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?

[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.