Forum - View topicUnderstanding anime without the Japanese fluency...
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Iota One
 Posts: 7 |
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For those of you who aren't fluent in Japanese or are currently studying the language, how much stuff in anime are you able to understand without subtitles?
I've studied Japanese for about a year now, but it's still quite difficult to really get a feel for what's going on if I were to watch a show raw. There will be words I will hear that are familiar through studying, but it seems like I have to concentrate on what's going on screen to understand anything. And when it comes to the grammar I know, I'm still a ways off until I can actually appreciate a seiyuu's voice work. So I still heavily rely on subs. |
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Murasakisuishou
 Posts: 1469 Location: NE Ohio |
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I certainly can't watch anything raw, but I know enough general grammar and basic phrasing and a few nouns to know when a DVD is dubtitled (like with Appleseed: Ex Machina - there were several places where it was blatantly obvious that the characters weren't saying what was in the subs). I might be able to get a very general idea of what was going on if I watched a raw, but I still depend very heavily on the subtitles
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JacobC
ANN Past Staff
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Yeah, I know enough to get both irritated and...kind of understand why at the same time...subtitles translate something "meaning-wise" instead of literally. There are a lot of things in Japanese that can't be translated literally, so there are many substitutes for them even in subtitles.
Usually my big tip-off that the subtitles are arranged for meaning and phonetics rather than COMPLETELY LITERAL meaning is the use or non-use of honorifics. If the subtitles don't use honorifics, I kind of click my tongue because I know I'm going to have to take the translations with a grain of salt. I listen to dubs a lot because I like things to sound totally natural and fluent to me, but when I watch it in Japanese, I want to know it literally, because I want to catch any nuance that I can that's lost in translation. Even if it does look stilted, as it should. Japanese is a far simpler but more versatile language than English where many words can mean more than one thing depending on intonation and choice of suffixes or speech patterns. I mean, how many ways have I seen, (romaji, so don't stone me if it isn't right) "Ma-taku" translated? I don't think there's a literal way to translate it, seeing as I asked my Japanese friends and they couldn't give me a solid answer either. I think "For crying out loud" is the closest you can get. So...what a rant!...to actually ANSWER the question, I can understand most interjectory and introductory phrases and sentence structure, but actual nouns and verbs I only get the conjugation of, not the meaning. I know how the language works, but I don't know too many words. |
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abunai
Old Regular
 Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
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全く (mattaku) is constructed of the kanji for "whole" or "total", and adverbialized by the -ku, so there actually is a good way to translate it: "Really!" or "Indeed!" -- although if you're seeing it used to express exasperation, "Honestly!" might be better. As a rule of thumb, a word ending in -ku is an adverb. For instance, the adjective 強い (tsuyoi, "strong") becomes the adverb 強く (tsuyoku, "strongly"). You see this used a lot in 強く成りたい (tsuyokunaritai, "I want to be strong" -- or literally, "strongly-becoming (I) wish"), a staple in shounen anime.. While we're at it, you can also form a noun from an adjective, by adding -sa. 強い thus becomes 強さ (tsuyosa, "strength"). - abunai |
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Iota One
Posts: 7 |
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I hate going off in a tangent here, but doesn't the particle "ni" work the same way in other words? |
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abunai
Old Regular
Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
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Oh dear gods, don't ask about particles. I can't prove a causal relationship (some people have had the temerity to bring irrelevancies like age into the equation), but I can inform you that I had no grey hairs before I started struggling with particles. Anyway, ni is one of the most difficult of the particles, because there are so many ways to use it -- not to mention all the special cases, where it takes on a special meaning in one particular context. You are probably thinking of the phrase お Ｘ になる／なります (o-Ｘ ni naru/narimasu), where Ｘ is an action or state attained by someone that the speaker wishes to express respect for. You see it in phrases like お帰りになりました (o-kaeri ni narimashita, "(You/he) has (gone/come) home" in respectful mode). - abunai |
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JacobC
ANN Past Staff
Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Ha ha, thanks for that, that really helps!  My study of Japanese is entirely self-taught and not very intensive as I have actual school studies to worry about so I just look over Japanese on a whim, not with the diligence I really should if I had the time.
The best that my Japanese friends were able to translate it as was, "Yeah, that's a go!" No, I'm not kidding. When I said it was used more as a curse or an exasperation in the cases I had seen it, they looked puzzled, then said it was more like "Ah, too much!" Of course, their English is very basic, so I figured I'd never really get it. Now I guess I do? Ha ha. On the topic of speech patterns being fascinating, they really are. How many times have you seen crossdressing in anime? Have you ever noticed that many characters are fooled by it not solely based on the ambiguity of a character's appearance, but by the way they speak, taking on a feminine style of intonation and choice of words that men aren't used to, or vice versa? I think I noticed that actually being mentioned in one anime. (Oh, what was it? Not Tenchi Muyo!, but something VERY similar to it. Grrr.) Sometimes it even reveals more about character. For instance, in Trigun, which I kinda prefer in English, but has a great Japanese dub, Legato speaks with an insane politeness that doesn't really befit a nihilistic heartless murderer. It kind of baffled me at first until I realized that he was copying Vash's speech pattern, which varies more but is also insanely polite when he's in his "happy mode," in public. Vash-envy much there, pretty man? Apparently. Looking at it that way, given Legato's relationship with Knives and the ultimate choices he makes, made Legato a much more understandable character. The poor creep spoiler[wishes he wasn't human, as he sees them so inherently flawed and Vash godlike. He even knows his own master, Knives, will never look on him favorably, and only wants Vash back. All Legato has of Vash is his arm, his place at his brother's side, and his peculiar manner of speech. No wonder he hates himself.] And all it took to get that was the way he spoke. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6921 Location: Kazune City |
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It depends on the kind of series...if it's a younger-audiences series (CCS, Hime-chan's Ribbon) or a modern-day slife/romance series (Ai yori aoshi, Rumbling Hearts), I can generally get 90% or more. If it's something like Last Exile or Gasaraki that has a bunch of technobabble, or something set in pre-modern Japan, that figure drops to 75% or so. Japanese may be a more versatile language in some ways (although its total vocabulary is far smaller than English's), but anime dialogue is not all that varied. It's a kind of curse; the more Japanese you understand, the more you see anime dialogue as uncreative and repetitive. That's one reason I've come to like English dubs more, because they spice things up to provide a little variety. And I'll always prefer subtitles that are natural and flowing rather than stiff and over-literal. Even though literally translated Japanese sounds "stiff" in English, there's no reason anime subtitles and dubs should have to sound that way. To some extent, anime dialogue is supposed to represent natural conversations between people, or depending on the show, melodramatic theatrics or hot-blooded bravado. So I always value subtitles (and dubs) that are faithful to the original but still make enough changes to be entertaining and enjoyable. And yes, it is possible, I've seen it done in numerous official and fansub releases. |
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CorrosiveMeso
 Posts: 58 |
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That's funny, it's usually the opposite for me. Anyway, I don't know enough Japanese to understand a raw, but I can get a general sense of what's going on. My biggest problem is probably my lack of a decent vocabulary. But I like learning the grammar because it's so different from that of the other languages I know (well, Farsi's a little more similar than, say, English, but it's still very different). There are some parts of the grammar that annoy me, like counters. Sort of like how much I hate agreement in the passé composé in French. |
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JacobC
ANN Past Staff
Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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GAH! I've been posting here too much, but I really wanted to comment... That's one of the biggest reasons I like English dubs, too, and I hate to be stoned for saying so, so I don't say this often: The English language is so beautiful and varied, why don't we use it to its full capacity in cases like this? I have to disagree on one point, that I prefer subs really literal, if only because I partly listen to learn more Japanese, and want to catch nuance. But I like dubs adaptive. Really adaptive. I don't want the English version of anything I watch to be horribly literal. You get Eureka Seven when you do that, which, say what you will about it being a great show or having a good dub, is painfully syntaxed in English because the script is a near exact translation of the Japanese. You DO hear the same words over and over, (Japanese is more versatile, but not more complex and the vocabulary is miniscule compared to English, which has one of the largest selections of words of all the languages of the world,) and dialogue between characters sounds overly poetic, mechanical, boringly simplistic, or just unrealistic. I'm not saying that I want meaning to be lost or changed, just enhanced. Look at Fullmetal Alchemist and a lot of the better Funimation scripts. That's a terrific example of writing up from a source instead of writing level. I think if adaptive writers, directors, and actors really respect a work that comes to them, they wouldn't try to translate it, they'd try to improve it. Not by hacking away and changing the meaning ala 4Kids or the earlier days of Funi, but gently polishing to make the series shine even brighter than it did to begin with. Oh, yeah, and we can't forget Cowboy Bebop. Another fantastic example. The over-simplicity of the Japanese there bores me a little. The clever spin and naturalness of the dialogue as well as the authenticity of some regional accents made the English version so respected as it is. So yeah, totally not trying to bash the Japanese language, (heck no, I just complimented its intricacies two posts ago) but if you're going to make something an English production, go the whole hog and make it the best you can in ENGLISH, not translated Japanese. If I want that, I'll watch subs, which should be more literal, for my liking. |
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abunai
Old Regular
Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
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This happens a lot -- playing with pronouns (actually, there are no pronouns in Japanese, only indicators of direction or status that have come to take on the quality of pronouns, over time, but that's another matter) is one of the staples of theatrical dialogue in Japanese. In anime and dorama and films, characters frequently vary their pronoun use to indicate subtle (or not-so-subtle) points about their nature. 俺 (ore), the boastful masculine first-person pronoun, is frequently used in anime to indicate pride/ego. It can be dreadfully offensive. However, in Tenshi na konamaiki, Megu uses it because she thinks of herself as a boy... and everybody thinks it's terribly cute. I should also mention that the younger generation of Japanese males use 俺 quite a lot, and with less offensiveness... and this has, unfortunately, rubbed off on me, since many of the Japanese people that I associate with are a bit younger than I am. I try to remember to use more humble forms when speaking to older Japanese, but for some reason, 僕 (boku, the humble male pronoun, lit. "servant, lackey") sticks in my craw. Speaking of pronoun patterns at odds with a character's gender... in Bleach, Urahara Kisuke ("sandal-hat guy") uses 私 (watashi, the neutral/female pronoun indicator) pronounced as atashi, which is a very feminine modality. Makes you wonder.... - abunai |
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JacobC
ANN Past Staff
Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Yeah, that's probably one of the modalities I can pick up on the easiest. I mean, how someone addresses themselves, that is. It really does say a lot about a character that has to be conveyed in different ways in English, which has no such advantage to using a variety of pronouns to denote attitude and little changes of mood. I actually remember a moment in Fullmetal Alchemist where that was chill-bump worthy. Ed, being, well, Ed...uses "ore" quite a bit. When he's around people he respects or is more kind to he switches to age-appropriate "boku," but unlike Al, never uses "watashi" or anything. (Al uses "boku" most often, though, he's hardly that humble or effeminate.) Still, unless he's being a little pain-in-the-butt, Ed uses "boku," but it was especially chilling at the end of episode 21, where he chooses not to. In that episode, he's speaking to Tucker, which is weird. I mean, he hates the guy, so he reserves pronouns like "teme" for him, but still has some attachment to him as his former mentor, I guess, so he speaks using "boku" in first person. At the end of the episode, though, Tucker is intentionally getting his goat by taunting him and saying that no "ordinary alchemist" could make the Philosopher's Stone, and he's wasting his time. Ed's pretty shell-shocked at this time, but still a bit insulted. He responds, with a shaking, snarling, eeeeerily monotone whisper: "Ore wa...ore wa...'nami no' renkinjutsushi ja nai de." (I'm no ordinary alchemist, you weasel.) (Okay, so he didn't say "weasel," but I would.) And I'm thinkin' "Aw, crap, he's gonna get provoked and do something stupid again." Little changes like that do mean a lot, which is why adaptive dubs are important. You have to make up for not having literal words that denote shifts like that. |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 8017 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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I'd say I know somewhere between 50 to 60 words of Japanese myself just from watching subs. It's still incomprehensible though since I don't know the sentence structure of Japanese so it doesn't help much. I'm by no means fluent at all, but when it comes to linguistics it would my 3rd best language, English being my first which obviously I'm completely fluent in and Spanish being my second. In Spanish at least I know enough to phrase all manner of sentences, write it, and speak it even if I only had two years of it in high school. I also bits and pieces of German, French, and Russian.
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legendfunk
 Posts: 101 Location: Sydney, Australia |
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I'd say so too. I'm not learning Japanese by studying, I'm doing it on my own, so I guess it's much harder since there's really no-one to talk to in Japanese. Thing I've been doing is memorising the hiragana and katakana symbols before actually getting into speaking the language. If you ask me, having an English subtitle positioned underneath a Japanese sign kinda ruins an anime a bit, and if you're watching it on TV, they don't even show them, so I've made an effort to memorise the symbols. Kanji is heaps hard, though - that's where Dictionary.com comes in handy... |
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Iota One
Posts: 7 |
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Yeah, learning Kanji is like a totally different ballpark. The different readings and compounds make it extremely difficult to understand some of the random signs that appear in anime, although some are starting to look more familiar. I can't tell you how many times I've seen the characters for "book store" (honya) appear in a scene set in the city). Luckilly, learning kanji this isn't as bad for anime as it is if you want to read manga raw. |
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