THE MATERIALS
Here's what's floating around in my head already:
- 4 semesters "intensive" Japanese courses from the University of
the South, TN, USA
- 1 semester intensive (as in 3 hours a day, 5 days a week) Japanese
study at Nanzan Daigaku, Nagoya, Japan
- 1 semester "intermediate translation" course at Nanzan Daigaku,
Nagoya, Japan
- who knows how many hours forced practice from living homestay in Nagoya for
4 months, and living on my own in Kijo Town, Kyuushu, for the two years between
August '02 and August '04.
- years of picking up bits and pieces from much anime and manga. ~.^
the end result of this? well, I consider myself of decent fluency in Japanese. I can read a shojo/shonen manga cover to cover and understand 95%, and a "shosetsu" (novel) start to finish and understand 75%. it's plenty enough of a foothold for me to be able to look up specifics elsewhere. I'm still studying and learning though. One never really "masters" foreign language. There's always more to learn.
These are the 3 books I use most often:
- Kenkyusha's New College Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th edition.
-this thing is the most convenient and oft-used
dictionary I have. 2000+ bible-paper pages of Japanese words, and
lots of example sentences and cross-references. it's J-E coming
from the Japanese side, so you have to know your kana and how to read japanese
dictionaries (a,i,u,e,o,ka,ki,ku,ke,ko...etc, instead of a,b,c,d,e,f...). figure
that out, and you can find most non-slang, non-dialect words you'd come across
in there.
- Kanji & Kana, Revised Edition; A Handbook of the Japanese Writing System.
by Hadamitzky & Spahn
-again, an incredibly useful little book.
it's got both hiragana and katakana syllabaries, all 1,945 government-recognized
kanji, another 284 kanji sanctioned for use in personal names, and some neat
little bits of history on all three writing systems. the best part about
this dictionary is it has a lookup system based off of the stroke-count of a
particular kanji, so you don't have to know it's radical or any of its pronunciations
to find it.
- The Kanji Dictionary. by Hadamitzky & Spahn.
-my Unholy Huge Tome 'O Kanji. this
sucker's HUGE. some 3,000 kanji to the Kanji & Kana's 2,100-someodd,
the main draw for getting this book is the kanji combinations. over 47,000
of them, to be precise. when I don't know the kanji and there aren't any
furigana for me to cheat off of, I go here. it is a rare day when I can't
find a particular combination of kanji in here. it's also useful for those
odd kanji that don't show up in Kanji & Kana. there are LOTS
more than 1,945 kanji in common use, and this one hits most of the ones previously
missed. you just need to know radicals or the kanji's pronunciation in
order to look it up.
These resources I use every now and again:
- “Jeffrey's Japanese <-> English Dictionary Server” (rut.org/cgi-bin/j-e/dict)
-if, for some odd reason, I just can't find
something in any of the above sources, this is the first place I go. it's
mostly exactly the same stuff as in my other two dictionaries, but sometimes
it's just got one little something that doesn't show up in the others, especially
if they're business or science related terms. it's been the only place
I've been able to find more than a handful of words.
- Using Japanese Slang; A Comprehensive Guide. by Kasschau & Eguchi.
-you wouldn't believe the curse-words
and slang you can find in here. it's not exactly a "dictionary", per-se,
but more like a regular book that's got a LOT of, erm, interesting vocabulary
in it. given enough time to just read through it, there are lots of set
phrases and catchwords that just don't translate directly into English well
(i.e. calling a person "the enemy's dog". logical english thought
- the enemy's crony, thug. actually, it means "the enemy's spy").
and then, of course, there's the more colorful stuff. not that I'd ever
use any of it, mind you... ~.^
- The Japanese Have a Word for It; The Complete Guide to Japanese Thought
and Culture. by DeMente
-haven't had a chance to use this
one yet, but I have it in case I run across Old Sayings and Pithy Phrases. once
again, not precisely a dictionary, more like a book on the Japanese mindset.
except for the Kenkyusha dictionary, American companies publish all the above books, so they can probably be found quite easily on amazon.com or at your local large bookstore like Barnes & Nobles. the Kenkyusha I had to buy as part of my translation course, and is published by a Japanese company, so Amazon might have it, but I'd suggest checking out Kinokuniya or Sasuga Books. or any of the other bookstores that you can dig up on Anipike's "online stores" list.
THE PROCEDURE
well, there isn't much to it except
to just do it. ^.^ I usually plunk down when I have the spare time
and pull up my three big dictionaries and plug away.
I do everything longhand first. not only does this force me
to revise my work when typing it up, it also eliminates the procrastinating
excuse of "I don't have my computer handy." I don't go
into too heavy detail here with my narrations, mostly just notes and ideas.
if I find a phrase that stumps me, and several minutes of dissecting
the thing verb by particle doesn't yield a good answer, I'll write down the
kana and move on, not coming back to it until I'm ready to type everything into
Word.
once the handwritten draft is done, I'll let it sit for a day or
even a week, then start typing it into Word. heck some of the Trigun
scripts I've typed up were over a year old ! the break theoretically gives
me more objective eyes to look at my work, so I should see what's really
written, not just what I want to have written. lots of stupid little
mistakes get caught that way. I look at both my draft and the original
manga this time, comparing the former against the latter and checking for accuracy
and building on what I've already done. fleshing it out, so to speak.
here's where I pick up all the sentences I couldn't get before. typing
the handwritten transcript moves much faster, so context and story flow are
easier to keep in mind. that usually provides enough clues for something
to finally click. when I still don't get it, then I just say heck
with it, and guess.
that done, I let it sit. again. usually just a day this
time. then on to the final revision. I read it straight through, looking
for nit-picky things that spell-check doesn't pick up (to/too, their/there,
etc.), making sure I've italicized everything that needs to be, and generally
trying to see if everything fits together right. any major revisions made
warrant another revision later.
when I can read through the whole chapter without cringing or noticing
anything other than cosmetic changes, then it's officially Done! Yay!
given that whole mess of stuff that I go through to get these translations done,
just why do I do it you ask? 'cuz I love it. yes, shaddy's weird.
very, very weird. high school french, spanish, latin, ancient greek,
I took them all-- boo~~~ooriii~~~~ng. Japanese? oooooooooo. the
language itself is so refreshingly different from all the romance languages
and I utterly adore the writing system, all three of the alphabets (a challenge!
finally!) are oodles of fun. especially kanji. they're the closest
I'll ever get to art, hon. I've always loved stories, the longer the better,
and manga throws in great art to boot! wahoo! so there's something
out there that'll let me read cool stories AND drool at pretty art AND play
around with my favorite language?? sign me up! now the trick is
finding someone who'll pay me to do this for a living……
so you want to give this translating thing a go, but you don't know that much
Japanese? try anyway. you don't have to be as much of a nutcase
about it as I am to do a good job.
Intangible But Handy Things to Have (aka:
Tips, just in case you want to try this crazy stuff yourself):
- creativity!!
-just because one person uses "baka"
6 times on the same page doesn't mean you have to translate it as "stupid"
each time. find a thesaurus. come up with a more creative way of
insulting the guy's intelligence. the Japanese have a much higher threshold
for oft-repeated words than we do (or so I've seemed to notice), so throw in
some variety.
- patience!
-this stuff takes forever and a day to do.
there's so much time spent in hunting down that one kanji, or trying to figure
out just what that sentence really means. and I generally do everything
long-hand first, so then I have to type it all up! then the tricky part--
not being so daggum eager to post it that it's not proofed properly. let
it sit and rest for a day or three, then go back and read your work!!
spell-check is great, but it's not infallible. look for all those incidences
of "your" instead of "you're", or "there" instead
of "their". it's little nitpicky stuff, but if you let it slide
it really detracts from the whole!
- half a clue how to write.
-you don't have to be a novelist, or even
a semi-decent fic-writer, but it does help to have an idea how to string sentences
together and have them work as a whole. don't get so caught up in each
individual sentence that you forget they have to make sense when read by someone
other than you.
- half a clue how people talk.
-even when you translate a Japanese sentence
over into English, it's still going to sound weird because they just don't speak
like us. take a little license and shift things around so that it sounds
like it would if one of your friends said something along that line. we've
got phrases and lines that the Japanese don't use, like "what's his/her
damage?" or "sketchy", or "dude!". express the
gist of what's being said if the verbatim translation sounds too stilted or
weird to your American ear.