Jump to content

The Broadcast Club: VN Podcast Episode 13 - Untranslated Visual Novels/Learning Japanese


NowItsAngeTime

Recommended Posts

Hey, folks!

This episode we talked a bit about our journeys into reading visual novels in Japanese with a guest who is no stranger to the medium, /u/Cornetto_man. Reading in Japanese is a pretty daunting task when starting from square one, and there's a lot of information about getting started out there. So of course, we decided to put our own thoughts to words on it. It's definitely not for everyone, and can feel like an uphill battle at times, but for fans of the medium, it can be incredibly freeing to open up the entire history of the medium, and also be able to stand waiting for the newest releases without needing to wait for a localization company to pick it up and eventually release a translation. If you're on the fence about getting started, maybe listening to us chat about it can help you make up your mind!

As always, feel free to comment on the cast below.

There’s also a list of Japanese resources at the bottom of this post:

http://thebroadcast.club/2018/11/19/episode-13-untranslated/

Here's the YouTube version of the ep:

 

Make sure to follow us on Twitter!

https://twitter.com/VNBroadcastClub

-----------------------------

Discussion Topics

  • Have you read VNs in Japanese or are you interested to start?
  • Was there a big untranslated title that you started learning for, or would consider starting to learn the language to read?
  • We have a short list of resources linked in our blogpost. Are there any others that you've found helpful that you'd like to make others aware of?
Edited by NowItsAngeTime
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, NowItsAngeTime said:

Discussion Topics

  • Have you read VNs in Japanese or are you interested to start?
  • Was there a big untranslated title that you started learning for, or would consider starting to learn the language to read?

Can we discuss it here, or is it just announcement?

Anyway, I'll answer ;)

Wanting to read untranslated VNs was one of my reasons for starting learning Japanese. The two titles that were the source of that are Konosora (it was back when I didn't know if and when retranslation patch will be ready) and Mashiroiro Symphony. Now they are joined by many others (like Clover Day's for example, and bunch of '90s PC98 titles, like Love Escalator or Kakyuusei).

As for the first question - I still don't have confidence to tackle those big ones, but recently I started with Hanahira to get my feet wet ;). It looks very approachable from the learner's point of view - the writing is very simple, and - since there is no narration - all lines are voiced, so it makes looking up unknown words easy even without hooking software.

As for the resources I'm using for learning - I started with JFZ online course. I also use Tae Kim's book, and currently mainly I'm learning kanji with WaniKani (and I'm about halfway through, at lvl 30). I'm also thinking about joining some actual class/course next year, to have some speaking pratice and some more structured learning schedule.

For now I feel pretty confident with basic grammar, but find my vocabulary and kanji knowledge considerably lacking, so reading bigger VNs would for now still mean looking up many words. But I hope, that maybe in a year or so I will be able to do it :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, adamstan said:

Can we discuss it here, or is it just announcement?

Anyway, I'll answer ;)

Wanting to read untranslated VNs was one of my reasons for starting learning Japanese. The two titles that were the source of that are Konosora (it was back when I didn't know if and when retranslation patch will be ready) and Mashiroiro Symphony. Now they are joined by many others (like Clover Day's for example, and bunch of '90s PC98 titles, like Love Escalator or Kakyuusei).

As for the first question - I still don't have confidence to tackle those big ones, but recently I started with Hanahira to get my feet wet ;). It looks very approachable from the learner's point of view - the writing is very simple, and - since there is no narration - all lines are voiced, so it makes looking up unknown words easy even without hooking software.

As for the resources I'm using for learning - I started with JFZ online course. I also use Tae Kim's book, and currently mainly I'm learning kanji with WaniKani (and I'm about halfway through, at lvl 30). I'm also thinking about joining some actual class/course next year, to have some speaking pratice and some more structured learning schedule.

For now I feel pretty confident with basic grammar, but find my vocabulary and kanji knowledge considerably lacking, so reading bigger VNs would for now still mean looking up many words. But I hope, that maybe in a year or so I will be able to do it :)


It's a discussion topic you guys are free to talk about here!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

54 minutes ago, NowItsAngeTime said:

Have you read VNs in Japanese or are you interested to start?

I was thinking about starting to learn Japanese for some time, but I never really got to actually doing it. I mean, learning a completely new language is a pretty difficult task, and I still don't understand how exactly I managed to learn English on a level that I'm more or less comfortable writing on the forums like this one. :michiru: At some point I was convinced that languages and me just don't go together.

54 minutes ago, NowItsAngeTime said:

Was there a big untranslated title that you started learning for, or would consider starting to learn the language to read?

No, not really. There were some untranslated titles that I was actually interested in reading, but some of them got translated, and I'm not really as engaged in the whole VN medium as I were in the past, so I'm not really as interested as before in the ones that are still untranslated. Also, I don't think learning a new language just to read one piece of fiction is such a good idea. On the other hand, if you want to be able to read something in particular, it can still be a pretty good motivator to actually learn it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, NowItsAngeTime said:

Was there a big untranslated title that you started learning for, or would consider starting to learn the language to read?

For me it was Grisaia no Meikyuu and Rakuen, since they didn't have translations at the time, and I absolutely loved Kajitsu. While it wasn't the reason I started learning in general, it certainly was a strong motivator. The Kono Oozora fandisk was as well, which was the first game I ever tried reading in Japanese. I was pretty terrible at the time, but the motivation it gave me certainly helped me improve a lot faster than I would have normally.

12 hours ago, NowItsAngeTime said:

We have a short list of resources linked in our blogpost. Are there any others that you've found helpful that you'd like to make others aware of?

I'd personally recommend the Genki books, tbh. We used them at our university, and Genki 1-2 gave us enough knowledge to get by when we studied abroad in Japan. Stuff like Tae Kim's guide is way too overwhelming for beginners in my opinion, and I don't think it should be used as a primary learning resource, but as a secondary source that you check for specific pieces of grammar instead.

While it isn't a resource for learning per se, another thing I recommend is for people to start looking up definitions of Japanese words in Japanese dictionaries as soon as possible. (Like this site.) Sure, you might not understand the definitions fully early on, but there is definitely tons of benefits to looking up definitions in Japanese, as English translations won't always carry over the correct nuance of a word, and might even give you the wrong idea of what a word means altogether.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd also like to add one thought.

I often feel like I'm making very slow progress with my learning, but nevertheless all that knowledge somehow creeps in and piles up - it's amazing feeling for a beginner to be able to read (or understand from listening) even few sentences.

While reading Sanoba recently, I tried to read some parts of the prologue in Japanese using its convenient language-switch feature. Some simpler dialogues between Shuuji, Kaidou, Wakana and Nene were no problem - only had to look up few words. Narration parts were tougher, especially with more complex sentences - I still felt overwhelmed by some of them. It was rather slow process as I used to read a line, and then check/compare my understanding of it by turning on the translation. It would be tiresome to read whole VN that way, so ultimately I switched to translated version, but still it was very rewarding experience - I got most of the simpler lines (and even some complex ones) right :wafuu:

54 minutes ago, Dergonu said:

Stuff like Tae Kim's guide is way too overwhelming for beginners in my opinion, and I don't think it should be used as a primary learning resource, but as a secondary source that you check for specific pieces of grammar instead.

Definitely agree with that - it started to be useful after I had absolute basics covered elsewhere.

Edited by adamstan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I found your series awhile ago randomly searching Castbox for VN podcasts. As you can imagine there wasn't many and I think this was about the only one that wasn't dead. I was a little apprehensive at first, learning that it came from Reddit, but the episodes I've listened to sound quite professional and I've enjoyed them. Anyway, I hope you guys keep at this. VN related podcasts are far too few. Thank you for your work.  I look forward to listening to this one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not watching the broadcast, but at least I can try to answer the questions here.

1. As for reading VN, I'd obviously read it in English which admittely not my first language here. So obviously I didn't read any VNs in Japan yet, and as for learning well perhaps I still didn't interested to do it yet.

2. For untranslated VN title that make me consider to learning Japan, well I guess there's no untranslated VN that motivated me enough to learn Japanese as of now, and besides if I managed to learn Japanese I would have more backlog which is not always good. More importantly I didn't want to be bothered with the processes as of now, so I'm kind of content for now.

I think that's all for what I can say here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, ciel_yuri said:

I found your series awhile ago randomly searching Castbox for VN podcasts. As you can imagine there wasn't many and I think this was about the only one that wasn't dead. I was a little apprehensive at first, learning that it came from Reddit, but the episodes I've listened to sound quite professional and I've enjoyed them. Anyway, I hope you guys keep at this. VN related podcasts are far too few. Thank you for your work.  I look forward to listening to this one.

Thanks for the compliment

Im not sure why Reddit has this representation has this automatic reputation of not being professional but generally smaller/specific communities generally have more mature fanbases

But thankfully the two cohosts and I agreed we wanted a professional and organized VN podcast if we wanted to do one and dont regret starting one with them cuz theyre some of the coolest people from the reddit visualnovels community

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...