I’ve been learning Mandarin as i drive, and I’d like to learn both written and spoken Japanese.
I know several of you on these boards buy Japanese only games etc, are you using that translating software, or can you actually communicate in Japanese? If so, how did you learn and what were your resources?
I’d love to be able to get into some of these games in their native language, and to actually understand more than the little bits here and there that I do when the voice actors are speaking.
I’m one of the many who don’t know Japanese, yet try to play the games anyways. Like you, I know some tidbits they say verbally and I know basic Hiragana, but not enough to understand the games.
First, there are a number of games in Japanese that don’t necessarily require Japanese to play. The best examples are ones without a story plot. These typically include 3-D titles with the company “Illusion” being at the forefront, such as Artificial Girl, Sexy Beach, Biko, and Rapelay. Thankfully, even the interface for some of these games have been translated, so with the exception of spoken dialogue, it’s entirely in English, so I’d check these games out if you haven’t already.
Regarding translation software, yes, I’ve used it with hit-and-miss success. Not all games are translation-friendly. The best resources are AGTH (Anime Games Text Hooker) and Atlas:
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They’re not perfect and translations will vary, but it should give you a “general” idea of what’s going on. You’ll need to play your games minimized though, which is a shame, since AGTH and Atlas operate off of separate windows. It doesn’t literally take text and plug it back into the game. It just reads the text string on-screen and displays it in a separate window.
Finally, for learning Japanese, I enjoyed using “Let’s Learn Japanese.” It’s a video television course that has been uploaded on YouTube in it’s entirety:
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I know, it’s old, but it’s not like the language is outdated. Give it a chance before you close it =). It’s been VERY helpful to me, since like many others, I’m a visual learner. They take it really slow, giving you a Sesame Street approach to learning while also showing you “normal speaking,” some of the culture, customs/mannerisms, etc. The video course even has downloadable text-books (see third link above). It’s worth noting the lessons and textbooks prefer teaching a romanji approach to writing over Japanese writing, which some people frown upon because it makes you addicted to romanji and it acts as a crutch. I don’t see what the big deal is. Call it a crutch if you will, but I think it’s better to take baby steps and romanji’s a great way to assimilate new people into the Japanese language.
Hope this all helps and good luck learning. I don’t want to say you’ll need it, but… well… you’ll need it =).
Let’s keep recommendations to legally available options, thanks. ^^
Illusion games can be purchased at Himeya Shop, and J-List has a wide variety of Japanese study items.
There are also several free and legal online tools for assistance in Japanese learning that I’m sure others can recommend.
I’ve never found standard methods for learning Japanese to be that useful for me. I spend the majority of my time on grammar and the meanings (and occasionally common readings) of kanji, as well as just generally reading a lot of stuff to get me more used to the language. As such, I can read visual novels without too much trouble, but would have trouble holding a basic conversation =p
This suits me just fine–I’m no japanophile, and I don’t really watch anime. I just like my visual novels.
I just shelled out for Japanese class. This is expensive, but basically guarantees you’ll make progress.
While I haven’t tried playing any games in Japanese yet, I can let you know how I personally have progressed in learning the language. Anyways, here’s my story (bear with me, it’s a bit long):
Some may laugh at this, but my wanting to learn the language really got serious after I heard the song “The Real Folk Blues” from Cowboy Bebop. While I had some interest in learning the language previously since I am ?? (Hiragana: ??? Romaji: Sansei) and had grown up without the language around me, this is what really got me on the path. After this, I started to listen to more and more music in Japanese, often going to sleep listening to it. I came across a few sites that were interesting and somewhat informative (here and here), but what I learned was random at best. I looked around for classes at that time, but there weren’t any I could find near me. So for a few years I was in limbo. A couple years back, I saw a commercial for Rosetta Stone software (no, I’m not endorsing this, but it is part of my story). So I went online and saw that there was a demo of the software. Naturally, I went straight to the Japanese lessons and tried it out (though I did play with some other languages, such as Greek, Russian, and German). While I think that the approach that the software uses may work for some people, the way I learn just didn’t fit with it’s approach. So I was in limbo again. About a year and a half ago (I think), I came across this site with hiragana flash cards, which was helpful, but without context, not that useful of knowledge. Late 2006, I found out that the community college near me was finally offering Japanese. However, the 101 class was already going (or over, I don’t remember when exactly I found out), and the only Japanese class offered for spring 2007 was 102. So I kept up my hope that 101 would be offered in the fall. As I had hoped, when the new schedule came out, Japanese 101 was offered again. So I signed up for it and was lucky enough to get in (apparently, there is a bit of a waiting list to get in the 101 class - I still don’t know how I managed to get in). This is where things get interesting. I don’t know if it’s my natural skill with language, the fact that I tried to immerse myself in the language as much as I could, or a combination of the two, but everything started to fall in place. When I picked up the books for my class at the new student orientation, I saw that the first thing we would be learning was hiragana. So with a combination of the textbook and the site I mentioned above, I started cracking down, hoping to have a head start when class started the following week. To my amazement, I had down basic hiragana in under a week. As class went on, I was consistently the top student (followed closely by the friend I made in class, who as I have mentioned in other posts, is in to yaoi). I ended up with a 4.0 for the class that semester (in fact, I got 100% on the final). I just recently (yesterday actually) finished my second semester of Japanese (102). While I am positive that I didn’t get a perfect score on my final again (I couldn’t remember what the verb for “to wrap” was), I am pretty certain that I will have a 4.0 again. Over the summer, I’m planning to keep up my skills by going to an informal Japanese class that I’ve heard is held every week at the Buddhist temple I attend. This coming fall, I’m planning on continuing my learning at another community college that isn’t too far away (the one I have been going to only goes up to 102). As for long term planning, I’m hoping to live in Japan (for a time at least, don’t know about permanently) within the next five years. There are a few little things I’ve left out that have contributed to my learning (such as the J-List newsletter - If you read this, thanks Peter Payne!), but that is pretty much it.
Now that I’ve said all that, I pose this question: How do you know when you’ve learned enough to be able to play the games in their original state?
To know if the boat you built float, throw it in the waters. First try with a peaceful lake, then a peaceful river, try progressively and one day, throw it through a raging storm in the ocean. Even if it doesn’t float at some point, or take water in, just repair and consolidate as you go.
While Olf is basically right, there is one thing that you might want to bear in mind:
It entirely depends on which game you want to play in japanese for determining what level of japanese you would need for playing it. Furthermore, it depends on whethere you demand from yourself to understand every single word’s nuances - or just to get the basic idea what is going on in the text.
For some games, JLPT3 might be enough, but some other games use very unusual words and kanji, so even a person who has passed JLPT1 would soemtimes have to check with a very good dictionary for getting all the words in the text right. However, they are extreme cases, but sometimes these are also exactly the games with the most interesting storylines and characters… :oops:
What I wish for and what isn’t currently supported by any japanese translation tools that I know of is something that would turn japanese text to romaji. I find it a lot easier to learn and remember the words when I know how they sound, and can make a lot more sense out of games with voice than without - obviously the tone carries some information, but I can pick out actual words that I’ve heard often enough from the piles of anime I watch that I know roughly what they mean, where as in japanese text it’s a complete mystery. Faced with text I could actually read, the translation would be a lot less daunting.
Of course, lack of spaces between words might make it hard for an automated system to know where to break up words when building romaji equivalents 
Memorising katakana is not that difficult and is useful if you like playing rpgs and other non-VN games. A lot of game interface stuff is practically English once you sound it out. This won’t help with story segments though…
To complete the image: it depends on if your purpose is for your boat to merely float, or be able to win races, and which ones. Even then, you may have to regularly improve it, and may still find challenges in some races.
so a person with a bachelors might have trouble but someone with a masters degree should have no problems . also Uniy what would be a game
which requires exceptional mastery of Japanese.
Thanks for all the replies to my question guys. I’m sure I’ve got a ways to go yet before I can try playing the games in Japanese. I’ll probably wait a year to a year and a half or so (or in other words, until I’ve gotten through the 200 series of Japanese classes).
While I don’t know this for a fact, I’ve heard that the way Nasu forms sentences is, how shall I say, unique. His works may be some of the ones you’d need a fairly high understanding of Japanese for in order to understand.
Fate/Stay Night and perhaps AIR too.
Definitely not Yami No Koe - if that’s what you feared…
… and Gore Screaming Show also wasn’t too difficult to understand.
Just as I thought, one of Nasu’s works.
Actually: no, that wouldn’t be the worst problem. All Hiragana and Katakana directly translate into one definite romanization each - regardless of separation of words.
The REALLY BIG problem for such a program are the multiple readings of the kanji and the decision which to use in which case for romanizing them.
Otherwise, you might end up with “Kokushiro” instead of “Kokuhaku” for “confession of love”.
Or in a worse cases, the program might even come up with “Aijin” instead of “Koibito” for “lover/beloved”. :shock:
… now that I think of it, this might exactly be the way how Babelfish once turned Al Azif into a concubine when I just for fun used it for translating one of Olf’s former signatures… :oops: