small milestone

[piranha]

today i translated my first page of manga. and no, it wasn't one of the pages with a lot of "a...h" and "n...h". :) though it had only a minimum of kanji, since i know so few. i hadn't actually planned on it, but i got sucked into a story that has only had a chapter scanlated, whch ended on a cliffhanger, so i got my hands on the raw and tried to make sense of it. this bloody raw doesn't have furigana, so i am not planning to carry on with it; it'd frustrate me in no time. it took hours just to do three pages with very little actual text. but i resolved the cliffhanger and can now sleep well.

i'm glad i listened to so many drama CDs lately. knowing the sound of words even if i don't know how they're written really helps when translating -- i have to painstakingly sound out the kana syllable by syllable (yes, i move my lips), and then suddenly! it makes a phrase i know! なんでもない was the first one that gave me a "eureka" feeling.

this stage of foreign language acquisition is generally a royal pain because i don't recognize any patterns yet, and i am generally such a pattern matcher, and rely on it hugely for reading in all languages in which i am fluent, *sigh*. but to get the mere inkling of a pattern is a thrill.

i'm tickled a bright electric blue. :)

Comments

[janetmk.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's impressive.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Awesome! :)

[firecat]

w00t!

re: small milestone

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Wow, go you! What story was so interesting in the first two chapters?

Re: small milestone

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i am not sure the story's interest level actually warrants my efforts, really. :) uso to kisu by minase masara. it was the hotness of the bois; i like minase-sensei's style.

what's happy-makingly different about this story is that there is no initial angst happening at all, no rape (yay!), no one-sided pursuit, nor any of the other silly tropes -- these two bois meet, they're attracted to each other for a while, and one day they go out drinking, and then have hot, happy sex. (except we're getting omniscient foreshadowing that there will be angst, of course). i am easily hooked these days. :)

woops. it's licensed! i didn't realize. well, that means i could buy it and check my translation! i am not sure i want to buy it, though. it's not one of the stories that really gets to me. i am just happy that it didn't suck.

i need an icon with some minase boi with glasses. in the meantime, here's colour art from this story:

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

That's really marvelous!

[huashan.livejournal.com]

Well...there you go. That's about as good as I ever got with Japanese in 4 semesters of college classes.

And now I'm trying to learn some Mandarin...4 months until I'll be there trying to buy food/shop/touristy things and I have about 8 phrases. Hopefully all of the people I meet on this trip will be as forgiving and friendly as the last trip. I sure wish I spoke more languages. Maybe someday I'll have the time and money to finally learn one. Hopefully my brain will work well enough. hehehe Stupid brain.

language acquisition

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

yeah, i am pretty quick with this. language acquisition is one of my talents; i have an ear for it, and i am really grateful for it. once upon a time i wanted to be a simultaneous translator at the UN. life sure does happen differently...

but learning any language takes most of all a lot of practice, and the sort of monomaniacal immersion thing i do speeds that up. but most people actually have, you know, lives, and can't invest that sort of time and effort.

mandarin is somewhere further down on my list, *heh*. some day... maybe after i polish my french more. it's embarrassing to live in canada and have such bad french.

so you're going to china!? how exciting is that!

most people anywhere i've gone have really appreciated my attempts to speak their language, so i bet your 8 phrases will pay off. :)

Re: language acquisition

[huashan.livejournal.com]

One of the things that bugs me is that French (the first non-native language I tried to learn) was so easy for me. I was never fluent, but I found the classes to be incredibly easy. Having no reason to believe otherwise, I thought that Japanese would just be a bit harder. Wow...so very wrong. I think I just did it wrong though...I was so stressed about it from day 1, and ended up desperately trying to learn through rote memorization which is not one of my strong points. Mandarin I'm just learning through occasional contact with it in class (unlabeled and mixed with cantonese and fukienese...sigh) and Instant Immersion CDs.

Yep, going back to China for the second time on another whirlwind kung fu tour. 1.5 days per location, all over a large section of the country for 2 weeks seeing sites, seeing demonstrations and for some of us putting on demonstrations. Not me...one thing the world doesn't need to see more of is giant fat white guys trying to perform traditional kung fu. Although, I have to admit, the Chinese people on the last trip were very entertained by me. Like a mix between a Circus Freak and a Sports Celebrity.

I apparently practiced a couple of phrases last trip well enough that it sounded like I spoke Mandarin. One woman slowly asked me a question, I answered with the correct pat phrase from the CD, and got back a very fast torrent of chinese with gestures, questions and smiles. I understood only a couple of words. hehehe Then I couldn't remember how to say that I didn't speak Chinese. oops. I'll have to make sure I have that one down this time.

I've got to get Greetings, Food Ordering, Directions, and Bargaining down...those are the sets of phrases I know I'll need the most. Oh...and numbers...that's always useful.

Re: language acquisition

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

Although, I have to admit, the Chinese people on the last trip were very entertained by me.

hey, whatever gets you in contact with the natives, if you don't mind being gawked at. :) i hate that, but admire it when people can just do it.

yeah, i've had the experience of learning some phrases well, and having sufficiently good pronunciation that natives would reply with rapid fire responses, and i'd just look dumbfounded. *heh*.

there's always some stuff that simply has to be learned by rote, but rote alone does IMO not do it, and overall, it's not a good method for a lot of aspects of a language (like grammar). i tend to use a mix; i'll learn verb conjugations by rote, but i also practice them in context, over and over and over. vocabulary i once learned a lot by rote, but not this time; i am learning what i come across instead. i am not sure yet whether this will work as well or better or worse; my subjective perception is that i am picking up a lot of connective tissue terms casually, but not quite enough otherwise.

Re: language acquisition

[huashan.livejournal.com]

I don't have a lot of choice about being gawked at...especially in a country where I'm nearly a foot taller and 250lbs heavier than the average person. heh That was almost always the first question anybody asked me when I was there, and I had two people say I was the largest human they'd ever seen in their lives.

Part of the problem I had with Japanese was that I was too rushed, I didn't have the time to just let stuff sink in and practice. Or at least I felt tht way. I think if I'd just done that I would like have done better in the classes and much better at learning the language.

Re: language acquisition

[daev.livejournal.com]

but learning any language takes most of all a lot of practice, and the sort of monomaniacal immersion thing i do speeds that up.

Yeah. I remember once saying in frustration (while surrounded by linguistics polyglots), "I wish I could just learn to speak a language without having to get a crush on it and take it to bed!" There are people out there who can acquire the ability to communicate in Turkish, for instance, without turning themselves into fanatic Turkophiles for years.

Re: language acquisition

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i can learn languages that way; i did it with english and french. but aside from the factor that it keeps more of your life free for other obsessions, it's nowhere as much FUN. and it takes sooooo long.

funny that you said "take it to bed", *heh*. i currently have ... *goes to count* ... 7 books in my bed that deal with things japanese (only one is a manga). plus my mp3 player which has a japanese drama CD in it.