I couldn’t find ゆがみ and わずか in the vocab sheet. It’s in text that I missed when I was playing - perhaps it comes from examining the crystal after you defeat Garland? Regardless, I attempted to translate the line in the spreadsheet.
I included spoiler tags and I see them in my text, but they don’t appear in the preview and I don’t see anything special when I see my completed post. Let me know if they actually worked…
It did work! Thank you.
I think I may have added that specific line after I had already generated the vocab sheet and I couldn’t be bothered to re-run the script. It’s an easy line to miss after all…
I love the vocab sheets and the full script. As a beginner it’s been very helpful for me to refer to and try to write down what each thing is. Also easier for me to take a laptop with me and take a look at the script to decipher some things when I get the chance. I greatly appreciate all the work you’ve put into this.
Vocab list for week 3 is live. Fixed a few typos in the script as well, but since nobody is playing ahead it’s fine.
I may not be playing ahead, but it feels like I’m shaking Christmas presents when I’m peaking at a line or two to sanity check some vocab.
I’ve updated the bunpro deck with the week 3 vocab. Only 62 new items!
I haven’t taken the time to look at your text dumps yet but I will soon!
Also while I intend to transcribe all of this game manually, I probably won’t t do it for the others, so having an automated way to dump the text will be very welcome then…
Added a compound verb that I’ve never seen before to the Week 2 vocab sheet. Well, more like a set phrase than a compound verb, which makes it hard to recognize if you don’t know it. 力になる, meaning something like “to be helpful”. Sounds like a less common version of 役に立つ.
At this point you may not be surprised to learn that I have a Final Fantasy VIII screenshot for that too:
Looks like they both use 力になってやる. What is the additional meaning that the やる conveys? Something like "i will actively do something (to be helpful), e.g. “I’ll help you out”? Or is it the “give” sense of やる? Though I guess that would mean effectively the same thing, though I’ve heard that やる is old-fashioned, or rude, or something, and you’d use it to say you were giving something to someone beneath you, like a cat. In that case, could Irvine be saying he’d deign to help her out?
Perhaps it’s this grammar pattern? ～てやる (JLPT N1) | Bunpro
As far as I know it’s a less polite あげる, doing something for someone’s sake.
I think so yes.
Saw the thread yesterday, bought the game immediately, and now caught up to this week. Excited to try it out, never managed to finish FF1 back in the day.
By the way there’s a fundamental difference between 役に立つ and 力になる which probably explains why you’re more familiar with the former while the latter is very common in videogames and the like: 力になる, as far as I know, can only be used for people helping other people. You wouldn’t use that for, like, a screwdriver or a smartphone. You “lend your strength” to the other person.
It’s one of those cases where the Japanese definition may 役に立つ:
力(ちから)にな・る
１ 人のために骨を折る。助力する。「及ばずながら—・りましょう」
２ 頼りになる。「子どもが—・ってくれますので元気が出ます」
There’s the notion of making an effort to help another person, not just be helpful by nature.
Contrast that with 役に立つ which overlaps more with “to be useful”:
使って効果がある。有用である。
So both can be translated as “to help” or “to be helpful” in some contexts, but in Japanese there’s a pretty strong nuance between the two.
Did you hide the deck for public on purpose? I can’t find your deck without following your link, though following your link works nicely.
Sounds like a hired bruiser…
Let me help you! Whose bones would you like me to break for you?
Nope! I’ll fix it and make it public again today, thanks!
Questions to the people here, how do you plan/translate the game? Line by line translation, or just understand the general gist and move on?
I’m trying to find the balance between learning and enjoying the game, and was wondering how other people are tackling it.
Purrsonally, I’m the “general gist” type of purrson.
However, line by line translation – is also a valid method; it’s just not my way 
It depends wildly depending on the difficulty, my mindset and level of tiredness. This week I’m a bit busy so I went through the weekly Trails content without looking anything up and I certainly did not understand 100% of what was going on but I could understand enough to get the gist of (hopefully) everything.
My rule of thumb is always “if somebody asked you to summarize what just happened, could you do it?” If the answer is yes, then IMO you’re good. You don’t have to understand all the puns and secondary dialogues.
Learning to deal with the ambiguity and moving along is actually a useful skill to practice when learning a language, and probably even more so when learning Japanese specifically.
As I mentioned previously, a good thing with games like these is that the vast majority of the dialogue isn’t critical, and the stuff that’s important is usually repeated a lot (and you can always return and re-trigger conversations with important NPCs who will usually repeat the important parts).
And if it’s really too hard or frustrating, don’t hesitate looking up an English “let’s play” video on Youtube to see what is being said, and then try to match that with the Japanese you’re reading. It’s obviously much, much easier that way. I used that a lot when I played my first games.
But also, if you have the stamina for it, taking the time to look everything up and break sentences appart can be a very good exercise and you will learn a lot doing it, just don’t force yourself to do it all the time if it leads you to burnout.
So basically, there’s not really a wrong way to do it, just do what feels right.