I find that whenever I’m doing Anki or analyzing Japanese, I’m constantly translating whatever I can understand into English. It’s as if I’m a translator trying to find the perfect English equivalent, making sure I know the correct translation of every word in the sentence.
I’m aware that no two languages are equal, and that translations are mostly never 100% accurate. Therefore it feel like it’s wrong to translate. I’m not ready to make the monolingual transition just yet, but it feels like doing that could really help.
Does anyone else do this? Is it something I should be actively avoiding?
14 comments
Yes you will die
How far along are you? If you have something like a textbook to go by (Chapter 7 of Genki…), it would be helpful.
Generally at beginner levels, you’ll have more of a reliance on your native language, and you’ll need less and less of its help as you go on.
Also realize that in many situations a deep, exact translation isn’t always needed. It’s a good skill to have, but sometimes fussing over the details can lead to confusion which will cause a breakdown later on.
You should try to understand the sentence without actively translating it. If that doesn’t work, then translate, but translation shouldn’t be your first course of action for exactly the reasons you described.
I think the best case for translation would be, if you’re trying to break down and understand a sentence.
With any language but I think for English speakers, Japanese *especially*, you can come across sentences where every **piece** is familiar to you, but the sentence as a **whole** seems meaningless. The syntax and priority of information can be very different, so it might take translation and piece by piece breakdowns to get *used to*.
But translating **just** to confirm you understand? I don’t know so much about that, not in the long term at least.
Personally, I don’t treat it as a 1:1 translation. Instead, I’m trying to piece together the English sentence that’s going to convey the same idea as the Japanese one. Sometimes, I’ll do that successfully, but I’ll know for certain there are pieces of grammar I don’t understand. So I’ll stick with that sentence for a while longer, do some research, and figure out how those bits of grammar helped get the sentence to its destination.
With that said, I’m early into N4, and reading material a little out of my league, so do with that what you will lol
It never hurts to look up new words but if your new to Japanese its easy to get lost going down rabbit holes of different words and verb conjugations. Just remember that it’s okay to not know all the answers. Trust that they will eventually come up in your studies. If you’re focusing on on jlpt 5 material but are constantly finding yourself looking up next level material you may burn out quickly
Hello. I used to do translation work (e.g. translated documents from JP to EN, made official English subtitles for a few JP shows, etc.) and I’m quite guilty of trying to translate everything I see and hear to English as well.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with it. It’s actually even useful to think how a phrase might translate to English if translation is something you might want to pursue. For learners of the language, it might be good practice to verify what you know about Japanese.
That said, when it comes to translation, words and phrases don’t really correspond 1-to-1 between English and Japanese. You need to rely on context to get a sensible English equivalent in some cases. And sometimes, you even need to check if the phrase is an idiom or something, so you don’t end up taking the expression literally in English.
It might be bad. But it doesn’t hurt anyone. As long as you remember the word after translating then I think it should be okay.
When we read words in English we don’t immediately apply a second word to the first word to grasp the meaning of it. Instead, we usually end up visualizing the situation surrounding the word.
Applying that same mentality to go out of your way and visualize the content of cards in your Anki decks and text when you’re reading Japanese in the environment it’s meant for will go a long way for helping you to internalize the words without translation.
It’s unavoidable for a while, but later down the line, if you want to understand effortlessly, you’ll have to practice listening without thinking hard about everything. This effortless comprehension is, of course, a late-intermediate to advanced skill so don’t worry too much about it
yes
I find it helpful to visualize the word or action in my head. Words are tied to these things, for instance if when you were learning the word ball as a child you never actually saw a ball then you might think a circle is a ball if someone described it to you. The brain builds relation connections between words and their actual meaning. After all language is just that, conveying meaning.
When going through my Anki reviews, I first read the Japanese sentence, then I translate it in my head to my native language – usually saying it out loud afterwards. Finally, I try to read it once again in Japanese concurrently with the audio file.
I don’t need it, but neither does it hurt.
That’s good. You’re trying to applying what you learn. I think it can only help.