Thanks for the link mtb, I read the first result “Final thoughts on remembering the kanji”, and although the author refers to RTK, his insights are very valuable. In fact he did inspired me to go on with this.

From the very beginning we all knew that learning japanese was gona be hard, I mean, we are starting from zero, we don’t know how to read it, how to pronounce it, how to type it, not even how to look for it in a dictionary. If we were looking for ‘easy’ we could have gone with esperanto, or at least with a language we shared an alphabet with. Alas, we chose japanese. It’s gonna be hard, and how harder it can get shouldn’t be bothering us after we made up our minds into learning it.

So, with this, I’m not looking for the ‘easy’ way, there’s no easy route in the path we took; what I’m looking for is the ‘scenic route’. I’m looking for a road I can enjoy no matter how hard it might be.

(On the other hand, I’m convinced that, in this world, there are no such thing as easy or hard, there are only things you enjoy doing and things you don’t)

Thanks Sayuri, you are right in that reading an english book translated to japanese might sound weird if what I’m trying to learn is japanese. Some expressions might be literally translated, not reflecting the japanese usage. The structure of the text might be preserved for accuracy, forsaking the japanese accustomed practice. But this is all up to the translator, and this is true the other way around. A book translated from japanese to english might be subject of the same shortcomings, because there are things that can not be accurately translated either way. Please take the following points into consideration:

1.  Imagine a japanese book being translated to english, where the translator finds the following:
いただきます！
That’s a usual japanese expression with no accurate translation to english, since people in US/UK/Canada/Australia don’t have a similar ‘saying’. So the translator goes and writes the usual ‘Let’s eat!’/'Thank you for the food!’. But unless the translator puts a T.N. at the bottom you have no way of knowing why people are saying it every time they put something in their mouth.
Now if we go the other way around, and an english book is being translated to japanese, where the translator finds:
I’m broke.
The translator won’t take that literally 私は壊れています, he might write 私は金欠 which is just ‘I have a lack of money’, which makes perfect sense.

2. As we have concluded up to this point, is almost always up to the translator to de a good job. And this is another reason why a chose HP. Harry Potter is major franchise that won’t have any random translator taking care of their books. I would expect that great care has been taken in those translations, making them familiar to the reader rather than accurate. I dare say that because Harry Potter isn’t Edgar Allan Poe where the form carries substance; in Harry Potter if the overall plot is transmitted the mood is understood. The cat meows and the dog barks, carry on with the story. You don’t have to ‘read between the lines’ (that would be a good one to translate) nor guess anything from the way the story is been told.(This is true for the first 3 books, not so much for the rest).

This is a book for children, they don’t have inherent knowledge about England and their schools, I’m sure the translators know this and should translate accordingly.

3. Availability. This is important too, I would need the book to be available in a digital format in Japanese, english and spanish (having an extra language sometime helps clearing translation issues). Harry Potter can be found even in latin (for real). I’m not sure which japanese book for children would be so readily available. If you know any be sure I’ll give it a go.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 5 months ago by  whtlnv.

@マーク:  酷い！:P

Yep, that’s me. But please keep in mind these two things.

That’s me two months ago.
Reading and writing are two very different things, to the point where you can find people that can read but are unable to write.

My main objective is to understand the Japanese language. Writing will come afterwards. That’s how I learned English, and I believe it worked.

I don’t understand your second post; although I didn’t specifically say it, I think it’s clear I enjoy Harry Potter. There are several manga I enjoy too, but to be honest, I don’t enjoy reading them… What I like the most of the ones I’ve read it’s the story that got left out of an Anime, or the story that will happen in the Anime… But after seeing my list of read manga… Getting the raws for Deadman Wonderland and going through with those sounds like a good idea… The problem there is the handwritten/irrelgular font kanji, I have enough difficulty with typeset ones to add even more confusion to the mix.

@Astralfox: How long have you been doing this? What did you choose to read? Thanks for sharing your experience ^.^