Maybe this is common knowledge to others, but I came up with a workflow for translating the subtitles in Netflix that feels like a breakthrough for me.
For context, I’m level 11 Wanikani and working on N5 grammar, so any show I choose, I’m still going to be awash in unfamiliar vocab and grammar.
The trick is this: for each screen of Japanese subtitles, I pause the show, take a screenshot with the phone buttons, and then feed that screenshot to the Google Translate app. The results:
I get copy/paste-able text that I can use to look up meanings, I get a printout of the pronunciation, and I can save each “slide” of translation as a saved translation in Google Translate for later reference.
Once I’ve done the work to look up all the unfamiliar Vocab and grammar for an episode, I can rewatch from a standpoint of actually knowing what’s being said, and start focusing on listening comprehension. And the “slides” are always there as a reference at that point.
Hopefully this is helpful for those like me. I kept feeling thwarted in my efforts to learn from shows, because I couldn’t pronounce the kanji in the subtitles and didn’t have the time to use a printed kanji dictionary to look them up. This finally broke me through that barrier so that I can translate much faster!
