So I have seen some words so far where the Meaning and Alternate Meanings don’t really translate at all when translating example sentences, take for example exhibit 1 折角:
In Wanikani, you see meaning as WITH TROUBLE, WITH DIFFICULTY, GOING THROUGH THE TROUBLE, TROUBLE WITH, DIFFICULTY WITH, ON PURPOSE, DELIBERATELY
However when looking at the only sample sentence, or other sentences from Tangorin or other pages, you would not see any of the meanings translated in there:
Well, it’s a good opportunity to make a long-awaited change to my look, so I might as well get it shortened in the back by about 30 centimeters.
I understand that there are words that are hard to translate or that you really shouldn’t expect to see the explicit meaning when translated into other languages.
In some other cases, you can easily understand the usage of a word in a sentence and how its meaning impacts the overal sentence meaning even though you dont see it in the actual translation, but this one in particular has got me scratching my head…
To me, when they say “long-awaited change” (折角イメチェン), it seems like they are implying that it was long-awaited because it’s something they’ve been trying/meaning to do for a long time but couldn’t for one reason or another. So they, with difficulty, eventually got the opportunity to do it.
Yep this is a good answer. It’s a good idea from now on to be aware that lots of Japanese words should be approached from the perspective of “idea being conveyed” instead of a literal definition. For example, if you look up 随分 using Jisho you will get “very; extremely; surprisingly; considerably” but what you really should be learning is that 随分 + X adj means that something is “more X than you expected”, e.g. 随分古いだね. There really aren’t any good resources that specifically concentrate on nuances of words but read lots of example sentences and you’ll figure it out eventually. Sorry if this comment ended up a bit irrelevant lol