Hi everyone!
Is there any Brazilian here in these forums?
I want to share idead mainly about the difficulties to adapt the keywords to our mother tongue. I can understand most of them but sometimes it's more comfortable to learn and remember them in Portuguese, right?

I know at least 2 other people in my city that uses this forum, so you are not alone But maybe they are just lurkers like myself.
What's the trouble about the keywords? You seem pretty comfortable using english, so why don't you just use both languages? I know J.Heisig advises not to, but sometimes it's just necessary. Some other times, it would be just easier to use the japanese version (ex.: 嬉 --> 嬉しい).

When I went through RTK I did try first with english keywords, but it wasn't really working for me. Even though I knew the meaning of them, there was some sort of barrier that slowed me down.
After that I decided to translate every keyword, it was also when I started using Anki (previously I was using this site), so that I could edit easier the cards. Sometimes I used words very different than the english one, not sure if it would work for others, but for me it worked pretty well.

I had the entire deck untill 2 or 3 years ago, but my HD decided to burn and I lost it, luckly I had already studied it to the point I was getting bored...

there is a list with Heisig's words translated to portuguese in this blog: http://vocabulariojapones.blogspot.com.b...o-rtk.html

the thing is they used both english and spanish version of RTK, and some of these translations just seem weird to me, with words that are barely used in our daily vocabulary, such as "vadear" in place for "ford (渉) or, in other cases, with a bad translation from the spanish version (房 - assim e assim - tassel - fulanito de tal).

gisars Wrote:there is a list with Heisig's words translated to portuguese in this blog: http://vocabulariojapones.blogspot.com.b...o-rtk.html

the thing is they used both english and spanish version of RTK, and some of these translations just seem weird to me, with words that are barely used in our daily vocabulary, such as "vadear" in place for "ford (渉) or, in other cases, with a bad translation from the spanish version (房 - assim e assim - tassel - fulanito de tal).

The end goal is the same: to drop those keywords after learning the writing and get a gist of the meaning of the kanji for later learning of J-meaning and reading.
I think gisars has a point about just doing it in English and how it's no good if the Portuguese one is translated from the Spanish that is translated from the English.
If you're really up for a project, you could join forces and write a Portuguese version for the sake of Brazilians, Portuguese, Mozambiquans, Angolans et. al. who don't speak English or Spanish.

That was the point for the list on the link above. There was a group of people trying to get this translations done, but that list with a bunch of errors was the best they could achieve, and I'm no better than those guys. As far as I know, we can try to continue their work, make new revisions and all, but in the end we would just come up with long, not useful or not precise expressions to substitute a simple word.

let me update that example above: 渉 = FORD
In portuguese, we have a word to describe exactly this: VADEAR. But, on the daily basis we don't use that word, and when we do need to express such an action, we say something like "navegar pelo raso" (navigate on the shallow parts), "passar pelo leito" (pass over the river bed), and such.

Maybe we could join forces to translate the EXPLANATIONS of the keywords used on RTK.

As far as I remember there are some keywords used on the english version that are not currently used on the daily vocabulary as well, but since the focus is on the gist of the meaning, maybe there is a chance we could achieve the final goal without getting too attached to the keywords. What do you think about that?

Hello there,
From Brazil but living in Japan right now. I have been using RTk for a while, some breaks on the way.

The translations are a little bit difficulty sometimes to get the exact idea. What I usually do is to translate the key word and try to get a story in english (shared stories) because I think those have a better sense of the key word(assuming most are native speakers).

Sometimes I mix those stories making a new one and even when I have to write my own story I do it in english. (Usually inspired by other stories on this website).

gisars Wrote:Maybe we could join forces to translate the EXPLANATIONS of the keywords used on RTK.

The explanations are just sample stories; they're meant to clarify the mnemonic, not the meaning.

You are right, Vempele!

Sorry, i mixed up things