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Akya

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Posts posted by Akya

  1. I've translated English from Japanese a few times so I have a few tips especially if you want to start doing translating.

    It's very important you have a stong understanding of both languages and cultures and spoken language.

    Don't focus on accuracy of word by word but by feeling - you can shorten sentences as long as the audience understands the main points.

    Try and learn the culture enough to be able to translate a joke that would relate to the audience you're tanslating for.

    Don't focus on the words you don't know! Keep it flowing and maybe explain it if you can't find the right word.

    If the speaker says I, my etc in their language, don't start saying their or that person's name. It's more natural to say I, my cos the audience knows you're translating for them. If they have a partner they refer to in their speech, you can maybe mention their relationship if the general audience doesn't know.

    If you have any questions or want to add your own tips, please do! I only did casual translations at an international church but it was important to be accurate for people who weren't bilingual.

  2. Living in Japan, dating an Italian man and my mother is Filipino, I don't particularly care so much about 100% correct grammar since it's more important to be able to communicate. I use the best grammar to my Australian knowledge but sometimes I have to make it extremely simple to explain my point to my family in the Phillippines or to Japanese people that want to practice their (broken) English with me.

    On the other hand, it's disappointing to find grammar mistakes talking to native speakers of English.

  3. I want to share a few things I found successful! I have a student who's about 13 and she find's it hard to focus. I've done find a words and crosswords and they seem to be very helpful and fun for her to learn vocab from a short story she reads. I also do a bit of comprehension on the story as well and help her with her pronunciation.

    Anyone else have tips for other people? I find this age group one of the more stubborn and difficult groups to teach.

  4. I've tried teaching English conversation ESL classes in Japan and just found it really stressful and difficult. My students often cancelled due to business trips and I couldn't reschedule to a different day so some months I made a lot less than I was expecting. Unfortunately I had to quit but my company encouraged me to keep one student cos her mother was really strict on what type of teacher and I apparently I was most suitable.

    I actually work at Starbucks now (in Japanese) :D

  5. I'm actually dating a wonderful Italian man, and he can speak perfect English but his parents can't. His friends can't communicate much English either but I know it's more important if I can communicate with his family. His grandfather can only speak Venetian and that might be a dialect I end up learning as well but I'm gonna focus general Italian first :)

  6. My mother is Filipina and I never learnt Tagalog. My father doesn't know Tagalog either but we can get the gist of things when my mum talks with friends leaving us out of the conversation. It is disappointing that Tagalog is a dying language since most youth speak Taglish though.

  7. It depends on what visa you're coming on and what job you wish to do. Most college graduate level jobs require JLPT N1 pass and TOIEC (english) helps a lot. Those companies will also need to sponsor your visa in Japan.

    I'm here on a college visa and I didn't need to pass any exams to work at Starbucks. I had to get a stamp in my passport to be permitted to work and pass the interview with the store manager though!

    I know there are some compnaies that require very minimal Japanese skill. Most of these companies however, are based in a different company (eg Philippines) and they have a branch in Japan and employ Filipinos to work there on contracts.

  8. I'm still not married yet (or engaged) but I'm currently serious with my boyfriend. We have discussed kids a few times and we both say we want to raise our kids from a young age in several languages. His native language (Italian), my native language (English) and my second language (Japanese)! It'll definitely be hard but I guess kids books and kids shows are going to be our main resource. Also word games etc...

  9. My school had compulsory Japanese classes in grade 5-7 and then we could choose Japanese or French in year 8 (13 years old). I continued Japanese in 8, 9 and went to Japan on a 3 month student exchange in year 10. Returning to my hometown, I took Japanese in year 11 and 12, moved to Japan the year after and went to a Japanese language school. After that I entered a Japanese university where I still am today!

    My biggest fluency turning point was when I first went to Japan at 15 in year 10 where I got a lot of my basic Japanese into solid foundation.

    Now I'm a few months into learning my third language, Italian!

  10. I ve always wondered what moshi moshi literally means. I know its used by people in Japan as a means of salutation on phone but what does it actually mean.

    Moshi moshi comes from the keigo/polite Japanese for "I'm speaking". The neutral form is "iimasu" and the polite form is "moushimasu". It's basically like "I'm speaking I'm speaking". I don't know how 100% accurate this is but this is how I learned it three years ago in Japanese language school from the Japanese teacher.

    If you want a more similar English version, it's like when we say "Hello? Hello?" on the phone.

  11. Hello everyone! I'm still new here so I decided to introduce myself. I've been living in Japan for 3.5 years, and I'm doing my Bachelor of Engineering here (in Japanese). I first truly fell in love with Japan in 2007 when I did a 3 month exchange during high school. Before that I also studied Japanese in primary and middle school but wasn't really interested before living in the culture.

    I started studying Italian a few months ago but only got serious the start of this month after spending a week in Italy. My boyfriend is Italian and we've been dating for almost 6 months (it's 8 days shy of our half year anniversary). I realised I mainly need to learn Italian so I can understand his friends and more importantly his MOTHER and family. His English is amazing but I don't want to rely on him pausing the conversation every now and again to translate for me. Plus most of the time I tell him to not bother.

    Another reason for me to start studying it is that it's a very beautiful melodic language. It's often called a language of love. I can't wait to build my fluency to conversation level!

    We're not even engaged yet but we've already joked (or mightv'e been serious) that our children will be raised as trilingualists - English, Italian and Japanese. So he wants me to teach him some Japanese so he'll know when the kids are cursing at him in Japanese etc :P

  12. What is your favourite manga?

    Or are you one to read a large variety or a weekly buyer of "Jump"?

    For me I never got into Manga, I used to read Fruit's Basket and Deathnote and Absolute Boyfriend in English but after moving to Japan I stopped reading cos there are so many and it ends up costing soooo much especially to follow the series to the end (or wait for the next instalment like Naruto).

  13. I can recommend about any book from Haruki Murakami. As my Japanese is very basic, I couldn't read any of his novels in Japanese yet, however, those books are even great in English or German. I guess in Japanese they are even better. So my recommendations would be (my favorite novel by Haruki Murakami) is 1Q84 (いちきゅうはちよん). Another great one is Kafka on the shore (海辺のカフカ).

    Slightly off topic I guess, but is "1Q84" a spin off of George Orwell's 1984? Something similar perhaps?

  14. Learning it is hard especially not all words use katakana - only non-Japanese words.

    I had an iPod mini when I was learning it and what I did was changed the settings to Japanese and most things were in katakana! (eg ミュージック for music)

    Obviously it's a lot harder to do now since iPhones/iPod touches use a lot more Kanji just cos there are a lot more features. But if anyone still uses an old school iPod classic or mini or nano etc, it's definitely a great way to learn!!

  15. This seems very hardcore, but I found that living in Japan and forcing yourself out of your comfort zone of finding and making Japanese friends (compared to people who speak your native tongue). Whenever any of my friends learn a language and say they're spending time in that particular country I give them the same advice - mix with the locals.

    I have studied at a Japanese language school in Osaka, and of course the only Japanese people were the teachers - most students spoke Chinese and I saw so many students also stick together where as I went and made friends, and joined a community that was bilingual and I hung out mainly with Japanese people. Half way through this course, I was already speaking fluently (and relatively strong Kansai/Osaka accent) with other students and the teachers and sounding like a native. This isn't my opinion, I was told this so many times especially by the teachers. I personally don't follow pop culture even in English so I didn't listen to jPop or watch anime (other than Studio Ghibli) or have a TV to watch Japanese shows or read manga or novels. Having friends, forcing yourself to be in a situation where you'd prefer talking to family or friends on skype and being a hikikomori can definitely prove wonders on your language learning.

    Learn from and with the natives, not just other people who are learning too.

  16. Of course many people know about "ganbatte" or "yoroshiku" as they don't always translate the same into English and it loses the emotion behind the original word. Today I came across a totally new word for myself proving I'm yet to learn a lot more about Japanese (I probably have more to learn about English despite it being my native language).

    Here's the URL I found it on!

    http://visual.ly/11-untranslatable-words-other-cultures

  17. I love "imiwa?" which used to be called "kotoba" on ios devices. Not only you can look up words in hiragana, katakana, english - romanised Japanese also works! On top of this, you can tap the 部 icon above the keyboard to insert kanji by the radical. I stopped carrying my denshi jisho (electronic dictionary) around cos of this app :)

    Also it downloads the entire database so I don't need to access internet!

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