Request: Explanation of translation of example sentences (in footnotes)

[Jshnaid]

Often when I look at the example sentences for vocab, there are translations which aren’t ‘literal’ translations, so you have to do some work to figure out how the grammar works in that sentence to understand why it’s translated as it is. It would be a really nice feature if Wanikani added footnotes to the translations which explained expressions that are used, words that are used which don’t appear on the English side of the translation because they modify a word or the whole sentence, or any grammar which the reader might not know at that Wanikani level. It would probably reduce the amount of questions asked about example sentences as well.

Edit: For example, the sentence: 「Tofuguはぜっさん出血大サービス中です」

A question was previously asked about it, and one user provided the following context

サービス by itself often means to give something/do something completely free (or attached for free to some other transaction). It’s worth noting because it’s used A LOT, and isn’t an intuitive use at all going from the English origin.

I thought this was really important information that should have been provided with the example sentence. Furthermore, I was confused about what 「ぜっさん」was doing in the sentence, as it seemed to have the same meaning without that word to me. How I’ve understood it now is that 「中」is describing the great offer (ぜっさん) to be “in” or about 「出血大サービス」. It would have been great to receive a more literal translation with the example sentence to see how the meaning of the sentence is constructed.

[anon9242278]

I agree that would be really cool. But, WK is geared toward learning Kanji, not grammar. My understanding is it is intended mostly to be used by those who are not starting from zero Japanese knowledge. I don’t think something like this would be a high priority or result in a worthwhile return for WK’s maintainers.

Don’t take any of this as discouragement. It would be great to see something like what you are proposing. A good way to provide the feedback so it gets attention might be to submit comments via WaniKani — Log in

[Jshnaid]

I agree. I’d clarify that I don’t expect Wanikani to provide explanations that would satisfy someone with zero japanese knowledge. My expectations for such an improvement are much more modest. Something like a literal translation + any relevant important knowledge about the usage of certain works in example sentence would be what I have in mind. That way it’s at least much easier to parse the grammar concepts in terms of something you can find find in guides/textbooks for Japanese grammar.

I’ll reach out to them with my feedback, thanks for the link.