VN in Japanese - Some questions

[Dageki]

Well I recently started to read a VN in Japanese and wanted to ask a few questions for people who are more experienced.

There are always a few parts in the VN which are pretty hard for me to understand (Especially longer narrative parts are giving me trouble) or even a sentence which I almost don't understand at all. (but happily this isn't so often) And since there is no English translation for the VN I'm reading I can't look it up. But I'm sure if there would be one I would look at it every new sentence just to make sure I got everything right so I'm kinda glad that there isn't one.

How should I handle these parts? Of course if I see a new grammar point I will look it up but sometimes I just sit there a few minutes trying to figure out what that one sentence could mean. I think one of the main problems is that there are so many new vocabulary I don't know and if there are like 3-4 new words in a sentence it is actually pretty hard to understand what these words mean even after looking them up in English and German. This is why I most of the time look them up in a Japanese dictionary to get a much better feel. Of course if it just one word I don't know there isn't a lot problem since I have more context.

Did some of you also have these problems? What should I do about it? Would it be good if I would just ignore these parts (it's mostly just a few sentences here and there) and keep going? I noticed that if I don't focus too much on one sentence and keep reading a little bit more everything makes more sense. But I always have a little "unsatisfied" feeling if I rush a part because I suck.

Any experienced guy here who can give me some advice? 

[Jartse]

I run into this problem all the time when I started out reading in Japanese - not as much of a problem after a while though as I tend to have an overall feel as to what they're trying to say from the context of the previous sentence.

When I started out - If it's just in the common route/not an important part then I'd ignore it and move on.

However in an important segment (I can usually feel it if it is), I tend to unjumble all the nouns and verbs from the speech connectors and throw them into jparser/google translate (this is where having good knowledge of the grammar is useful). From there I'll piece together the nouns and verbs and figure out what it's likely saying. It's slow but it works.

Well worked for me so far for some pretty tough VNs (eg/ Ruitomo + FD/Grisaia Meikyuu and Rakuen). There's a guide to amaterasu somewhere on breaking down the sentences but it's down at the moment.

[sanahtlig]

I assume you text hook?

When I encounter a difficult line, I look up every word, match with the ATLAS machine translation as a reference, reread the sentence a few times, then consider the surrounding sentences (both before and after).  That resolves the problem 99% of the time.  I never spend more than 2min or so on a single line.  If I still can't figure it out, I just skip it.  A single line is hardly ever critical to understanding the scene.

It sounds to me like you're not reading very efficiently.  I can get through a sentence where I have to look up multiple words at maybe a little slower than speaking pace.

Edited December 16, 2015 by sanahtlig

[Dergonu]

Yeah, pretty much what Sanahtlig said.

I personally also try to consider the context when I try to make sense of the sentence in question. If there is a particular word/part of the sentence I cant really make much sense off I try to read the entire thing one more time, (having translated the parts I can), and look at the context to try and make sense of it. Going forward a line or two and back to see if those parts will help in understanding the sentence in question is not a bad idea. 

Although one sentence is very rarely critical, there is always that one line that actually does matter a great deal. And if you do end up ignoring one, you might lose some information regarding the situation, and the next line might make less sense because of it. 

Of course, you also dont want to spend too long tinkling with just one line either. It can be a little bit difficult to get into the gist of it. I myself still haven't read too many untranslated novels, but I feel fairly confident with my method now. 

 

It was not obvious from reading your post so I am going to ask as well, are you using a text hooker to translate the text? Or do you actually manually look up individual phrase/word/kanji? If so, text hookers will change your life. 

[Bolverk]

In situations such as that. I tend to just continue to read the text some more lines forward. Usually I get it then. If I still don't. I consider if it's actually important to understand that sentence. If it's about some food dish or other pointless thing. Ijust continue on reading and don't mind it. If it's important to the story I scroll back and read the backlog and think some more. If that doesn't work, I give up. And go back to reading normally.

[Kawasumi]

im pretty novice when it comes to reading japanese, but I feel like you make it harder if you want to understand it sentence by sentence, its better to get the conversation as a whole instead. I get the grasp of what has been written in the start but I dont get the overall meaning of the conversation, then after a part or the whole conversation is done it actually tends to fit together nicely and I feel like I understand everything that has been said.

So yeah I would rather focus on the subject as whole instead of going on sentence by sentence, it actually makes me even more confused.

[Dageki]

Thanks for the replies. I'll now try to concentrate more at the overall situation and try to avoid spending too much on a single sentence and getting discouraged.

 

I assume you text hook?

It was not obvious from reading your post so I am going to ask as well, are you using a text hooker to translate the text? Or do you actually manually look up individual phrase/word/kanji? If so, text hookers will change your life. 

If you mean by a text hooker something like Visual Novel Reader then yes I'm using it and am just pasting everything into Firefox so I can use rikai-kun for easy look ups. I would never even think about touching a VN without something like this

[sanahtlig]

 

If you mean by a text hooker something like Visual Novel Reader then yes I'm using it and am just pasting everything into Firefox so I can use rikai-kun for easy look ups. I would never even think about touching a VN without something like this

Yep, you're using an inefficient method.  First of all, don't use VNR to parse / do dictionary lookup, which it sounds like you aren't.  Use Translation Aggregator (Jparser or MeCab with EDICT2) or Chitrans for parsing and dictionary lookup.  It's much much faster than copying and pasting everything into another window every single line.  I wouldn't be surprised if you're more advanced in Japanese than me AND reading much slower with your current method.

I have a friend that figured out how to hack Translation Aggregator so it can use both an E->J and a J->E dictionary at the same time.  Once I figure out how he did that, I'll be able to take my Japanese to the next level. 

[Deep Blue]

use this http://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/12119-tutorial-how-to-read-visual-novels-untranslated/ your way of reading is just really slow this will improve everything