Need help learning how to translate manga better

Japanese Language
#21

Thank you for the links.

I would personally throw out the study from 1955 and likely the one from 1971 as well, as in the world of linguistics those are honestly like a lifetime ago. But, rather than the quality of the study, I suspect the formulas themselves are significantly different, and that accounts for the large difference between 33k and 50k. The difference between 33 and 34, and even 32 is basically nothing since these are all done in the same way. “Have people see if they know X words” and then extrapolate from there.

You also bring up an interesting point. I could say, know a shit ton of archaic vocabulary, but in the modern world that’s just useless. Like, if I know the entire sentence “Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.” That might be more vocabulary, but it’s literally useless outside of a very specific context.

What I’m doing right now is going through the studies to see if I can find how words were defined. But as the other posts said, the problem here is still that “word” is not a singly defined concept, even in Japanese, what is one-word is complex. Like I said, are する and した two words or one, is 私は different 私? Is は a word? These are all the kinds of questions that need to be answered. And if you say は is a word, it’s an entire class of words that English doesn’t have. So already from that it’s an unfair comparison.

And yes, to the other posts, none of this actually matters to OP. This is a more theoretical discussion.

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#22

I currently read about 10 pages at a time and then go back to words that I’m unfamilirized with and sentences that don’t make sense and then figure out what was happening in that specific dialog. I do it both for enjoyment and for improving my japanese.

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#23

This is what I had been doing lately! I love the idea of just learning the grammar as it comes up “in the wild” like you said. I also got started with genki 2 but I am taking it rather slowly than usual… Thank you very much for all the sources that you have used before and I will definitely watch Cure Dolly’s videos.
Although, I think I will get the “A dictionary of basic Japanese grammar” book later down the road. Thanks to you I have many sources to go off and I find it fun research and learning about new grammar and having some kind of text to connect it to. Let me know if the book was really helpful, right now I literally just use hinative, japanesetest4you, genki, etc. for decyphering the “grammar”.

I really appricaite the help!

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#24

Wow! How often do you see your self writing the sentence? Whenever you don’t understand or its the whole book? I’m currently aiming for just understanding what the grammar meanes in the context and somtimes the defintions of words. I’m not really looking for the English transation but more like what one part of the sentence is equal to English. I will also look into getting the A dictionary book but I don’t think I’m going to get it now. Thanks for explaining how you learn from the text you read and how you break it down!

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#25

I don’t find anything that was translated for entertainment is a good translation. They’ll usually changed it to fit English. You could take こんにちは and translate it to hello or good afternoon but how Japanese use it is they are saying todayは like hows your day or how’s the day. Like in dialog when they ask about someone like たけしさんは？
I’m looking more for the translation of the part of the sentence and not how it would look like in English.

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#26

For me it varies scene-by-scene. If it’s lighthearted I don’t bother with getting a perfect understanding, I just read what I can and move along. But if it’s a serious scene or important conversation then I add everything I have trouble with since I don’t want to miss anything important. I only do this for grammar though. If it’s just vocab that’s stopping me from understanding something then I just look it up quickly, re-read the sentence, and move on. Nothing to break down there, just a missing puzzle piece.

If you decide to do something like this, you could also use those sentences in flashcards to quiz yourself on the vocab or grammar. It might stick better that way since it’s taken directly from something you’re interested in.

And no problem! I hope it was useful to you.

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#27

It is very useful to me! And I like the fact that you read it for the fun unlike some people who just read of it mainly just cause they just wanna learn the grammar. I have things that I don’t understand in the manga that I’m reading but I see the qualities in it and from what I have seen from many people here is that if it doesnt make sense now, it will make sense later. Thank again!

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#28

Yes, that method won’t help you get a detailed breakdown of how every part of the sentence works, but knowing what would be the equivalent to that compound can take away a lot of the guesswork. In your example, seeing konnichiwa translated as hello you’d go like “oh so this is an expression used as a greeting! no point in trying to dig deeper”, but of course with stuff that’s a lot less obvious XD

Regardless of the specific grammar/syntactic structure, the information that’s being transmitted will usually be the same as we would transmit, since people anywhere in the world are more or less the same. So a competent translator will be able to keep the gist of it. Otherwise anime wouldn’t be so relatable hehe

But then again, this has been showing good results for me who’s really in beginner 101, maybe at the level you’re at this won’t work so well :slight_smile:

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#29

To be honest, I might use this method later on but for now I’ll just work off sources that others have listed. I have never thought of it because it could really be a direct translation or it could be equivalent to what is said in english. I still appricate the suggestion!

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