KM2 was extremely useful in my opinion. There was actually quite a bit of grammar in there that I've encountered in the native stuff I read and watch. KM1 seems a little less useful though. I got a lot of vocab from it though, which was useful I guess.

I am almost 7000 cards in mnsyomne as far as the AJATT thing goes so it's all stuff I mined over a course of a year. The best part is I'm deleting a lot of crap. Like lately I don't increase or increase very little because I add however many cards but then while I do reviews I'm like uh this one's pointless/too easy/waste of my time/ too confusing. before I used to be very attached to everything and I would keep these sentences that only kept me going side-ways. so I feel like when I reach 7000 cards, almost all of it is actual cards that I like/need (well I'm sure i'll delete more in the days to come.). If I didn't delete I'm sure I'd already be at 7000 something but it's not relaly 7000.

I'm just glad I reached a point where I am letting go and thinking well if that's really that important then I'll see it somewhere and decide to not mine tediously. that it's about enjoying it, that it's about learning something you acutallly want to learn/use/say.

Last edited by howtwosavealif3 (2009 August 30, 8:14 pm)

Finished RTK1, started Tae Kim and had to add one very simple kanji ("who") that occurred in the first 40 sentences

I also took a quick peek at first page of Death Note and to my delight a lot of it made sense without even knowing the readings ie. "Death+Gods+World", such is the power of RTK.

2/3 of RTK

Added 61 new kanji today on RtK - a new personal record!

This week I experienced 2 milestones: 1. I hit 5000 sentences, 2. I won a translation (of life insurance document) contest on lang-8. Prize was 2,500円 on amazon.jp. So I'm going around looking for stuff that will be the most fun and worthwhile to get (I've been putting off Japanese-book buying because I'm way too cheap).  Japanese version of "The Witches" by Roald Dahl is in my cart for sure.  To go along with that, I'm trying to find a large-sized how-to book with pictures.

Pretty motivating forum; interesting to go through and see what people are accomplishing.  Good work everyone!

I just looked at the xlation contest on lang8. I think they devised the contest to get cheap translations for their document (2500円x2 is way way below the market rate for translations of a document of this length and complexity).

I'd have to say it backfired though. The English in all of the submitted xlations is error-filled, Engrishy, and doesn't accurately portray the original meaning (no offence to the translators, they aren't professionals after-all). It'll be interesting to see if they make use of it in their official literature.

@Blackmacros: Did you make that KM1kyuu anki deck?

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2009 September 01, 11:09 pm)

Nukemarine wrote:

@Jarvik,

Come on man, stay positive. Now reason to think it's anything but a legit contest. Thanks to both of you for mentioning it though, I'll go check out the contest and the results.

@Nuriko,

Is your winning submission posted under your name? Congrats by the way.

Thanks nukemarine And yeah it's probably under something close to the name Nuriko. 

@Jarvik
I was a bit surprised I was one of the winners, as there were things here and there that I knew I didn't fully grasp or translate naturally.  Maybe it was the calming effect of the blue text that won em over ...then again, only 5 or so people participated.  Anyway, my translation (however error-filled it is) is more than I could've done half a year ago, so I'd like to think that if I did something like this again 6 months later, it'd come twice as naturally.  It was a good opportunity for me, maybe not quite the best opportunity for the Lifenet company (hopefully they get someone to check things over before they publicize it...) 

By the way, what's a professional like you doing amongst us non-professionals at the RTK forum?

Last edited by Nuriko (2009 September 01, 11:46 pm)

Jarvik7 wrote:

@Nuriko: Procrastinating mostly

But seriously, learning is a lifelong endeavour. Translation itself is a skill that must be trained and ability generally has no relation to how good you are at the source language (as long as you are above a certain level). I was the top translation student at my university, despite there being several Japanese natives with near native English also enrolled in the program.

Despite my criticism (which is one of the most important things a translator can do for another translator), yours IS the best entry. Some of the others didn't even make sense in English or had sentence fragments!

That's right, criticism is always something to be appreciated.  And thank you, it's good to know my translation was at least that much on track.

I don't mean to poke fun at the other people who translated, but I couldn't help but laugh at how 「腑に落ちるまで」was perceived in one of them.  I had begun to think people were doing this as a joke...

Oh.. Who should I send a pic to for km1kyuu spreadsheet access?

After about 2 1/2 years of study, Japanese helped me land my dream job.  セント レジス プリンスヴィルリゾート  Here is the view from my new "office"

I will be explaining to Japanese guests how to use the spa facilities at one of the most beautiful resorts in the world.  I rented an apartment near to the resort and so my new back yard will be Hanalei Bay, listed as America's best beach CBS.com

I am actually not sure I am fluent enough to pass JLPT2 yet, but for just that one day my Japanese was good enough to pass the interview.  I am very thankful none of you guys flew to Kauai and applied!!!

Keep up the hard work!  All the long hours and sacrifice do pay off one day.

Achievements:

1) just finished 1/4 of RTK, I am extremely excited about that.

2) I have improved my immersion in 3 ways:

   I) Bought 4 j-animation series from friends for cheap (raw animation is excellent)

   II) purged my mp3 player of all english songs and replaced them with japanese songs.  I am also sampling right now for good songs.

   III) I have told all my friends about my eventual immersion and they all where very supportive even though it might mean I won't be going to see any English movies with them.   

That's it for now.  I think my next achievement will be if I can study while I am taking a 7-day trip to the states. 

Passed JLPT2

Also, I had to give a quick speech at end-of-term dinner for my Aikido school, but I forgot my notes so I had to wing it. Seemed to go okay, I actually got a couple of laughs (from jokes, not laughing at me!), and the guy after me said he was impressed how much my Japanese had improved since last year.