I would like to start reading japanese books because I am getting tired that some of the best stuff never gets translated. But even though I have some knowledge of Japanese, my level is really not that high.
To give you an idea of how good I am in japanese, I can tell you that I studied it in school and passed the exams with fairly good grades, but that’s starting to be quite some time ago. If I were to get lost in Tokyo, I wouldn’t break a sweat because I would manage to ask and get things done even though I would stick like a sore thumb. Hiragana and Katana are absolutly no problem for me but I struggle with all kanjis but the most basic ones, I pretty much forgot all of them since my time in school. My japanese is good enough to spot the translation errors when I watch movies/animes with subtitles.
Before reading any novels, I will start slow by reading some Gundam mangas because my favorite stuff is Science-Fiction. While I need absolutly no help to read some basic shonens like One Punch Man, I will probably struggle to read gundam because of the techno bable.
I was wondering if somewhere there was a lexicon guide for Japanese Science Fiction so I can read gundam without having to look up a dictionnary for every sentence? I will probably need refreshers on some grammar forms but that’s not the most important probably.
1 comment
Your best bet, in my opinion, is to read that stuff with a community and work together to define terms you don’t understand/are new to you. As an example, the Wanikani community forums have book clubs for various skill levels, and they tend to make chapter-by-chapter spreadsheets for new terms. Here’s one for the novel that inspired [Kiki’s Delivery Service](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pzIVzIUS2XN-7WOkqZqDB-bK4f0ejMYO0sBrWE-G5ps/edit) (sorry, I know it’s not sci-fi) that might give you an idea of what I mean. It’s a lot of work, but language-learning is just like that sometimes.
As an alternative, [koohi.cafe](https://koohi.cafe) has a list of works that have had many (sometimes all!) of their terms broken down by order of appearance or frequency, and that can greatly aid studying. It has a built-in SRS system, or you can simply add the items to Anki, Kamesame, or whatever else you use to study. Just have to find a work you’re interested in reading!
I don’t think a generalized sci-fi terminology translation resource exists. It sounds like you are actually pretty darn comfortable with Japanese, so the least time-intensive way might be simply leaning on Google. Japanese Wikipedia and pixiv are often good shortcuts to getting the gist of terms in specific genres, if they’re common enough. Putting an unfamiliar term into Google image search may also quickly give you an idea of what it is.