Jeez,

It's not an all or nothing situation here. If you're STARTING OUT, you're kind of low on the number of Japanese shows that you can follow (basically zero unless it's subbed in your language). A dub of a show you've seen and liked in your native language is a good stop gap at the beginning. In addition, you can cover up subtitles of anime you may have (that you liked).

If it's all that you watch in the next two years, yeah, it's probably gonna be weird. Hopefully you begin tossing on native Japanese live action material in there (news, drama, movies, discussion, etc). Get many, many things as time goes on.

Anyway, the important thing is that it grabs your attention. Passively listening to the iPod while reading English websites just does not work. I phase it out too easy. The video being in my face, something that distracts me is best. Course, it's what I found is working for me. YMMV.

Translated stuff may not have the same flow as first-language stuff, I can agree with that. However I wouldn't call it unnatural. Actually, trying to define a "natural" language is what's wrong, the way I see it.
Everybody speak their first language in a slightly different way, depending on the area of origin, the area of origin of one's parents and friends, the kind of education acquired, etc etc. (and, why not, the amount of translated movies one has seen).
So there isn't an ideal, fixed form to which you have to stick in order to sound "normal", as long as it's not wrong in some way. It would be like living in a country of robots, otherwise.
Also, by your logic, even watching anime and (most) native language movies would lead to an "unnatural" L2.

So the point is, translated language is way better than wrong language. If a student started talking exactly like that, most people wouldn't even realise, and those who do realise would still understand 100% of what is being said. That would be an awesome achievement in my opinion.
Then, of course, I don't think it's a good idea to learn from only one type of source, so the problem kind of disappears totally.

I reached that conclusion but it always feels better when someone else agrees with your thinking let alone two people....

ghinzdra Wrote:But your last sentence confused me : you say that Khatz disapproves of non-natural japanese source . I clearly remember Khatz himself talked about buying his favorite show in japanese/chinese though : will smith movies ,toy story , etc...

Is he advocating for a mix (the same way I'm doing) ? did I miss his point ? does he contradicte himself ?

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...g-japanese

I'm not sure where Mr. Tobberoth is getting this information. If anything I'd say the blog writer favors natural input, as in made/translated/spoken by a natives, rather than being strictly against translations. But without him posting to actually clarify, the information on that blog can be interpreted pretty much anyway you want it.

Tobberoth Wrote:Khazu says listening and learning from non-natural Japanese sources = you speaking unnatural Japanese. Thus it would be a very bad idea to learn from translations.

Is he speaking from experience, then? Because I hear people say his Japanese isn't all that hot. The man is inspirational, but he's not a language major. He's only giving his opinions, not a conclusion to a scientific experiment he has run.

nac_est Wrote:Translated stuff may not have the same flow as first-language stuff, I can agree with that. However I wouldn't call it unnatural. Actually, trying to define a "natural" language is what's wrong, the way I see it.
Everybody speak their first language in a slightly different way, depending on the area of origin, the area of origin of one's parents and friends, the kind of education acquired, etc etc. (and, why not, the amount of translated movies one has seen).
So there isn't an ideal, fixed form to which you have to stick in order to sound "normal", as long as it's not wrong in some way. It would be like living in a country of robots, otherwise.
Also, by your logic, even watching anime and (most) native language movies would lead to an "unnatural" L2.

So the point is, translated language is way better than wrong language. If a student started talking exactly like that, most people wouldn't even realise, and those who do realise would still understand 100% of what is being said. That would be an awesome achievement in my opinion.
Then, of course, I don't think it's a good idea to learn from only one type of source, so the problem kind of disappears totally.

Good points in this post, however, everybody speaking their native language differently =/= foreigner speaking it very differently. A Japanese person using a word differently than most people is just an interesting quirk. A westerner speaking Japanese like he's speaking English, only with Japanese words, is unnatural.

Translated language is obviously better than wrong language but who is stupid enough to try to learn Japanese from incorrect sentences? That wouldn't make any sense. The point is that native natural Japanese is much better than translated Japanese.

As for Khazu saying one thing or the other, it isn't important. The point is that I'm taking his idea one step farther. He's saying you learn natural Japanese from being exposed to natural Japanese, that's the point of immersion. You mimic what you see and hear. If you see and hear unnatural Japanese/incorrect Japanese, you will start using it. If you disagree with this, you have little choice but to disagree with most of the AJATT approach. So what we can ask ourselves is, to what degree? HOW bad does your Japanese become? If you have a slight error in 5% of your anki cards, how crappy will your Japanese become? Will 5% of your sentences have slight errors in them or will those small errors built up to make your Japanese sound horrible? How bad is it to speak English-sounding Japanese?

Take a slashdot article for instance. It's Japanese, translated by natives. It sounds quite good. However, would my Japanese be noticably odd if I spoke like those are written? Definitely.

I'm not saying reading one translated book will destroy your future prospects of becoming fluent, I'm saying that it's not a good source for learning compared to native NATURAL Japanese. You want to talk natural Japanese, so use natural Japanese sources.

The same is true for anime by the way but in a MUCH smaller scale. Just because your main exposure comes from Bleach doesn't mean you will start speaking of swords, spirits and magic in real life. The sentences in anime/manga are still natural even if their CONTENT might be unnatural. Translated English sentences are unnatural even if their content is natural. As an example noted earlier in the thread, he/she and other pronouns are used MUCH more often in translated works.

Tobberoth Wrote:Translated language is obviously better than wrong language but who is stupid enough to try to learn Japanese from incorrect sentences? That wouldn't make any sense. The point is that native natural Japanese is much better than translated Japanese.

Tobberoth Wrote:Translated English sentences are unnatural even if their content is natural. As an example noted earlier in the thread, he/she and other pronouns are used MUCH more often in translated works.

The quality of translation depends on the individual or company doing the translation. The quality of pure native input depends on the native who output it. Correct?

So how can you say for certain which one is "much better"?

Quote:Take a slashdot article for instance. It's Japanese, translated by natives. It sounds quite good. However, would my Japanese be noticably odd if I spoke like those are written? Definitely.

Only if you used it as a single source of input, no? And let's not forget the abundance of natural Japanese input that can be used in everyday natural conversation. How natural would someone's speech sound if they made high level Japanese novels* their single natural source of input? Not very... correct? But what if it were only 5%? To what extent are we willing to speak like a Japanese novel*?

--"I'm not saying reading [high level novels*] will destroy your future prospects of becoming fluent, I'm saying that it's not a good source for learning compared to native NATURAL Japanese. You want to talk natural Japanese, so use natural Japanese sources." --

* replace high level novels with newspapers, research papers, or whatever...

Tobberoth Wrote:A westerner speaking Japanese like he's speaking English, only with Japanese words, is unnatural.

I think this a little strong. The sentences in a translated novel are *not* English with Japanese words. My confidence about this is lower for Japanese translations of English books, but I've read French (and English) translations of Japanese books and they are not Japanese with French words.

Quote:Take a slashdot article for instance. It's Japanese, translated by natives. It sounds quite good. However, would my Japanese be noticably odd if I spoke like those are written? Definitely.

This is probably true, but I think the translation process in the case of slashdot is far from the one used for a novel.

My point is that when a novel is translated, it is by a native speaker and the native quality of the output comes first, faithfulness to the original comes second. This breaks down a little when the works are more experimental, which is why I don't recommend Pynchon or Woolf in French to my friends (I haven't looked closely at Yourcenar's translation of The Waves, but I think it didn't work as well). On the other hand I remember enjoying Baudelaire's translations of Poe perhaps more than the originals.

Quote:I'm not saying reading one translated book will destroy your future prospects of becoming fluent, I'm saying that it's not a good source for learning compared to native NATURAL Japanese. You want to talk natural Japanese, so use natural Japanese sources.

Of course it depends on the quality of the translation (I've seen some bad ones too), but I don't think it is so hard to find good translated sources. In French at least, for major novels there are sometimes several translations available and discussions of the merits of each of them, which indicates the care given to this process. I am looking forward to reading Japanese novels in Japanese, but I may read some translated Camus or Gide along the way with the French book on the side.

I am not at the level where I can read a lot of Japanese yet (I stumble on kids' manga), so I'd be happy to see an example of unnatural Japanese from a translated novel, with an explanation of why it's not natural.

nyquil Wrote:My point is that when a novel is translated, it is by a native speaker and the native quality of the output comes first, faithfulness to the original comes second. This breaks down a little when the works are more experimental, which is why I don't recommend Pynchon or Woolf in French to my friends (I haven't looked closely at Yourcenar's translation of The Waves, but I think it didn't work as well). On the other hand I remember enjoying Baudelaire's translations of Poe perhaps more than the originals.

Wow, I was just about to add something like this to my post. You've put it in far better words than I could have, though.

Hmm, hard to quote and reply to two long posts, so I'll just try to cover the counter-arguments.

- It depends on the quality of the translation:
No, it doesn't. English is actively translated into Japanese to retain English feeling, this has been discussed all over this forum, several sources mentioned. There are books which are "rewritten" into Japanese, but it's hardly common. Most of the time, the feeling of the original is meant to be kept intact and the natural feeling of the Japanese takes the hit. Great for a native speaker, bad for a student. If you can find a source where it isn't obvious it was translated, good for you, go ahead and use it. I wouldn't risk it. I know "English with Japanese words" is an exaggeration, I'm trying to make a point here. English translated to Japanese retains English qualities which are not natural in Japanese. This isn't true for every sentence in every translated book, it's just a general problem with translation. Read a native Japanese book about something, then read a translated book about the same thing. You can even do this in your own language. You will definitely notice the difference.

-Same is true for high novels, anime, manga.
I already covered this, I don't see why it was brought up yet again. High novels are natural Japanese, their content is what makes them unnatural. Yeah, if all your exposure comes from high novels you might speak speak like an overly intellectual Japanese person. That isn't bad, just unexpected. It's also easy to fix since it's kind of obvious when a word is a bit advanced for normal usage. If all your exposure comes from translation, your Japanese itself will be odd. Your sentences will resemble English sentences. That is bad. It's harder to fix since the words will be the same as normal Japanese and they probably won't react seeing as you're a foreigner, it makes sense to them that you speak in a foreign way.

Tobberoth Wrote:I'm saying that it's not a good source for learning compared to native NATURAL Japanese.

That's certainly true. But if watching/reading translated stuff is the only thing that will keep you into Japanese at the moment, I say watch/read it without too much fear. It's better than non-Japanese, isn't it?

Let me invent a new expression: "naturally weird". Hey, my kingdom for a perfectly natural and fluent weird Japanese today! I'll mind about the details tomorrow.

(I want to point out that I actually read and watch "original" Japanese stuff only, せっかくだから)

nac_est Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:I'm saying that it's not a good source for learning compared to native NATURAL Japanese.

That's certainly true. But if watching/reading translated stuff is the only thing that will keep you into Japanese at the moment, I say watch/read it without too much fear. It's better than non-Japanese, isn't it?

Of course. The question is, why? If you're good enough to read a translated Harry Potter (especially one claiming to be written in natural Japanese) you should easily be good enough to read REAL Japanese books and it shouldn't be much harder. (If it is, it's obvious the Japanese in Harry Potter isn't natural since it's for some random reason easier for you).

If you desperately need English translation first (I don't see why, I never had that kind of need when I started out), read an English translation of the native work first.

I guess, to continue your statement there, translated Japanese is better than no japanese. But so is incorrect Japanese. If reading the Tanaka corpus is the only thing keeping you in Japanese, do it. Just don't expect perfect results.

Tobberoth Wrote:No, it doesn't. English is actively translated into Japanese to retain English feeling, this has been discussed all over this forum, several sources mentioned. There are books which are "rewritten" into Japanese, but it's hardly common. Most of the time, the feeling of the original is meant to be kept intact and the natural feeling of the Japanese takes the hit. Great for a native speaker, bad for a student. (...)
This isn't true for every sentence in every translated book, it's just a general problem with translation. Read a native Japanese book about something, then read a translated book about the same thing. You can even do this in your own language. You will definitely notice the difference.

And my point was that this is *not true* in my experience for books translated in French and English, i.e. the general practice is that a natural feeling in the target language is kept, while the original feeling may take a hit.
I can believe that Japan stands apart in this regard and that your characterization of translations to Japanese is accurate, but as far as I know it is against the general way translation of literature is done (this is far from my field of expertise though).
There are long periods when I don't read these forums, so I probably missed the comments you mention. I'm curious about this specificity of Japan and I will look into it a little. If you have any pointers I'd be grateful.

It is also perfectly possible to read Japanese novels with their translations in one's native language which, keeping in mind usual caveats about translations, will provide exposure to native natural Japanese. But I intend to go both ways. I like to see what translation and the alien structures of another language do to a work I know.

edit: typo

All right, let's settle for that

EDIT: referring to Tobberoth's last.

Tobberoth Wrote:- It depends on the quality of the translation:
No, it doesn't....

Yes it does. A well translated book or article is far more valuable than one that lazily translated and butchered. There are a plethora of good and bad translations in virtually all languages.

Tobberoth Wrote:Read a native Japanese book about something, then read a translated book about the same thing. You can even do this in your own language. You will definitely notice the difference.

First I ask how is this possible? Unless you are speaking of, for example, a mystery book written in l1 by a speaker of l1 and another written in l2 by a native of l2, and l2's book is translated to l1. Regardless of whether the books are on the same subject the authors have different styles and perspectives, not to mention cultural differences.

So next you have to ask... Is this a factor of translation or simply a difference of style and skill? And, how would this difference realistically affect someones speech?

Tobberoth Wrote:-Same is true for high novels, anime, manga.
I already covered this, I don't see why it was brought up yet again. High novels are natural Japanese, their content is what makes them unnatural. Yeah, if all your exposure comes from high novels you might speak speak like an overly intellectual Japanese person. That isn't bad, just unexpected. It's also easy to fix since it's kind of obvious when a word is a bit advanced for normal usage. If all your exposure comes from translation, your Japanese itself will be odd. Your sentences will resemble English sentences. That is bad. It's harder to fix since the words will be the same as normal Japanese and they probably won't react seeing as you're a foreigner, it makes sense to them that you speak in a foreign way.

This is assuming you practiced outputting in this manner, along with the assumption that you used these "bad" translations as your sole source of input. But the same can be said about inputting massive amounts of, natural, native posts on internet forums. Correct? And we're making a lot of assumptions here, are we not?

kazelee Wrote:Yes it does. A well translated book or article is far more valuable than one that lazily translated and butchered. There are a plethora of good and bad translations in virtually all languages.

There are good and bad translations but none of them will be completely natural unless the sourcetext was completely rewritten which goes against the concept of fidelity. A good translation might very well have high fidelity AND transparency compared to a badly translated one, but it's still a translation.

Kazelee Wrote:First I ask how is this possible? Unless you are speaking of, for example, a mystery book written in l1 by a speaker of l1 and another written in l2 by a native of l2, and l2's book is translated to l1. Regardless of whether the books are on the same subject the authors have different styles and perspectives, not to mention cultural differences.

These cultural differences are exactly what I'm talking about. A book on flowers isn't written the same way in Japanese and in English. An English written book on flowers is natively English, a Japanese book on flowers is natively Japanese. When you translate one to the other, you try to change this fact and it doesn't work, you HAVE to take shortcuts. You can't perfectly translate anything. An English book is an English book, no matter how good the translator is. And that, my friend, is the whole point.

Kazelee Wrote:This is assuming you practiced outputting in this manner, along with the assumption that you used these "bad" translations as your sole source of input. But the same can be said about inputting massive amounts of, natural, native posts on internet forums. Correct? And we're making a lot of assumptions here, are we not?

No, it isn't assuming any of those things. It IS assuming that exposure transfers to your own ability, an assumption most people on this forum agree with. If you ONLY learn from translation, ALL of your Japanese will have these problems. If you relied on translation for 50% of your exposure, less of your Japanese will have the problem. If you relied solely on natural native Japanese, hopefully you won't have that problem what so ever.

Tobberoth Wrote:These cultural differences are exactly what I'm talking about. A book on flowers isn't written the same way in Japanese and in English. An English written book on flowers is natively English, a Japanese book on flowers is natively Japanese. When you translate one to the other, you try to change this fact and it doesn't work, you HAVE to take shortcuts. You can't perfectly translate anything. An English book is an English book, no matter how good the translator is. And that, my friend, is the whole point.

The translator would only need to use such shortcuts if his/her ability in one language or the other were lacking. Also, just because something is lost in translations don't mean that whatever a skilled translator puts in its place will automatically be strange.

---"Her long black hair spread out fan-like over the pillow, framing the soft outlines of her oval face. A sanguine hue tinted the depths of her pure white cheeks, and her lips were a vibrant red." -- Soseki translation---

How would reading this negatively impact any learner of English (as you said it, the same goes for Englsih)

VS

---“Ah yes, a mere fortnight remains until this world shall be mine.” With a deep, menacing voice, he exulted his pure joy at the thought of his plans and the pain he would cause. He was a towering creature, standing over seven feet tall. His skin a gloomy shade of yellow, his eyes glittering blue. He had horns upon his head, resembling those of a ram. His body was muscular and the sight of him exuded sheer terror. His teeth were sharp and so large, they could not fully fit in his mouth, so they were barred, adding to the animal quality he possessed. -- Buffy, fanfiction. ---

The second example exudes more literary prowess, but that's the style it was going for. That aside, how could the Soseki translation damage the learning of an individual seeking to learn English? Especially, given this is what the translator considers the bare minimum changing of words to account for even flow and style.

It's more than clear in this example that regardless of whatever is "lost in translation", there plenty more than enough to gain from without compromising one's studies.

Tobberoth Wrote:If you relied solely on natural native Japanese, hopefully you won't have that problem what so ever.

The quality of the native input must be examine as well, no?

kazelee Wrote:The translator would only need to use such shortcuts if his/her ability in one language or the other were lacking. Also, just because something is lost in translations don't mean that whatever a skilled translator puts in its place will automatically be strange.

That's a very common misconception. When it comes to good and bad translation, it's extremely seldom that the problem has anything to do with the translators grasp of either language, that isn't where the difficulty of translation stems. The wikipedia article on translation has a good part about misconceptions if you're interested in that.

When a translator takes out something from the source text and inserts something of his own, he is losing fidelity over transparency. This is sometimes a good thing, sometimes not. In general, good translation is supposed to have high in both regards, it isn't okay to change the source text just to have the new text sound beautiful... the opposite is of course true as well. This also differs between countries, from what I've seen transparancy is valued highely in french culture wheras fidelity is valued higher in German culture. From what I know, fidelity is valued very highly in Japanese culture which is why, for example, pronouns are so common in translated texts.

Kazelee Wrote:The quality of the native input must be examine as well, no?

Absolutely. However, that's a slightly different problem. If you read native Japanese which is badly written, this will be in the form of bad grammar, spelling and incorrect usage of hard words. It was written by a native, the structure won't be foreign. There might be errors, but there will be errors that natives make and you will have to correct them the same way you correct your native tongue.

Unnaturalness is a different concept. It's very hard to spot and it's very hard to explain. When my girlfriend tries to speak Swedish, I can easily hear that she isn't Swedish even though her grammar etc might be fine. I can't explain what's wrong any more than "well, we say is slightly different in Swedish, even if it means the same thing". Oftentimes, I simply ignore it since the meaning obviously gets across and it's not like she's a serious student. The same is of course true for yours and my Japanese. We probably can't spot the errors ourselves and Japanese people won't and might not even be able to correct us.

Quote:From what I know, fidelity is valued very highly in Japanese culture which is why, for example, pronouns are so common in translated texts.

Interesting....more info please

Tobberoth Wrote:Unnaturalness is a different concept. It's very hard to spot and it's very hard to explain. When my girlfriend tries to speak Swedish, I can easily hear that she isn't Swedish even though her grammar etc might be fine. I can't explain what's wrong any more than "well, we say is slightly different in Swedish, even if it means the same thing". Oftentimes, I simply ignore it since the meaning obviously gets across and it's not like she's a serious student. The same is of course true for yours and my Japanese. We probably can't spot the errors ourselves and Japanese people won't and might not even be able to correct us.

Let's also remember that this unnaturalness is not limited to speakers of different languages, but people from different regions/cultures as well. I ain't even bout to go into that, though. What it seems to come down to is that written word is not spoken word.

Save for those who choose to remain at whatever level they've attained, these unnatural qualities, fade with practice, listening and actual conversation. Even if a translated novel used "he" 333 times, wrote the sentences backwards, and ended every sentence with certainty, in actual conversation one tends to pick up on the lack of he, the change of syntax, the tendency to turn statements into questions, and so on, though not necessarily in that order. Let's not underestimate the determined learner .

Unfortunately the Animelive! channel at Mogulus was shut down. Fortunately, you can watch Animelive! now here.

KeyholeTV relays broadcasts from JNet.
http://www.jnet.ne.jp/
This site has way better quality with the ability to record and download. The downside is that it is a bit expensive, starting from 3600 yen a month. There is a one day free trial so you can see how nice it is in comparison to KeyholeTV.

Rael89 Wrote:http://wwitv.com/portal.htm

Thanks! This site is really interesting! I like how you can watch TV pretty much from anywhere.

Smackle Wrote:KeyholeTV relays broadcasts from JNet.
http://www.jnet.ne.jp/
This site has way better quality with the ability to record and download. The downside is that it is a bit expensive, starting from 5000 yen a month. There is a two day free trial so you can see how nice it is in comparison to KeyholeTV.

Hmm... I would almost be willing to pay that if I was garantueed no lag... KeyholeTV works perfectly for me when it's in the middle of the night in Japan, but if I try watching it when there's actually good stuff on, it lags horribly, it's completely unwatchable.

That lag is kind of unique to Keyhole TV. I have tried both and have gotten no lag on JNet. (It may have hiccups if your connection is worse than mine though. I am not sure.)

This is a free alternative with better quality than Keyhole TV.
http://freshverse.com/
You can only watch what the admin has scheduled, but you can request channels if you so desire.