Current Events > ITT: Japanese Studies

(+) Yeah! (+)

Some of the booru image sites have tons of images with untranslated text (mostly dialogue from characters). You can make an account on there and try to translate some of the images. You can then tag the image with a request for someone more experienced to vet the translation for you too.

It's kind of a fun no stakes way to practice translating.

I'll keep that in mind, thanks! Hopefully my translations wont be too bad.

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Haven't done much studying today. Got a lot of other things to take care of.

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Trying to figure out why whenever I try to translate Kanji I end up forgetting every since one I studied, but then I remember a few hours later.

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It's so crazy
here we go

Never give it up never give it up


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Ugh so classes are gonna be delayed until later this month. Sucks, I wanted to get back into the swing of things. Really wish face to face classes will start soon..

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Some of these lyrics dont make full sense obviously when translating them. I believe songs sometimes take liabilities?

Its so crazy
here we go

never give it up never give it up

Run away, its so crazy
Throw everything out here we go
I want to grab it someday
Never give it up never give it up, you are

Not sure if the translation is 100% correct? Going to translate the next part.

Edit: The last part would be better if I said "You Never give it up, Never give it up"

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Why is the first line here can I take your order? I cant find the normal way to write this in English so I cant find the translation exactly?



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Stalolin posted...

Why is the first line here can I take your order? I cant find the normal way to write this in English so I cant find the translation exactly?

I wouldn't know. Maybe some of the more learned members can answer that?

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Stalolin posted...

Why is the first line here can I take your order? I cant find the normal way to write this in English so I cant find the translation exactly?

It comes from the verb () which means to ask/inquire and is used quite formally. I've often seen it used when you want to ask someone, especially a stranger, a question and are "seeking permission". Something like ...

In general it just means you are asking or about to ask something, or would like to do so and are seeking permission. So in this case it's translated as "can I take your order" because it's pretty much the server prompting you to order.

Thanks!!

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Bump

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I was so not expecting to see a Shimura Ken reference in a Zelda game.

https://i.imgur.com/A1e306F.png

Burst out laughing because of how unexpected it was.

Rimmer_Dall posted...

I was so not expecting to see a Shimura Ken reference in a Zelda game.

https://i.imgur.com/A1e306F.png

Burst out laughing because of how unexpected it was.

I could read the first 2 sentences perfectly but had trouble with the last one :<

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SpiritSephiroth posted...

I could read the first 2 sentences perfectly but had trouble with the last one :<

= . Not a word you'll encounter very often. Had to look it up myself, mostly because it was the first time I'd seen it written in that form instead of .

Starting to get back into the groove. Back to finishing VNs for once and going to start a new Anki mined words deck. I'm going to abandon my old decks as I haven't used them in forever so the algorithms are probably way off.

One of them was the Core vocab deck and I've long mastered all that vocab. The other was an old mined words deck that was way bloated with unnecessary stuff.

I added a bunch of words that I doubt I really need to know and that I barely have a grasp of in English anyway (a bunch of scientific terms like chemical compounds etc that basically had no chance of sticking). I think there was a science infodump in some VN and I just added all the words from it to Anki without thinking.

My new deck is only going to contain stuff that I think I can remember and that seems like it'll be useful/repeated often.

Overall if someone goes the mining/Anki route (adding words that pop up in stuff you read to a deck), my advice would be to not add in everything blindly because your deck will end up bloated with difficult to remember stuff. I would advise asking yourself if the word is actually something you'd predict seeing more than a handful of times ever. I think with a more focused deck, practice will be more efficient.

Of course it depends on your goals with Japanese as well. If you're going for like a science degree at a Japanese university obviously priorities will change.

Itachi157 posted...

Starting to get back into the groove. Back to finishing VNs for once and going to start a new Anki mined words deck. I'm going to abandon my old decks as I haven't used them in forever so the algorithms are probably way off.

One of them was the Core vocab deck and I've long mastered all that vocab. The other was an old mined words deck that was way bloated with unnecessary stuff.

I added a bunch of words that I doubt I really need to know and that I barely have a grasp of in English anyway (a bunch of scientific terms like chemical compounds etc that basically had no chance of sticking). I think there was a science infodump in some VN and I just added all the words from it to Anki without thinking.

My new deck is only going to contain stuff that I think I can remember and that seems like it'll be useful/repeated often.

Overall if someone goes the mining/Anki route (adding words that pop up in stuff you read to a deck), my advice would be to not add in everything blindly because your deck will end up bloated with difficult to remember stuff. I would advise asking yourself if the word is actually something you'd predict seeing more than a handful of times ever. I think with a more focused deck, practice will be more efficient.

Of course it depends on your goals with Japanese as well. If you're going for like a science degree at a Japanese university obviously priorities will change.

I checked Anki out and I really don't know how to use it. All I saw were blank cards. Am I supposed to fill them out myself?

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SpiritSephiroth posted...

I checked Anki out and I really don't know how to use it. All I saw were blank cards. Am I supposed to fill them out myself?

It's been a while since I've set it up, but IIRC there are pre-made decks you can download and use.
Not sure if they are still out there. I think they set up all the formatting for you too.

But aside from that to my understanding, you do make the cards yourself manually. You can set the cards up however you want (what info to show on each side, etc) and there are also ways to change up the fonts/sizes.

There used to be a tool in Firefox I believe that synced up with Rikaichan (mouse over dictionary) where if you linked it up with Anki, you could add and create new cards to an Anki deck with the press of a button. Made it super fast to make and add new cards. It would make the whole card for you. However, some browser update broke it, and I didn't check if it ever got restored. It was kind of a double edged sword as the ease of using that tool made me add every unknown word I ran into, which led to inefficiencies.

I'm actually going to make a new deck for the first time in a while, so if I find anything useful, I'll post it here. I was planning on making the cards manually which would probably be a pain, but if there's a way to auto do it I'll try to find it. Like I said it's been years since I really messed with Anki.

Found this when poking around reddit

https://learnjapanese.moe/

It has a section on Anki. Not sure who made it and I didn't in depth read the whole thing, but from skimming there's some good info on there.

There's no one way to learn but you can usually glean some useful stuff from guides like this.

I've decided to start practicing writing, not because I particularly want to write but because I want to improve my reading speed. Today for the first time in forever I started writing the hiragana over and over again from memory, and I've also started the Kanken deck and finally learn how to write kanji (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/759825185).

I've already seen results. It's the same day and my reading speed has already improved just by writing hiragana and a few kanji. It's ridiculous.

Itachi157 posted...

It's been a while since I've set it up, but IIRC there are pre-made decks you can download and use.
Not sure if they are still out there. I think they set up all the formatting for you too.

But aside from that to my understanding, you do make the cards yourself manually. You can set the cards up however you want (what info to show on each side, etc) and there are also ways to change up the fonts/sizes.

There used to be a tool in Firefox I believe that synced up with Rikaichan (mouse over dictionary) where if you linked it up with Anki, you could add and create new cards to an Anki deck with the press of a button. Made it super fast to make and add new cards. It would make the whole card for you. However, some browser update broke it, and I didn't check if it ever got restored. It was kind of a double edged sword as the ease of using that tool made me add every unknown word I ran into, which led to inefficiencies.

I'm actually going to make a new deck for the first time in a while, so if I find anything useful, I'll post it here. I was planning on making the cards manually which would probably be a pain, but if there's a way to auto do it I'll try to find it. Like I said it's been years since I really messed with Anki.

Itachi157 posted...

Found this when poking around reddit

https://learnjapanese.moe/

It has a section on Anki. Not sure who made it and I didn't in depth read the whole thing, but from skimming there's some good info on there.

There's no one way to learn but you can usually glean some useful stuff from guides like this.

Thanks, I'll check this out.

Rimmer_Dall posted...

I've decided to start practicing writing, not because I particularly want to write but because I want to improve my reading speed. Today for the first time in forever I started writing the hiragana over and over again from memory, and I've also started the Kanken deck and finally learn how to write kanji (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/759825185).

I've already seen results. It's the same day and my reading speed has already improved just by writing hiragana and a few kanji. It's ridiculous.

Really need to start writing things. And not just homework or textbooks.

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Did a bit of reading today, although still have trouble with Kanji. But there are a few familiar words and letters. Really wish it was easier, but I got to persist.

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You guys ever heard of Wanikani? I had a book that tried to teach the kanji in a similar way, with mnemonics and wacky stories, but Wanikani is much more modern and engaging. I think the book I was using was pretty old and didnt have as much imagination to it, which is definitely not what you want when the whole point is about creating vivid memories and stories.

Would recommend.

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Stalolin posted...

You guys ever heard of Wanikani? I had a book that tried to teach the kanji in a similar way, with mnemonics and wacky stories, but Wanikani is much more modern and engaging. I think the book I was using was pretty old and didnt have as much imagination to it, which is definitely not what you want when the whole point is about creating vivid memories and stories.

Would recommend.

I managed to find my old review of WaniKani.

It's not bad, it just has some issues that become more annoying the longer you use it. The first problem is it requires you to manually type in your answers. A lot of people say it's a good thing because it helps strengthen your memory and makes you avoid mistakes, but the few seconds extra time and effort it takes adds up, and once your Enlightened reps start coming in it becomes a pain, possibly even a physical one if you have wrist problems. Having to type in your answers also means you can't just lie back and relax while repping. It also opens up the possibility of typos screwing up a streak, which is something you can only fix with userscripts/addons.

The second problem, and this is a major one, is the inability to suspend cards or mark them as already known. If you have a troublesome word or kanji that you just can't remember no matter how many times you rep it you can't just skip it and learn it some other day. Instead you have to go through the grind of constantly failing it over and over and over again until you finally luck out and remember it, and then you have to repeat the process again the next time it comes up in your queue. This is demoralizing, and your queue fills up with more of these cards as time goes on. In Anki you would just suspend or delete such cards. Not being able to mark cards as known means if you already know a fair number of kanji, WaniKani forces you to waste time on repping cards that you already know (this is especially egregious when it comes to the radical cards), time you could be using to learn new words or immerse in native Japanese content.

This leads to the third problem; you can't skip ahead. If you already know a fair bit of kanji, you might have to waste months waiting for unknown content. You also can't learn words that you might need to know right now (because the word keeps popping up in a book/manga you're reading for instance) but is many WK levels above what you're currently learning.

WaniKani is designed to make them money, with you learning something being incidental. There is nothing it does you can't do yourself for free and much faster. Anki decks exist with mnemonics on them if that's what you want.

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ssjevot posted...

WaniKani is designed to make them money,

Well yeah? Lmao.

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Stalolin posted...

Well yeah? Lmao.

By cutting that off you are missing the point. There can be well designed learning tools that cost money. WaniKani is literally designed to maximize the money they make, not the effectiveness of your learning.

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Fair enough. I find it works better for me but then Im not out here speaking fluent Japanese yet so

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Bump

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJxndUGN8Cg

Handy video which should fully be able to set up Anki for you along with auto creating flashcards.

Been speaking Japanese, mostly to my girlfriend. Im aiming to do at least 30 mins of straight convesation everyday.

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Didn't do much today. Got my hands on FF7 Intermission, just finished it lol

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Been writing down random phrases I've been making just to practice now and then.

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Still having trouble understanding conversations when people speak at average/fast speed. But I think its just a lack of vocabulary on my part. Remembering is the hardest part for me, ugh.

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Skimming more pages from the textbook. Should be starting up my lessons again in 2 weeks, anticipating it >_>

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Just watched Kimetsu no Yaiba in the theaters. What shocked me was how good the Swedish subtitles were. I'm so used to the trash English translators churn out (and then go on to twitter whine to the people rightly calling their translations garbage that it's not garbage it's 'localized for modern audiences' or some other bullshit) that the quality seemed outright divine. Accurate to the source material, natural-sounding in Swedish, no added bullshit. Even the attack names had translations that not only were accurate but sounded cool in Swedish. I think the only words I saw that remained untranslated were "kagura" and "mochi".

Wasn't all that surprised to see that the name of the translator was Japanese, so it seems part of the reason it was so good was because it was translated by a lady who was raised in a bilingual household.

I kind of wanted to watch it in theaters but I didn't want to get delta covid, so I decided to just wait until it's available online. I was able to understand the series in Japanese pretty well so expecting the movie to not be much more difficult. I do need to do more listening practice in general, too.

Itachi157 posted...

I kind of wanted to watch it in theaters but I didn't want to get delta covid, so I decided to just wait until it's available online. I was able to understand the series in Japanese pretty well so expecting the movie to not be much more difficult. I do need to do more listening practice in general, too.

They only let in a handful of people. There wasn't anyone sitting anywhere near us. No chance in hell anything was gonna spread there.

Yeah here in London I'd rather not risk it either till I either get the vaccine or Covid starts to die out for good.

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Bump.

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So I just spoke to one of my favourite idols of all time, Den Ayaka. And I'm so happy I was able to hold a conversation with her totally in Japanese! Im proud of myself, kinda struck me how cute she was too!

Damn, today was a good day.



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Did you run into her IRL somehow or was it online?

Itachi157 posted...

Did you run into her IRL somehow or was it online?

Spoke to her over video call.

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I did kind of cut her off once or twice now that I look back on it which I feel bad about. Probably because of me not being confident enough and trying to get myself across clearly.

But she seemed fine with it. She said my Japanese was very good but I know full well that they all say that. What I need to do is maybe let the other person talk to me more next time, so I can be in the answering seat more.

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Woot! Classes starting next week and I've been going over a few old chapters. Learning these phrases that I totally forgot.







Gonna be filling out a page of phrases with these before bed.

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Finished a page. Need to plan my day out, got so much I want to do every week.

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Okay! Going to finish off my homework for Saturday coming. Can't wait to see my class again online. My sensei will also be back from Japan, although if I was her I would have loved to stay there lol.

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Homework finished! It was more Keigo but I couldn't be sure on all the questions. Sent it to my Sensei anyways.

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Well I got it back with some corrections. I want to fix a few stuff in it. Also she's back in London now!

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Demon Slayer movie is out on Funimation now (streaming). I started it and it seemed there was a really strangely long recap of the very beginning of the series (showing Tanjiro's family alive). I was thinking "wow, they really took up this much time of the movie with showing this again"?

It felt too weird, so I checked and realized I actually hit play on episode 1 of the series.