I’ve recently made it to somewhere around an N3 level, being able to read and watch things reasonably comfortably. My friends have started sending me japanese text from untranslated games, manga, etc. asking if I could translate them, which I’ve obliged because I think it’s really fun. But I’ve started to worry that it may negatively affect how I acquire japanese on a subconscious level, because of how often i’ve been thinking about how to turn japanese words and phrases into english ones (not translating literally though). Any thoughts or recommendations?
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Translating might be more of the “learning” side of things.
I’d disagree. Japanese is a very difficult language to translate word for word. When I translate things from Japanese to English, I read the sentence in Japanese and then make a brand new sentence in English that means the same thing.
Lol, it’s very good, though it’s certainly a different skill somewhat.
Usually it doesn’t work like that. People make mistakes not so much because they try to replicate one language in another, but because the way to express something sounds natural for them due to other languages. When natives learn, there is only right way and nothing more, but it’s different for foreign learners. For example, in English there is such expression like “have a point” that suddenly turns into “make” when combined with “sense”. For many people it’s illogical, because nothing is really made, something is either reasonable or not, thus for such people “has sense” sounds natural and it’s a mistake.
The best way to prevent it is to mimic, the more we mimic, the closer to native we become. But fundamentally it’s quite hard to prevent all mistakes even after 10-20 years of learning. And many advanced learners can tell about it, or maybe their weak areas. Even natives differ a lot in their knowledge of their native language, let alone foreigners who usually start to learn it 10-20 years later.