How Well Does MTL Work?
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@jcochran said in How Well Does MTL Work?:
Good video, and I can see how knowing the kanji can make some previously unseen combinations of kanji understandable. And since you provided a video, I'll return with another video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcdYKxHT8kY
Kanji on the other hand... See, you may have heard that kanji are symbols for words. Nope. I found out they're more like playing a game of charades with a really bad teammate who gives you vague hints combined with obscure sounds-like clues that are way out of date.
This line in the description of that video drives home that this is a "just didn't get it" person. Sure, he wrote that more for laughs than to actually deride the kanji learning experience, but I personally didn't have much trouble learning hanzi (took Chinese for 2 years in college) and later kanji when I started teaching myself Japanese in earnest. As such, it kind of rubs me the wrong way to see someone with such a wide audience represent his own individual experience as though it's a larger truth.
Language is a personal experience. Just like everyone around you who speaks English constructs sentences a little differently and some people are more comma-happy than others, your ability to grasp kanji will vary by person. Where your ability to deduce the meaning of English words you don't know depends on how many Latin/Roman/German roots you've memorized or are familiar with, similarly your ability to deduce the meaning of kanji depends on how many Japanese roots and radicals you know.
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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@myskaros Understandable. And a comment someone made on the video itself is rather illuminating. It goes along the line of taking about week for that person to learn their first 10 kanji. But as time went on and more kanji were learned, it got to the point that when a new kanji was encountered, it took about 30 seconds to memorize the newly encountered kanji. So it does look like a process that starts painfully slow, but as one gains practice, becomes much easier. But there's this worried part of me that keeps reminding me of the 10,000 hour rule of thumb for new skills. But then again, I have about 20 languages under my belt. Admittedly, they're computer programming languages and not natural languages, but it seems that more than a few find those difficult as well.
Morning and Mourning sound alike for good and sufficient reasons.
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@jcochran said in How Well Does MTL Work?:
And a comment someone made on the video itself is rather illuminating.
I like this comment:
That komming from an Inglish spiker, a languij wer yu baysikali haf to lörn eweri wörd bai hart, despait the fakt, that it suposedli yuses fonetikal letters, bekoss it has forgotten wat that mihns and just pronaunses letters differentli in eweri wörd.
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@hiroto Ah yes, I remember that comment as well. And personally, can't think of a better example to illustrate the difference between an alphabet and a syllabary.
Morning and Mourning sound alike for good and sufficient reasons.
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@jcochran The video links started a rabbit-hole exploration hour for me, and dropped me on a video of "14 English words that even native English speakers can't pronounce."
Several of them weren't English words; they were "borrow words" that just happen to be used by people who speak English. Like "acai", which is actually borrowed from Portuguese, "açaí" with the accents stripped off.
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@someoldguy said in How Well Does MTL Work?:
@jcochran The video links started a rabbit-hole exploration hour for me, and dropped me on a video of "14 English words that even native English speakers can't pronounce."
Several of them weren't English words; they were "borrow words" that just happen to be used by people who speak English. Like "acai", which is actually borrowed from Portuguese, "açaí" with the accents stripped off.
Just keep reminding yourself of a quote by James D Nicoll:
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.
I've noticed that different languages tend to handle loan words and new concepts differently. Italian tends to grab 'em. File off the serial numbers and change the spelling and pronunciation to match other native words, then use 'em as if they were Italian all along. English just grab's 'em, mutilates them by tossing away any inconvenient diacritical marks, and pronounces them like whatever a native English speaker would say from the new spelling without regard to the original pronunciation was in the native language. Unless of course, there's enough objections by the original speakers of the word. And in that case, there's a brand new exception to what sound that specific sequence of characters makes, adding yet another inconsistency to an already inconsistent language.
And to close with an example of just how inconsistent this wonderfully flexible language is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-JDu3o7Cyw -
I before E except after C.
"Their".
Was the phonetically consistent English video posted above?
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@nargodian Unfortunately I am one of those people who can't easily learn new languages and absolutely hates waiting. How badly does a machine translation read?
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@elijah-karger-bf3ubvf said in Bookworm Part 3 Vol. 5 Discussion!:
How badly does a machine translation read?
Hello,
As this would lead to us getting off topic for the current discussion, please feel free to open a new topic for community input.
Thank you
Edit: You can also refer to an older topic from awhile back, https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/2588/how-well-does-mtl-work?_=1617196482565 (although it is not directly related to Bookworm)
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@elijah-karger-bf3ubvf Machine translation of typical documentation is "OK", but literature often uses uncommon words that the machines have trouble with.
I tried reading a machine translation of novels a while back. Without familiarity with the characters involved, it was very difficult to follow. It did not have consistency; a character could be referred to has "he" or "she" in alternate sentences. Any words that were in-universe (rather than straight Japanese) special terms could become pretty much anything.
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@elijah-karger-bf3ubvf said in Bookworm Part 3 Vol. 5 Discussion!:
@nargodian Unfortunately I am one of those people who can't easily learn new languages and absolutely hates waiting. How badly does a machine translation read?
Machine translation for JP->EN is terrible, inconsistent, and frequently outright wrong. When I've tried being lazy and using machine translation, I frequently find myself going back to the JP to figure out what the machine translation is trying to say.
I don't even try for Bookworm, because Quof's translation is amazing and worth waiting for.
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Just ended up moving posts around, and reviving this old thread.
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@justaidan OK. Thank you all for educating the newbie. Let me see if I have everything. The WN is complete but only in Japanese, and the LN is incomplete. Assuming my language skills don't improve I need a translation. Machine translations don't sound like something anyone would willingly want to read but they are only option if I am truly unable to wait. Giving what I am feeling right now I think we all now know exactly how Ferdinand is going to get Myne to pass her language classes.
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@elijah-karger-bf3ubvf Real quick so as not to derail the thread but I think there is also a sequel in the works and really don't read the machine translation, it's dire. You will struggle even to follow scenes and absolutely miss all the subtle stuff Bookworm is known for.
I can't stress how bad it is.
Quof's translation is excellent and on the threads you might see some of the background deliberations on the translation and discussions that happen between them and the original author to get the authors intent across. (Those might be one of my favourite behind the scenes stuff)
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@elijah-karger-bf3ubvf You can try MTL yourself, if you're using Chrome as your browser and tell it to "Always translate Japanese". It can be real fun trying to figure out what books on Amazon.co.jp are about...
Here is a short example, translating a verse from Second Flight, the opening of Please! Twins!
Kanji:
きっと巡り合わせた 天使のほんの気紛れだよ
曲がり角で会ったみたいに ふっと始まってたRomaji:
Kitto meguriawaseta Tenshi no hon no kimagure da yo
Magarikado de atta mitai ni Futto hajimattetaMTL:
Surely Tour Ri If Align was heaven use of only a gas- powder Re'm
song rising angle in the meeting like the whiff was Tsu started had been waitingTranslation used in the anime subtitles:
It was definitely fated, it was just an angel's whim
It had begun so suddenly, as though we met on a street corner -
@someoldguy (Also Second Flight slaps)
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@someoldguy said in How Well Does MTL Work?:
Kanji:
きっと巡り合わせた 天使のほんの気紛れだよ
曲がり角で会ったみたいに ふっと始まってたFor comparison, here's what DeepL gave me:
I'm sure it was just a whim of the angels that brought us together.
It all started so suddenly, like we'd just met at a corner.Which is to say, if you're going to use MTL, use DeepL, since it generally has better translations, and comes with a built-in editor where you can click on a translated word and get alternative translations, and if none of the alternatives fit, you can even type in your own suggestion, and DeepL will change its translation to fit your suggestion. You can either paste whole paragraphs, and let DeepL try to figure out the context (faster, but prone to severe errors), or you can paste a single sentence at a time, and do the job of decoding the context yourself (using DeepL's built-in editor).
And when DeepL fails, there's still Mirai Translate, which may or may not be able to make sense of things. It's still certainly better than Google Translate.
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In that case are there any other humans working on translation that I should know about? I am kind of new on this scene so any other websites would be good to know about if that is OK. I doubt my language skills will improve much but I do love new books.
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@waterdweller DeepL has been mentioned before; does it have browser integration available?
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@elijah-karger-bf3ubvf Anything licensed by an overseas publisher has a actual human translators working on the books.
So anything from J-Novel Club, Yen Press, Seven Seas, Tentai, etc.
