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This topic contains 5 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by  HypnoCrown 12 years, 12 months ago.

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  • November 17, 2011 at 6:07 pm #20970

    HypnoCrown
    Member

    Ive been studying Japanese for a while now(never going all-out about it) and Im working on words 600-800 for the core2000. but im having trouble translating songs/tv shows/movies/manga/etc…
    By using Deshi Jisho as a dictionary, it seems like theres always too much going on in a sentence to understand it.
    also, ill try translating a song, but then it ends up being too much of a mess, unable for me to submit it to lang-8 for corrections (and i dont just wanna make someone translate it instead of me. seems lazy)

    anyways, my main goal is to figure out exactly what a song or part of a movie is saying. is using denshi jisho the correct way to go? are there already translated text that directly lines up with the japanese media?
    kinda lost on how to go about this the right way…

    • This topic was modified 13 years ago by  HypnoCrown.
    November 17, 2011 at 8:15 pm #20975

    Reiden
    Member

    I’d say learn more grammar. You will be better at seeing how sentences can be broke down and isolate vocabulary words you don’t know. And really a song seem difficult. (not sure about that tho)

    November 18, 2011 at 4:36 am #20978

    Hatt0ri
    Member

    I agree with Reiden. If you have problems breaking a sentence apart, it’s definitely because of grammar. Denshi jisho is a great dictionary, but it can only be used for vocabulary. For instance, you can find the meaning of a certain verb in Denshi jisho, but there are various forms of that verb that go beyond tenses, and influence the meaning of the sentence. You can look them up here: http://ww8.tiki.ne.jp/~tmath/language/jpverbs/index.htm#contents. Same goes for particles. When you run into unknown particle, just google it, there are a lot of resources on them.

    November 18, 2011 at 7:03 pm #20985

    Anonymous

    Don’t judge your ability on the result of translating songs. Songs can do what they want and bend the rules, it’s not a good standard to use.

    November 18, 2011 at 7:53 pm #20986

    Armando
    Member

    Yeah I’d consider songs the hardest to translate. Even some songs in English don’t make sense. Grammar is what you need to learn more of. I’m going through a Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, and I’ve gotta say it’s amazing! You can get the whole book in PDF… By searching on google hint hint.

    November 19, 2011 at 1:22 am #20988

    HypnoCrown
    Member

    thanks for the help!
    and yeah im not ignorant, i know how songs work, its more so that i wanted something in Japanese to fully understand. like 30 seconds of dialogue in a movie or something. But i guess its because im simply not on that level yet. however, i do find the sentences on Denshi to be very helpful. maybe ill just stick to those for now.
    thanks again team -_x
    (great advice armando!…i always like DLing cheat sheets and stuff to learn Japanese better. this will help for sure!)

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