CursedKitsune]

Bump because some of these are pretty bad.

[Asher]

Hi @I-k-d , and thanks for using our vocab decks! It’s currently still a beta feature, but we are doing the best we can to get it to the quality level it should be in a timely manner.

As for this -

@I-k-d

I feel like that translation would be easy to write, is there a reason why you wouldn’t include the word ‘attatched’?

This appears to have been missed in our initial sentence check through, and is bad highlighting rather than a bad translation. Both ‘have’ and ‘on’ should have been highlighted here, as ‘to have on’ is another common particle verb translation of 付く. All sentences are written in Japanese by our sentence writer, AI translated, and then checked by us for naturalness/word use. In this particular case, I think what happened is that whoever read the translation thought ‘yep that looks natural’, without considering if it would be difficult to guess the English from the Japanese, and reverse.

In the case of similar words, this will be unavoidable, and is why we have added hints to help with distinguishing between them. However we will still always do our best to ‘force’ the use of specific words in the translations where X will be easier to visualize than Y. If you see any like this that we have missed, feel free to report them, and we will change them.

受けに行く is mistranslated, it should be ‘will go to -take- the entrance exam’. It will be fixed.

掛ける is a bit of a tricky one, as ‘put on’ or ‘rest on’ is probably the most natural when translated. We may be able to add an option for ones like these to show possible translations of the target word.

For 顔, をする and がする are common patterns used with the way things look/feel/smell etc in Japanese, and is also a grammar pattern that we teach here on Bunpro. In cases like this, the hint is probably the best to look at, as ‘My mother seems to be making a happy face’ is correct, but might make the reader of the English sentence think that it is something no one would ever say, as we don’t tend to express ourselves that way in English. Maybe a literal and natural translation for this kind of sentence side by side like you suggested would be a good fix?

All in all, please do send reports! The content team is going ham lately on making many changes/improvements, and we really do appreciate users pointing out every little thing that we can easily fix to improve the learning experience for everybody.

Edit - If you can find any that don’t make sense with the hint, definitely point these out too please!

[I-k-d]

Thank you for your reply! The AI translation makes sense, I’ll make sure to send more screenshots of other strange ones, thank you for all your hard work I’ve been enjoying Bunpro!

[nminer]

@I-k-d

And does anyone have any websites to help learn vocab in a type the answer style? Even if its just the word in english and you type the japanese or vice versa? Or any tips so that I can actually retain information from flashcards? What sites doyou guys use?

I think you can currently do this on Bunpro. I’m still on the old review system, so someone correct me if this has changed in 2.0, but if you go into the Vocab Deck’s settings, you should be able to change it to “Manual Input”.

[wct]

@Asher

Maybe a literal and natural translation for this kind of sentence side by side like you suggested would be a good fix?

This is a very interesting idea. Personally, I often think of a new word/phrase/whatever in multiple different ways, as different mnemonics to help me remember the different aspects of the word/concept that need to be remembered during translation.

Examples of different aspects of words/concepts I might try to remember with some mnemonic:

I may try to remember a particular exaggerated sound in order to remember how to say, spell, or write something. Even in English I have done this since I was young and still do it to some degree. For example, if I’m getting tripped-up on how to type out the word ‘beautiful’, I will mentally exaggerate the pronunciation of the specific vowels in the spelling: bee-aa-wuu-tiful (or actually sounding more like bee-ow-tiful, but the ow sound is already well-connected to the spelling au, so I ‘think’ of the ow as aa-wuu.

I do similar things for words that constantly trip me up, like peculiar; spelled as ‘peck you, liar!’, but pronounced like peh-CULE-yar.

Or I amended the old spelling ‘rule’ of
“‘i’ before ‘e’, except after ‘c’”
into
“‘i’ before ‘e’, except after ‘c’,
or when said like an ‘a’, as in ‘neighbour’ and ‘weigh’,
or other exceptions like ‘height’ and ‘eight’,
…
or if it’s just ‘weird’!”

In terms of Japanese, I will often delve into different kanji meanings, look for connections with similar-usage words (like the various kosoado word types), etc.

Specifically, I definitely try to keep a sense of ‘natural English’ translation versus ‘more literal from Japanese’ translation. It seems to help with not only dealing with practical translation issues (sounding natural), but also with understanding the differences between how the Japanese language is structured differently from English and even other Western/European languages I have some familiarity with.

In other words, being able to ‘know’ (e.g. through a separate mnemonic) what a ‘more literal’ translation from Japanese is, helps me to understand actual Japanese better than if I only tried to memorize the ‘best’ (most typical or natural-sounding) translation into English.

I think a good example of this which I bet a lot of beginners encounter early on are certain words like 好き, which are almost always simplistically translated into the most ‘natural’ English equivalent, such as ‘to like’, when it’s quite different to how it’s actually used in Japanese grammar, which is more literally as ‘likeable’.

When a Japanese learner comes across these ‘natural’ translations, it can actually lead to a lot of confusion (IMO), which has to later be unlearned and then relearned the more correct way, in order to understand how these words fit in to Japanese grammar.

So, this is basically a long-winded way of saying, “Hey, if the BunPro team can put something together where we have the ability to see, or use, or perhaps create our own ‘more literal’ hints or mnemonics, or whatever you had in mind, then I think that would be really cool!” (Sorry for the super-long post; just didn’t have the time to think it through ahead of time and write a more condensed version!)

[wct]

@nminer

@I-k-d

And does anyone have any websites to help learn vocab in a type the answer style? Even if its just the word in english and you type the japanese or vice versa? Or any tips so that I can actually retain information from flashcards? What sites doyou guys use?

I think you can currently do this on Bunpro. I’m still on the old review system, so someone correct me if this has changed in 2.0, but if you go into the Vocab Deck’s settings, you should be able to change it to “Manual Input”.

I recently switched from the old system (type in English word) to entirely the ‘cloze’ style system (use the Japanese word in a context sentence), and it’s a very different experience.

The old system was just recognition and I was able to handle a lot more words, just for recognition only, and that actually does have some merit.

The new system with clozes is more challenging, requires more mental effort, but also means I’m actually learning the words for usage and not just recognition. I find that I learn the words much more completely this way. They become more ‘familiar’, like I actually understand them, rather than just being ‘pretty sure it means X’ feeling.

So, long story short, BP allows both types of answers to be used. The setting can be changed for each individual card, but can also be changed for a whole deck at a time. It’s possible some folks might even like to mix-n-match, say learning N5 using the full cloze system, and ‘skimming ahead’ on N4 with the English-answer system.

[I-k-d]

Yeah i have been using bunpro for it, but i wanted some other options to use while the highlighted words/translations are a bit iffy

[I-k-d]

I agree, i was using a netflix extention back when I had the time to watch netflix that had 2 translations which was great

[Sidgr]

@Asher

Maybe a literal and natural translation for this kind of sentence side by side like you suggested would be a good fix?

1000% This, One translation and one transliteration.