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11/5/04 10:55I don't think I've learned all that much Japanese in the past year or two; sure, I know a few more words, a few more kanji, but my overall competence is the same. I can read novels if they're on nontechnical subjects, though only novels that are deliberately trying to be easy will be quick and fun. I can get the gist of nonfiction and newspapers but they overwhelm me if I try to read in detail.
But, for the Nth year in a row, I'm trying the Shizuoka International Translation Competition. And where previous attempts left me going "Gaaaaah" with the difficulty of the material (they choose pieces where the vocabulary is quite a bit harder than that of your typical novel), this time I'm managing all right, with a lot of dictionary lookup.
I can recognize an idiom a little better. I know enough to run a Google search on it and see how it's used, and I know how to search on "XXX means..." which is a trick that works surprisingly often. There's a reason why the linguistic abilities of high school Japanese students are so often lamented! If there's an idiomatic phrase or archaism I don't know or look up in a dictionary, I can bet that there will be a site on it for teens that don't know it either.
Of course, the real skill in translation isn't in understanding what the original means, but in writing a new document that says the same thing with the right style and words; that's hard, even for native speakers. I don't expect to win. But it's a story about an Edo-era thief, and a lot of fun.
But, for the Nth year in a row, I'm trying the Shizuoka International Translation Competition. And where previous attempts left me going "Gaaaaah" with the difficulty of the material (they choose pieces where the vocabulary is quite a bit harder than that of your typical novel), this time I'm managing all right, with a lot of dictionary lookup.
I can recognize an idiom a little better. I know enough to run a Google search on it and see how it's used, and I know how to search on "XXX means..." which is a trick that works surprisingly often. There's a reason why the linguistic abilities of high school Japanese students are so often lamented! If there's an idiomatic phrase or archaism I don't know or look up in a dictionary, I can bet that there will be a site on it for teens that don't know it either.
Of course, the real skill in translation isn't in understanding what the original means, but in writing a new document that says the same thing with the right style and words; that's hard, even for native speakers. I don't expect to win. But it's a story about an Edo-era thief, and a lot of fun.