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[Mikazuki]

I've been studying Japanese on and off for a year and a half and have about 900 words memorized and just started memorizing kanji. I'm learning the language very vaugely and feel knocked on my ass whenever I try to actually translate something. I just started playing FF4...

For the upper line, with the help of a dictionary, I came up with "Army death height crane group location world"

This is congruent with the picture but doesn't sound good at all. :lol My biggest problem is the apparent lack of spacing between words. Translating seems all about making your best guess with the sensory information to reference.

Am I screwing up horribly? Or is that basically how direct translations work? That would at least explain Engrish....

Thank you for your help!

 

[Chairman Yang]

For the upper line, with the help of a dictionary, I came up with "Army death height crane group location world"

Yep that's exactly right

 

[meltpotato]

 

[MrDaravon]

:lol :lol

 

[Barbacoatl]

This is why Im not moving to Japander.

 

[TemplaerDude]

I tried to play a game in Japanese once. I failed miserably. Haven't tried since then.

 

[Bebpo]

I've been studying Japanese on and off for a year and a half and have about 900 words memorized and just started memorizing kanji. I'm learning the language very vaugely and feel knocked on my ass whenever I try to actually translate something. I just started playing FF4...

For the upper line, with the help of a dictionary, I came up with "Army death height crane group location world"

This is congruent with the picture but doesn't sound good at all. :lol My biggest problem is the apparent lack of spacing between words. Translating seems all about making your best guess with the sensory information to reference.

Am I screwing up horribly? Or is that basically how direct translations work? That would at least explain Engrish....

Thank you for your help!

...

You know there are two alphabets: hiragana and katakana (besides kanji) right? You'd do well to learn what katakana is and when it's used... ;_;

 

[border]

For the upper line, with the help of a dictionary, I came up with "Army death height crane group location world"

:lol

It's actually "Bad clown making like super American car racers. I would make them sweat".

 

[Deadly Monk]

DQ7 was the first game I played fully in Japanese.

That was a lot tougher. Good luck!

 

[Xdrive05]

That's like doing a 20 page book report on an ancient Japanese novel.

 

[Barry Lightning]

Too old to begin the training.

 

[Mikazuki]

Katakana, the alphabet for words not native to Japan? So...I shouldn't bother attempting to translate katakana into a word originating from Japan. Dang, I should have thought of that.

Thanks Bebpo...

 

[icecream]

Huh? It helps to know the all the letters of the alphabet when trying to form words. ^^;

 

[dark10x]

I've been studying Japanese on and off for a year and a half and have about 900 words memorized and just started memorizing kanji. I'm learning the language very vaugely and feel knocked on my ass whenever I try to actually translate something. I just started playing FF4...

For the upper line, with the help of a dictionary, I came up with "Army death height crane group location world"

This is congruent with the picture but doesn't sound good at all. :lol My biggest problem is the apparent lack of spacing between words. Translating seems all about making your best guess with the sensory information to reference.

Am I screwing up horribly? Or is that basically how direct translations work? That would at least explain Engrish....

Thank you for your help!

I hate to tell you this, but you probably have a long way to go. It took me so many years to get to that point (and only by spending some time in Japan while attending a Japanese school and only using that language did I even reach the point where game playing is fairly easy).

That said, don't give up! It can be ultra frustrating at times, but once you really start to do it...the rewards are fantastic. If you have the will, you can totally do it!

How exactly did you manage to extract that oddball meaing out of that, though?

 

[Companion Cube]

Wait, you know 900~ words but just started with kanji? How's that working out for ya?

 

[Kobun Heat]

I have really bad news for you: you don't know Japanese. Probably should have thought about this.

 

[Bebpo]

Katakana, the alphabet for words not native to Japan? So...I shouldn't bother attempting to translate katakana into a word originating from Japan. Dang, I should have thought of that.

Thanks Bebpo...

Yeah, sorry for being a jerk but I wasn't sure if you were joking or serious since you said you knew 900 words and I would assume someone whose spent that much time would know their katakana like the back of their hand.

So here I'll explain it.

SESHIRU taichou <- note that the first word is in Katakana. This means you sound it out and it's either a foreign word or a name/proper noun. In this case it is a name (CECIL in the US version IIRC) so then you look up taichou which could mean several things but coming after a name the most appropriate fitting would be "captain". So now you have "Captain Cecil" (well you have CECIL CAPTAIN actually but the taichou is modifying the CECIL and err at this point just use logic to make it sound normal).

mamonaku BARON ni tsukimasu <- first you would look up mamonaku (you would know where the word ends because the katakana BARON would mark the start of the next word) and you'd find that mamonaku means "momentarily or soon" so then you have BARON which because it's in katakana you assume it's probably the name of something. so you look what follows. Next is a nitsukimasu. You seperate this after the ni because letters like "ni/de/wo/e/ga" tend to mark divders between words. It could be nitsukimasu, but you probably won't find anything in the dictionary under that, yet you'll find "to arrive/land" under tsukimasu. So for now forget the ni (which in this case means "in") and you have

"Captain Cecil, Soon/Baron/To Arrive/land" and then using logic you make "Captain Cecil! We will soon be landing in Baron!"

Basically if this is confusing then I would say at this point you need to stop memorizing words and learn the grammar of the language because that's 100x more important at this point.

 

[Lyte Edge]

I've been studying Japanese on and off for a year and a half and have about 900 words memorized and just started memorizing kanji. I'm learning the language very vaugely and feel knocked on my ass whenever I try to actually translate something. I just started playing FF4...

For the upper line, with the help of a dictionary, I came up with "Army death height crane group location world"

This is congruent with the picture but doesn't sound good at all. :lol My biggest problem is the apparent lack of spacing between words. Translating seems all about making your best guess with the sensory information to reference.

Am I screwing up horribly? Or is that basically how direct translations work? That would at least explain Engrish....

Thank you for your help!

I get this from briefly translating it:

Heishi: "Captain Seshiru! The Baron will arrive soon!"

I'm surprised by the lack of kanji...

EDIT: LOL, so Baron isn't a title, but rather a place in this game. :lol So it's "We will arrive AT Baron soon!" I suppose they'd use "kimasu" if the Baron (person) would be arriving...

 

[BudokaiMR2]

Basically if this is confusing then I would say at this point you need to stop memorizing words and learn the grammar of the language because that's 100x more important at this point.

Basically just like he put it. You really have to put serious work in to be able to play games in Japanese and get the most out of them.

It's been 3 years for me(1 in Japan) and I still struggle all the time. Especially games with only reading. Voice acting helps me a lot.

 

[dark10x]

Thinking of this, anyone ever use something completely random as means to test yourself over the years?

There was this drama track included on the Elemental Gearbolt soundtrack. 23 minutes long. I first heard it 6 years ago and understood nothing. Over the years, I would occasionally listen to it again and try to piece it together. I hadn't actually heard the thing in over a year and randomly decided to listen to it again now and was pleased to find that I had finally hit the 100% comprehension mark. A bit odd, I suppose, but satisfying.

It takes a lot of work to reach the point where you can enjoy games (or even read any material for fun).

I found that having JWPCE (look for it on google) running on my small laptop while playing games is useful. You can easily look up unknown words rapidly and pick them up from there. Still, it isn't all that useful until you (somewhat) master grammar and the like.

 

[Error]

first RPG I played in japanese was DQ3

I got a lot help of course but I managed got pretty far in the game too, I didn't care for the story too much.

I wrote down: Items, Weapons, Spells in a notebook in both japanese and english so I could know what I had in my inventory and what I could count on with in a battle.

it was confusing, challenging and it took time but I found it pretty fun.

but trying to fine what every words is and means err... good luck!

 

[MrDaravon]

Yeah, sorry for being a jerk but I wasn't sure if you were joking or serious since you said you knew 900 words and I would assume someone whose spent that much time would know their katakana like the back of their hand.

So here I'll explain it.

SESHIRU taichou <- note that the first word is in Katakana. This means you sound it out and it's either a foreign word or a name/proper noun. In this case it is a name (CECIL in the US version IIRC) so then you look up taichou which could mean several things but coming after a name the most appropriate fitting would be "captain". So now you have "Captain Cecil" (well you have CECIL CAPTAIN actually but the taichou is modifying the CECIL and err at this point just use logic to make it sound normal).

mamonaku BARON ni tsukimasu <- first you would look up mamonaku (you would know where the word ends because the katakana BARON would mark the start of the next word) and you'd find that mamonaku means "momentarily or soon" so then you have BARON which because it's in katakana you assume it's probably the name of something. so you look what follows. Next is a nitsukimasu. You seperate this after the ni because letters like "ni/de/wo/e/ga" tend to mark divders between words. It could be nitsukimasu, but you probably won't find anything in the dictionary under that, yet you'll find "to arrive/land" under tsukimasu. So for now forget the ni (which in this case means "in") and you have

"Captain Cecil, Soon/Baron/To Arrive/land" and then using logic you make "Captain Cecil! We will soon be landing in Baron!"

Basically if this is confusing then I would say at this point you need to stop memorizing words and learn the grammar of the language because that's 100x more important at this point.

Holy crap, I haven't touched my Japanese in about 6 months, and I was actually able to make that out by myself except for one minor error. I really need to pick this stuff back up again. Do you just get used to the font in games? I think I confused the hiragana tsu for fu (I don't know how to type Japanese yet ), which in hindsight I shouldn't have because of the height difference, but it's very slight. Then again, newer games show text much better.

Semi-related Bebpo, I remember you playing through the first Slime MoriMori game, how hard is the text in that one? Since 2 is coming out here I'm thinking about picking up the first.

 

[Blackace]

how did you come up with that?!? :lol Yeah I rememeber during my first year of studying Japanese I thought I could do it no problem. Even I had mastered Katakana and Hiragana I was way over my head. because it is really hard to look up verbs (see almost impossible) unless you know how to conjugate.

 

[Red Scarlet]

Cool, have fun Chris! FF4 was like the 2nd one in JP I gave a whirl with. There is no kanji in the game at all, though.

I TALK JAPAN NO (or whatever in an earlier topic)!

 

[dark10x]

Do you just get used to the font in games?

Yes. Read read read and it comes easy. After a while, you'll be able to skim it almost as if it were written with roman characters. Seriously. Oh, and kanji actually makes life easier once you start to really come to grips with it. Reading a giant block of kana is, I must admit, a tad bit annoying...but kanji can help you read things very quickly (even by glance, at times). Kanji is not evil, despite what you may think early on. It just takes a lot of work.

A really great game for reading practice that I used a while ago was Tomato Adventure for GBA. You should give it a look.

edit - if you are talking about OLD fonts, then yeah, they are rarely nice. Most games today are crystal clear and very easy to read.

 

[border]

"Captain Cecil, Soon/Baron/To Arrive/land" and then using logic you make "Captain Cecil! We will soon be landing in Baron!"

Heishi: "Captain Seshiru! The Baron will arrive soon!"

Japanese is awesome.

 

[Error]

(neutral) Mikazuki
Army death height crane group location world
(Yesterday, 11:48 PM)
Reply | Quote

:lol :lol

 

[Bebpo]

Holy crap, I haven't touched my Japanese in about 6 months, and I was actually able to make that out by myself except for one minor error. I really need to pick this stuff back up again. Do you just get used to the font in games? I think I confused the hiragana tsu for fu (I don't know how to type Japanese yet ), which in hindsight I shouldn't have because of the height difference, but it's very slight. Then again, newer games show text much better.

Semi-related Bebpo, I remember you playing through the first Slime MoriMori game, how hard is the text in that one? Since 2 is coming out here I'm thinking about picking up the first.

Yeah, old school fonts are a bitch. I tried playing Mother 2 in Japanese and I was like "....no" and then I played Earthbound instead GBA games are the worst because their font tends to lack kanji and be stuck in the NES/SFC ages. Probably a good reason why I've played so few GBA titles.

I never played the original SMM, just SMM2 which I really enjoyed. I wanted to pick up SMM but I never found it for less than $45 used in Japan and I don't pay > $30 for GBA games on principle :\

 

[Blackace]

I never played the original SMM, just SMM2 which I really enjoyed. I wanted to pick up SMM but I never found it for less than $45 used in Japan and I don't pay > $30 for GBA games on principle :\

but but it is better than most of the PS2 RPGs you pay 60$ for... :lol

 

[Red Scarlet]

I was already familiar with the game, so I just wrote down monsters/the menu screen/spells/items/weapons/armor and ignored what was being said in the game (still do that with 4). Have you played 4 before, Chris?

 

[Bebpo]

but but it is better than most of the PS2 RPGs you pay 60$ for... :lol

Yeah, I know. But GBA games just feel so..."cheap (not really the right word I'm thinking of)" and I always found the disconnect where US GB/GBA games were $20 and Jpn ones were $45-50 to be pretty screwed up like Japan was ripping people off. With DS it's pretty close $35 vs. $40-45 so I don't feel that way. But GBA games just felt so overpriced. I think the only GBA titles I bought while I was in Japan were Minish Cap and Mawaru MoW.

 

[Mikazuki]

Yeah, sorry for being a jerk but I wasn't sure if you were joking or serious since you said you knew 900 words and I would assume someone whose spent that much time would know their katakana like the back of their hand.

So here I'll explain it.

SESHIRU taichou <- note that the first word is in Katakana. This means you sound it out and it's either a foreign word or a name/proper noun. In this case it is a name (CECIL in the US version IIRC) so then you look up taichou which could mean several things but coming after a name the most appropriate fitting would be "captain". So now you have "Captain Cecil" (well you have CECIL CAPTAIN actually but the taichou is modifying the CECIL and err at this point just use logic to make it sound normal).

mamonaku BARON ni tsukimasu <- first you would look up mamonaku (you would know where the word ends because the katakana BARON would mark the start of the next word) and you'd find that mamonaku means "momentarily or soon" so then you have BARON which because it's in katakana you assume it's probably the name of something. so you look what follows. Next is a nitsukimasu. You seperate this after the ni because letters like "ni/de/wo/e/ga" tend to mark divders between words. It could be nitsukimasu, but you probably won't find anything in the dictionary under that, yet you'll find "to arrive/land" under tsukimasu. So for now forget the ni (which in this case means "in") and you have

"Captain Cecil, Soon/Baron/To Arrive/land" and then using logic you make "Captain Cecil! We will soon be landing in Baron!"

Basically if this is confusing then I would say at this point you need to stop memorizing words and learn the grammar of the language because that's 100x more important at this point.

No offense taken at all. I have in fact mainly been memorizing words, hoping the grammar would take care of itself with time. Clearly I'll have to make the time to dive into this at a deeper level.

how did you come up with that?!?

I must be related to that Nintendojo kid.

Thank you to everyone else who's offered support. On my days off I'll spend less time screwing around and more time getting this down...

 

[Blackace]

Yeah, I know. But GBA games just feel so..."cheap (not really the right word I'm thinking of)" and I always found the disconnect where US GB/GBA games were $20 and Jpn ones were $45-50 to be pretty screwed up like Japan was ripping people off. With DS it's pretty close $35 vs. $40-45 so I don't feel that way. But GBA games just felt so overpriced. I think the only GBA titles I bought while I was in Japan were Minish Cap and Mawaru MoW.

that's cool...just wanted to give you sh!t

 

[MrDaravon]

Mikazuki
Army death height crane group location world
(Yesterday, 11:48 PM)
Reply | Quote

:lol :lol :lol

Yeah, old school fonts are a bitch. I tried playing Mother 2 in Japanese and I was like "....no" and then I played Earthbound instead GBA games are the worst because their font tends to lack kanji and be stuck in the NES/SFC ages. Probably a good reason why I've played so few GBA titles.

I never played the original SMM, just SMM2 which I really enjoyed. I wanted to pick up SMM but I never found it for less than $45 used in Japan and I don't pay > $30 for GBA games on principle :\

Play-Asia sells the Ulimate Hits version new for $29 and some change. I'm pondering picking that and Venus and Braves up, which would total $54 which would let me use my coupon . I know I'm a loooong ways off from being able to play V & B but I definetely want to pick it up.

Aside from that I am definetely picking up FF6 Advance in Japanese and English. Probably my favorite game, and should be a decent starting point since I'm familar with it and all.

 

[Adam Blade]

Oh Blackace... :lol :lol :lol

 

[cvxfreak]

The first Japanese game I played before becoming a teenager was Pokemon Gold, but I didn't know how to read Japanese so it was a moot point, really.

The first Japanese game I played after unofficially beginning Japanese was GC Biohazard. Bad idea in retrospect, since it's an adult's game.

I haven't actually played through a Japanese game without the aide of an English version since starting last year, though. :lol :lol 400 Kanji later, and thirty or so grammar items later, my first true attempt is going to be Pokemon Diamond. I think I'll do fine.

BTW, the GBA version of FFIV finally contains Kanji. I think it'd be a good idea to play through an original version and then go through the version with Kanji afterwards.

 

[Mikazuki]

I was already familiar with the game, so I just wrote down monsters/the menu screen/spells/items/weapons/armor and ignored what was being said in the game (still do that with 4). Have you played 4 before, Chris?

Years ago....soon after getting Cid I went to some cave, got owned real bad and gave up.

 

[Bebpo]

:lol :lol :lol




Play-Asia sells the Ulimate Hits version new for $29 and some change. I'm pondering picking that and Venus and Braves up, which would total $54 which would let me use my coupon . I know I'm a loooong ways off from being able to play V & B but I definetely want to pick it up.

Aside from that I am definetely picking up FF6 Advance in Japanese and English. Probably my favorite game, and should be a decent starting point since I'm familar with it and all.

ooo..didn't realize they made an ultimate hits version. Guess I'll be grabbing it too at that price despite the tacky cover

V&B seemed pretty nice from what I played (maybe 5-6 hours?). I don't think you should worry so much about the text, seemed fairly straightforward and the selling point is the really nice art

 

[robo_robo]

FFXII is the first game I played through in Japanese and it wasn't bad at all.

V&B looks damn great, I don't remember who recommend it a while ago but I need to get this.

 

[MrDaravon]

ooo..didn't realize they made an ultimate hits version. Guess I'll be grabbing it too at that price despite the tacky cover

V&B seemed pretty nice from what I played (maybe 5-6 hours?). I don't think you should worry so much about the text, seemed fairly straightforward and the selling point is the really nice art

Well with V & B I had an extremely hard time finding a complete FAQ for it anywhere (I could only find one that was half-assed), and it must get way complicated later, because I was going through it and was like ****. We'll see.

I need "I got a good feeling!" tag or something :/

 

[shuri]

why do they have two alphabets?

 

[icecream]

Haven't yet tried an RPG in Japanese yet, kind of scared all the fantasy terms will confuse me...

But voiced visual novels are good.

The two forms, Katakana and Hiragana, serve different purposes. Katakana was invented to simplify Kanji and was used in Buddhist scriptures as aids in pronounciations. Now, it's used to represent English words and names, scientific names, and in terms of stories, emphasis. Hiragana is based on Kanji and was basically a simplified Kanji language made so people wouldn't have to learn so much Kanji. It's used for just about anything, and Kanji compounds can be spelled out in Hiragana.

 

[Cheesemeister]

Believe it or not, Kanji actually makes things a lot easier in terms of seperating out words and encapsulating the meaning of each word.

&#20853;&#22763;&#12300;&#12475;&#12471;&#12523;&#38538;&#38263;&#65281;
&#12414;&#12418;&#12394;&#12367;&#12288;&#12496;&#12525;&#12531;&#12395;&#30528;&#12365;&#12414;&#12377;&#65281;

Now for some fun with Kanji!

&#20853;
soldier
&#12504;&#12452;&#12539;&#12498;&#12519;&#12454;&#12539;&#12388;&#12431;&#12418;&#12398;

&#22763;
gentleman
&#12471;

&#20853;&#22763;
n. soldier
&#12408;&#12356;&#12375;

&#38538;
regiment
&#12479;&#12452;

&#38263;
long, leader
&#12481;&#12519;&#12454;&#12539;&#12394;&#12364;(&#12356&#12539;&#12362;&#12373;

&#38538;&#38263;
n. commanding officer
&#12383;&#12356;&#12385;&#12423;&#12358;

&#30528;
arrive, wear
&#12481;&#12515;&#12463;&#12539;&#12472;&#12515;&#12463;&#12539;&#12365;(&#12427&#12539;-&#12366;&#12539;&#12365;(&#12379;&#12427&#12539;-&#12365;(&#12379&#12539;&#12388;(&#12367&#12539;&#12388;(&#12369;&#12427

Also, &#12414;&#12418;&#12394;&#12367; (mamonaku) could be written with Kanji, but commonly isn't. If it were, it'd be &#38291;&#12418;&#28961;&#12367;.

&#38291;
interval, space
&#12459;&#12531;&#12539;&#12465;&#12531;&#12539;&#12354;&#12356;&#12384;&#12539;&#12414;&#12539;&#12354;&#12356;

&#28961;
not
&#12512;&#12539;&#12502;&#12539;&#12394;(&#12356

&#38291;&#12418;&#28961;&#12367;
adv. soon; before long; in a short time
&#12414;&#12418;&#12394;&#12367;

This is why RPGs with 16x16 font characters instead of 8x8 are preferable for learning purposes. As far as FF games go, see FFV onward.

 

[jett]

Damn Ferrio's lost some weight.

 

[Tyrone Slothrop]

when i was a kid i got through the JP versions of seiken densetsu 3, FFV and tenchi sozo without knowing a lick of japanese. though how exactly i have no idea

 

[Brofist]

I have really bad news for you: you don't know Japanese. Probably should have thought about this.

/thread

 

[thetrin]

...

You know there are two alphabets: hiragana and katakana (besides kanji) right? You'd do well to learn what katakana is and when it's used... ;_;

Yep, he totally missed the part where it says `cecil`

Haven't yet tried an RPG in Japanese yet, kind of scared all the fantasy terms will confused me...

Why? Almost all fantasy terms would be in katakana, the easiest kana to learn.

 

[Shouta]

Why? Almost all fantasy terms would be in katakana, the easiest kana to learn.

You obviously haven't played any RPGs in japanese. :lol

 

[JCBossman]

:lol :lol

Hey, thats UNAMERICAN, thats OUR TOP Japanesse Translator for the NSA. His "INSIGHTS" go straight to Pres. Bush, so It NOW looks like we are going to have to invade Japan!

 

[Hurricane_Chris]

I get this from briefly translating it:

Heishi: "Captain Seshiru! The Baron will arrive soon!"

I'm surprised by the lack of kanji...

EDIT: LOL, so Baron isn't a title, but rather a place in this game. :lol So it's "We will arrive AT Baron soon!"

Famicom, Super Famicom, PC Engine, and Mega Drive RPGs often lacked Kanji. Probably due to storage of data + glyphs.