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

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.