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.

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/bl … 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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All right, let's settle for that

EDIT: referring to Tobberoth's last.

Last edited by nac_est (2009 February 26, 7:24 am)

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.

Last edited by Tobberoth (2009 February 26, 7:47 am)

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.

Last edited by Tobberoth (2009 February 26, 8:32 am)

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

Rael89 wrote:

http://wwitv.com/portal.htm

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

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.)