forming a "Japanese Reading & Discussion Group"

[the_naming_game]

I've found it hard to be disciplined in my Japanese study, so I thought it might help to form a study group. (For various reasons, I find that studying with others helps keep me focused.) I was thinking that a Japanese novel would be more fun to discuss than random example sentences. I don't know about other people, but that's my main problem. My eyes just glaze over after trying to absorb too many meaningless facts.

I will attempt to start with "Zero no Tsukaima", since it seems to have a lot of interest in it. (I'm included in that, obviously.)

Hopefully, people will still be interested in discussing the Japanese text, even after the translation starts, but if not, I'm open to suggestions about other texts to use. I'm a little worried myself that I'll slack off once I no longer have to learn Japanese in order to understand the story. On the plus side of course, you have a reference done by someone who actually knows the language.

In any case,
since I started on this already, I thought I'd go through with it. I made no special attempts to make it flow in English, because that would hide my misunderstandings of the Japanese under another layer of processing. The main thing I'm interested in is where I screwed up the meaning. I'm hoping that this will spark some decent discussions on the Japanese language. I'm not sure if I'm going about this the right way though. Well, without any further ado:

raw text:

魔法の国

第一章　俺は使い魔

「あんた誰？」
　抜けるような青空をバックに、才人の顔をまじまじと覗き込んでいる女の子が言った。
才人と年はあまり変わらない。黒いマントの下に、白いブラウス、グレーのプリーツスカ
ートを着た体をかがめ、呆れたように覗き込んでいる。
　顔は……。可愛い。桃色がかったブロンドの髪と透き通るような白い肌を舞台に、くり
くりと鳶色の目が踊っている。ガイジンみたいだ。というかガイジンである。人形のよう
に可愛いガイジンの娘さんである。いや、ハーフだろうか？
　しかし、彼女が着ているのはどこの学校の制服だろう。見たことない。
　才人はどうやら仰向けに地面に寝転んでいるらしい。顔を上げて辺りを見回す。
　黒いマントをつけて、自分を物珍しそうに見ている人間がたくさんいた。豊かな草原が
広がっている。遠くにヨーロッパの旅行写真で見たような、右造りの大きな城が見えた。
　まるでフアンタジーだ。

"translation" -- I tried to break lines and paragraphs at approximately the same places as the Japanese text.

Land (Country) of magic.

Chapter 1: I am a familiar.

- "Who are you?"
- With a sky one seems to have fallen from in the background, the girl who is closely examining Saito's face, said that.
Saito's age is not very different from hers. Wearing under a black mantle, a white blouse and a gray pleated skirt,
the bent over figure is looking upon him in amazement
- This face is ... cute. (Peach-) Pink-blonde hair, almost-transparent white skin, form a backdrop in which quick
reddish brown eyes are dancing. She looks kind of like a foreigner. Ok, maybe she IS a foreigner. A doll-like
cute foreign (precious/important/respected daughter) princess. No, maybe a happa?
- But what she's wearing is some place's school uniform, probably. I haven't seen anything like this before.
- It seems Saito, in the act of looking upward, is laying himself down on the ground. He raises his face to survey his surroundings.
- Attached to the black cloak is someone who is looking very curiously at me. Lush grasslands
spreading out. The distance looked like a travel picture of Europe, and built on the right, a large castle could be seen.
- It's like something from a fantasy.

Here is some detail on
how I broke down some of the sentences.
Because this is all kind of new to me, I may go in depth on obvious things, so please bear with me.

paragraph 2, sentence 1

• "抜けるような青空をバツクに、..."
  "(fallen-from) (kind of) (blue sky) wo 'back' ni"
  
  I assume this is supposed to be a subordinate clause of some sort? But what's the verb that the "wo" indicates the direct object for? Or is this some kind of set phrase?

paragraph 5, sentence 1

• "才人はどうやら仰向けに地面に寝転んでいるらしい。"
  "Saito wa (apparently) (looking up) ni (ground) ni (lying down) iru (it seems)"
  
  We have this "verb1 NI noun1 NI verb2-te_form iru" structure that I parsed as "verb1 NI (noun1 NI verb2-te_form iru)" -- in other words, "(noun1 NI verb2)" is happening towards the act of "verb1"

paragraph 6, sentence 2

• "右造りの大きな城が見えた。"
  "built on the right, a large castle could be seen."
  (Mixed jp+en transliteration is too much trouble, so I'll probably avoid it from now, if possible.)
  
  Is that meaning of "右造りの" correct? I believe it's literally "right-hand structure's" -- using "right hand structure" as some sort of essence of "right hand structure"dness -- or less literally "right-hand structured"? I'm still trying to get my head around all the uses of "の"

There's a lot more I'm unsure of,
but it really is laborious to spell it all out literally. I think it's easier on both me and other people to just point out my mistakes. The whole point was to avoid that eye-glazing feeling, after all.

Let me know if I typed any of the Japanese wrong. I know next to nothing about Japanese usage, as in what word is most likely to be where, idioms, etc, but I am pretty meticulous, so I believe all the squiggles are the same. My most common error is small vs large versions of hiragana and katakana.

Any other suggestions
for interesting Japanese novels with reasonably simple language?

Or for better ways to organize a study group?

posting Japanese text
Since this is a pretty short passage, I don't see any particular problem with posting the Japanese. If it really is a problem, please edit out that section. Anyone who's interested can PM me for the Japanese text in case it's no longer available in this post.

Of course, a lot more text might get posted later, so it'd be nice to get something definitive on this.

[onizuka-gto]

interesting idea, naming_game

it'll e interesting to see how this fairs.
After all what better place to touch up your Japanese then at a translation site?

[SubordinateFive]

I like this idea. Count me in!

[onizuka-gto]

Talking about praticing your Japanese, The big Boss pointed out a great site, i've been hooked on it for a few hours....dammn him.


http://www.realkana.com/


Great way to practice your Japanese, but be warned, it's ADDICTIVE!!

[the_naming_game]

I'll post my reference sources
so that those following this can follow along better, or even join in. (Imagine that, eh?)

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdicmirrors.html
I use the "Translate Words" feature for an initial survey. It can't seem to recognize all-hiragana words, except singly.

http://www.alc.co.jp/
can find example sentences for things I can't find on wwwjdic.

http://guidetojapanese.org/
Japanese grammar. Best site I've seen for learning it.

http://wakan.manga.cz/
SubordinateFive turned me onto this. I like its character lookup options and its popup feature. Oddly enough, I still use wwwjdic once I have the Japanese text. I prefer the website's interface for that.

I'll go over some good free Japanese learning links/software in another post, because there are a ton out there. In comparison, Chinese has almost NOTHING. It's pitiful.

translation discussion
I've made some corrections, thanks to a preliminary translation which I'll cite once I'm told it's ok to. It's the sample posted in the ZnT Collaboration forum, for those curious.

I'll just go through the changes. I won't post updated text until I'm reasonably sure the meanings are right.

::::::::Here's the format::::::::

X: old text.
O: new text.

• Item 1 that was changed, with rationale.
• Item 2 that was changed, with rationale.
• Any extra notes will be in the last paragraph(s)
  
  They'll appear all as one list item, no matter how many paragraphs.

::::::::Here's the changes list::::::::

X: The distance looked like a travel picture of Europe, and built on the right, a large castle could be seen.
O: In the distance, looking like a travel picture of Europe, a stone-built, large castle could be seen.

• "右造りの" to "石造りの" -- I have no excuse. On the bright side, the sentence makes much more sense now.
• Also, I was treating the "で" particle as a "が" or "は" particle. I kind of punted on the initial "に" particle as well.
• My current parse: "[distance] NI ('Europe' NO [travel picture] DE [seen] [similar to] NA), [stone-structure] NO [large castle] [could be seen]"
  
  So when "na_adjective NA" is taken as a complete phrase, it means "na_adjective"-like? as in "In the distance, 'seen by way of European travel picture'-like, ..."? If there wasn't a comma after the "na", I'd have no trouble parsing the sentence, but the comma throws me for a loop.
  
  Hopefully that was the only typo in the Japanese text.

X: No, maybe a happa?
O: No, maybe a half? (as in "mixed Japanese-foreign race")

• "happa" to "half" -- even though I typed it right, when looking through during the translation pass, I misread "ハーフ" as "ハープ", and my brain immediately inserted "happa".

X: Attached to the black cloak is someone who is looking very curiously at me.
O: Attached to black cloaks, are people looking very curiously at me.

• I misunderstood the function and meaning of "たくさん"
• Since "attached" is the most generic meaning of "つけて", I'm keeping it as-is, even though "wearing" is a more colloquial replacement for "attached to".

X: the bent over figure is looking upon him in amazement
O: the bent over figure is looking upon him in shock

• switch from "amazement" to the slightly more negative "shock"
• After looking through some example sentences, "呆れる" seems to have more negative connotations than the dictionary definition indicated. However, from those examples, it seems there needs to be more context to indicate "disgust", but who knows.

X: It seems Saito, in the act of looking upward, is laying himself down on the ground.
O: Saito has somehow come to be lying on the ground, on his back.

• I used a little poetic license, on the literal sentence
  • "Saito apparently seems to be lying on the ground on his back."
  • "Saito apparently seems to have come to be lying on the ground on his back."
  • "Saito has somehow come to be lying on the ground, on his back."
  -- basically I felt that the only reason for that kind of a construct in that context was "How the hell did I get there?"
• I missed the fact that the command conjugation of the verb is used. Not that this makes the sentence any clearer to me. Right now, I'm going simply by the patterns I've seen in example sentences.
  
  Even though "仰向け" is the command form of "仰向く" (to look upward), when used in the phrase "仰向けに", for some reason, it seems mean "in the state of looking up" -- so my current parse is now:
  "state1 NI (noun1 NI verb2-te_form iru)" -- in other words, "(noun1 NI verb2)" is happening in the context of "state1"
  
  With that having been said, I now have no idea how one would express the idea: "Saito, in the act of lying down on the ground, has performed the act of looking up." Perhaps using the "de" particle? "Saito WA ((ground) NI (lying down) DE) (looking up)" -- or "Saito is looking up by way of lying down on the ground." -- though my grammar's most likely broken.

X: With a sky one seems to have fallen from in the background, ...
O: Under a clear blue sky, ...

• Some searching revealed that "抜けるような青空" is a set phrase. Consider that "抜ける" doesn't just mean "fall out", but can also mean "escape" -- so literally "an escape-(seeming, promoting, tending) blue sky" -- poetic, no?
  
  Other translations that I got from example sentences: "bottomless blue sky", "pure blue sky", "bright blue sky"

There is some subtle remaining stuff
that I'm hoping to get addressed. The questions I had in the previous post still apply, taking into account the current changes, of course.

Here's the next page,
raw text only. The earliest I'm going to get to try a crack at this is tomorrow. So I'll give someone else a first chance at it. (but it's not like you HAVE to read my translation attempt first before you try it yourself.)

　頭痛がする。才人は頭を振りながら言った。
「誰って……。俺は平賀才人」
「どこの平民？」
　平民？なんでそれは。周りを囲んだ少年少女たちも、彼女と同じような制服を着て、
手に何か棒のようなものを持っている。
　アメリカンスクールにでも迷い込んでしまったんだろうか。
「ルイズ、「サモン・サーヴアント」で平民を呼び出してどうするの？」
　誰かがそう言うと、才人の顔をじっと覗き込んでいる少女以外の全員が笑った。
「ちょ、ちょっと間違っただけよ！」
　才人の目の前の少女が、鈴のようによく通る上品な声で怒鳴った。
「間違いって、ルイズはいっつもそうじゃん」
「さすがはゼロのルイズだ！」
　誰かがそう言うと、人垣がどっと爆笑する。
　才人の顔をじっと覗き込んでいる女の子は、どうやらルイズというらしい。
　とにかく、アメリカンスクールではないようだ。それらしい建物はどこにも見えない。
　映画のセット？　なんかの撮影？　才人は咄嗟にそう思った。
　しかし、映画のセットにしてはだだっ広い。日本にこんな風景あったかなあ。いや、新

Here's the rest of that last paragraph, since it goes over to the next page. Actually, there are probably a lot of these. In the future, I'll probably just leave hanging paragraphs untranslated, even though I'll post each page in its original form.

しくできたテーマパークだろうか。でも、なんで俺はそんなところで寝ているんだろう。

The more I work on this,
the more I realize that I would already be slacking off on this by now, if the story weren't so interesting, and if Louise didn't have so much dojikko (magic-wise), tsundere, and hidden-Shana moe -- and if Saito wasn't so fun and generally non-despisable. Fear otaku power!

[the_naming_game]

I've been given the OK to post the

text of the prelim translation for page 1
done by Yuko of Kuroneko -- the ones bringing us "Zero no Tsukaima"

I did some light editing on it, but I've also put the original word-for word version (spellchecked, though.) in a spoiler, since it's always possible I changed something when I edited.

‘I'm a familiar spirit ’
“Who are you?”

The girl who looked steadily into Saito's face said, with a blue sky which looks like it will fall out behind her. She looks like about Saito's age. She is wearing a white blouse, and a gray pleated skirt under a black cape… She stoops down and is looking into his face as if she has been disgusted.

Her face is… cute. Her eyes of reddish brown dance with her strawberry blonde hair and her white flawless skin for a stage. She looks like a foreigner. Well, she is. She is such a cute foreign girl, like a doll. Or is she a half?

Regarding her uniform, he wonders which school it belongs to. He has never seen it before.

Saito seems to be lying on his back on the ground. He lifts his head up to look around.

There are a lot of people with black capes, looking at him as a stranger. A rich grassy plain is there endlessly. He notices a huge castle made with stone walls in the distance, just like he has seen in a European trip photograph.

This is just like a fantasy.

Spoiler! :

‘I'm a familiar spirit ’
“Who are you?”

The girl who looked into Saito's face steadily said, with the blue sky which look like it will fall out behind her. She looks like about Saito's age. She is wore a white blouse, and a gray pleated skirt under black cape… She stoops down and is looking in to his face as if she has been disgusted.

Her face is… cute. Her eyes of reddish brown dances as her strawberry blonde hair and her white flawless skin for a stage. She looks like a foreigner. Well, she is. She is a such a cute foreign girl like a doll. Or is she a half?

Regarding her uniform, he wonders which school it belongs to. He has never seen it before.

Saito seems to be lie on his back in the ground. He lift his head up to look around.

There are a lot of people with black capes, looking at him as a stranger. A rich grassy plain is there endlessly. He notices a huge castle made with stone walls in distance, just like he has seen in a European trip photograph.

This is just like a fantasy.

Page 2 has more dialog, and more colloquialism.
As a result, I'm going to have to finish cramming section 2 and 3 of the grammar guide before I have a chance of tackling it.

From now on, I'm going to be including the definitions of the all-hiragana words, since those can't be automatically translated. I'll also include any alternative spellings used, dialect, the equivalent of "do not -> don't", etc. Well, I'll do it later... I need some rest before I'll be in the Japanese studying mood again.

Suggestions on a better approach?
I'm tending towards trying to get understanding of each passage to 90+ percent before moving on, but that level of fanaticism might not be fun for others. Thoughts?

[Da~Mike]

The Naming Game.

After reading all the... stuff... above, may I suggest an alternative method of learning a language? That would be to learn it academically.

When I say academically, I mean it would be better to learn the language as if you were learning English back when you were a wee child, in order to build up a fairly strong foundation of the language.

I can testify that this method works better simply based on the proficiency of the two languages I have been learning (well, the third would be French but I prefer English ). I spent my gap year in China learning Mandarin Chinese academically whereas I learnt Japanese primarily from my Japanese friends, Jdoromas, manga and anime. Although I'm sure I passively learnt Japanese for at least 5 years, just 3 months of intensive academic training made me... somewhat conversant in Mandarin Chinese (though I must say that I have forgotten the vast majority of what I learnt already... ).

Without the aid of an academic institute to learn a foreign language, the next best bet would be to get a few textbooks and audiotapes (though learning to speak yourself is the last thing you should ever try.....) and slowly, but surely learn all the basics of Japanese: the phonetic characters, the 192 most commonly used kanji, grammar .etc.

While it is no doubt, extremely boring to do it this way, I can assure you that you will probably learn the language better.