Current Events > Is it worth learning japanese just to play untranslated games

(+) Yeah! (+)

I know the more popular untranslated games get fan translations like mother 3, trails from zero, etc
But those are unofficial
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Fuck yes.
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Not really imo, you would be tearing your hair out just trying to deal with the various forms of Japanese Language.

Some games especially for SNES actually use the rare vertical writing.
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No

You should probably learn the language to actually experience the culture and further a career tbqh

have you mastered the way of blades though?

@Reis
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No, and I highly doubt you will be motivated to follow through just for that. Many people start learning Japanese for games or anime but it's usually not worth the thousands of hours of hard study and practice it takes to get fluent. Almost everyone who starts for these reasons gives up unless either:

-They find other things that make learning to communicate more satisfying like wanting to live there or study culture more deeply, or

-Their devotion to manga or games is so deep that they're willing to become a professor specializing in that area or something.

If it's just so you can understand more of something you do for a hobby, when there's already so much translated material out there, it's just not worth it.

I'm not saying don't study, as you might find you like it. But understand that it is really hard.
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DocileOrangeCup posted...

@Reis

why did u tag me

Thanks guys i might just steer clear for now.
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Reis posted...

DocileOrangeCup posted...

@Reis

why did u tag me

Arent you learning japanese
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no I hate Japan I would never do that

Not at all. Like, can you spend a few dozen hours to learn enough to get by and play through the games? Sure. Especially since there's only like, one rpg I've imported where knowing the language actually mattered. And that of course was in tales of vesperia since you had that "here's three hints (round, hot, bright or something like that) and type in the password" thing in one of the dungeons. It was "sun" but you'd have to type it in Japanese so without the answer online, I'd have been stuck there forever.
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unless you really really want to play games that will never get released outside of Japan or want to do more than just that (like visit the country and whatnot) then probably just stick to fan translations/menu translations tbh that's what I've been doing

heck I've even gotten by on some games by just using google translate (although those experiences were really tedious)
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If you like learning languages, yes. If not, there needs to be games that you really really really wanna play and understand fully.
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Why are you people trying to discourage TC from learning a language? It doesn't matter what his motivation is. Learning Japanese is a valuable skill that can have many different applications beyond his initial goal of playing untranslated games.
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That's the reason I originally learned. I started with Dragon Quest V and VI for SFC when I was in high school. Now I live and work in Japan, so I guess it was a good move.
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Kaliesto posted...

Not really imo, you would be tearing your hair out just trying to deal with the various forms of Japanese Language.

Some games especially for SNES actually use the rare vertical writing.

By rare vertical writing do you mean the stuff used in newspapers, manga and most fiction books? Vertical writing is not any harder to read than horizontal. SNES games usually don't use it, but the problem with older games is the font can make complex kanji hard to read, so you have to rely on context to guess sometimes.
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pokedude900 posted...

Learning Japanese is a valuable skill that can have many different applications beyond his initial goal of playing untranslated games.

this. Now you can also watch anime without subtitles

pokedude900 posted...

Why are you people trying to discourage TC from learning a language? It doesn't matter what his motivation is. Learning Japanese is a valuable skill that can have many different applications beyond his initial goal of playing untranslated games.

Learning Japanese is really, really hard. The investment needed to play untranslated games is going to be thousands of hours delving into a language that likely bears little resemblance to TC's native tongue. This isn't like being an English speaker and trying to learn Spanish or German. Everyone just wants to spare TC the frustration of "wasting" his time in the unlikely pursuit of becoming essentially fluent.

Just stick to fan translations and games where reading isn't super important. One of my friends always imports music games (like Hatsune Miku and the Persona dancing games) because the meat of those is in the gameplay and not the text.

_Rinku_ posted...

Everyone just wants to spare TC the frustration of "wasting" his time in the unlikely pursuit of becoming essentially fluent.

Nope. People here aren't that considerate, especially of Rika (sorry buddy no offense). A lot of people here, though, don't really value a second language at all.
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scar the 1 posted...

_Rinku_ posted...

Everyone just wants to spare TC the frustration of "wasting" his time in the unlikely pursuit of becoming essentially fluent.

Nope. People here aren't that considerate, especially of Rika (sorry buddy no offense). A lot of people here, though, don't really value a second language at all.

That doesn't surprise me. I wish I spoke a second language. Two years of crappy high school Spanish and then a remedial year of it in college and I still don't remember most of it.

_Rinku_ posted...

pokedude900 posted...

Why are you people trying to discourage TC from learning a language? It doesn't matter what his motivation is. Learning Japanese is a valuable skill that can have many different applications beyond his initial goal of playing untranslated games.

Learning Japanese is really, really hard. The investment needed to play untranslated games is going to be thousands of hours delving into a language that likely bears little resemblance to TC's native tongue. This isn't like being an English speaker and trying to learn Spanish or German. Everyone just wants to spare TC the frustration of "wasting" his time in the unlikely pursuit of becoming essentially fluent.

Just stick to fan translations and games where reading isn't super important. One of my friends always imports music games (like Hatsune Miku and the Persona dancing games) because the meat of those is in the gameplay and not the text.

lmao gtfo here german language is harder than japanese one

Realize that if you do study Japanese for a while you will be able to do more than translate video games..

I actually got my minor in Japanese about four years ago, have continued to "study" it, and recently have begun seriously playing Riichi Mahjong.

I mean, there is more to Japan than just Manga and Video Games.
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HunkDude posted...

_Rinku_ posted...

pokedude900 posted...

Why are you people trying to discourage TC from learning a language? It doesn't matter what his motivation is. Learning Japanese is a valuable skill that can have many different applications beyond his initial goal of playing untranslated games.

Learning Japanese is really, really hard. The investment needed to play untranslated games is going to be thousands of hours delving into a language that likely bears little resemblance to TC's native tongue. This isn't like being an English speaker and trying to learn Spanish or German. Everyone just wants to spare TC the frustration of "wasting" his time in the unlikely pursuit of becoming essentially fluent.

Just stick to fan translations and games where reading isn't super important. One of my friends always imports music games (like Hatsune Miku and the Persona dancing games) because the meat of those is in the gameplay and not the text.

lmao gtfo here german language is harder than japanese one

Not even close:
https://www.state.gov/key-topics-foreign-service-institute/foreign-language-training/

tl;dr:
German is 36 weeks on average to learn and Japanese is 88 weeks for people at the US State Department.
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HunkDude posted...

_Rinku_ posted...

pokedude900 posted...

Why are you people trying to discourage TC from learning a language? It doesn't matter what his motivation is. Learning Japanese is a valuable skill that can have many different applications beyond his initial goal of playing untranslated games.

Learning Japanese is really, really hard. The investment needed to play untranslated games is going to be thousands of hours delving into a language that likely bears little resemblance to TC's native tongue. This isn't like being an English speaker and trying to learn Spanish or German. Everyone just wants to spare TC the frustration of "wasting" his time in the unlikely pursuit of becoming essentially fluent.

Just stick to fan translations and games where reading isn't super important. One of my friends always imports music games (like Hatsune Miku and the Persona dancing games) because the meat of those is in the gameplay and not the text.

lmao gtfo here german language is harder than japanese one

Do you think so? Seems like going from English to German would be easier since they're both Germanic languages.

German doesn't have thousands of characters in their written language that can differ in meaning. Plus there's not nearly as many instances of sounds that are like others but part of a different word entirely.

For that matter, German has far less (there's no English translation for this unless you want to read a paragraph on the cultural aspect or reference behind it and even then there's no literal translation) things. For that matter, even the super common "desu" doesn't actually have a true translation, it has several and they're only translated as they are because it's as close to a parallel structure in the English language as we have.
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Yes

Some games are gems comparable to Egyptian tombs
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I remember when FFX came out in Japan (or maybe just before? I don't know...) someone made a bootleg unofficial version of the game with English subtitles for the dialogue.

They just ran the text through a translator somehow and it was unintentionally hilarious.







I can't find the whole thing anymore sadly :(

But my favorite line was Lulu's something like "If you do not know a girl's mind, you will lose your face."
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HunkDude posted...

lmao gtfo here german language is harder than japanese one

That really depends on a lot of circumstances.
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scar the 1 posted...

HunkDude posted...

lmao gtfo here german language is harder than japanese one

That really depends on a lot of circumstances.

Just your native language. For native English speakers German is much easier according to every study you can find. A Korean speaker would learn Japanese more easily, but outside of them, not really any other language has enough similarity to provide much advantages. Chinese helps with vocabulary in a big way, buy you need to learn new ways to read all of them and the grammar is completely different, most Chinese consider English easier to learn than Japanese because of the grammatical similarity.
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ssjevot posted...

Just your native language. For native English speakers German is much easier according to every study you can find.

Such as?
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ssjevot posted...

Just your native language.

No, not just your native language. That's naturally a big factor, but there's more. For example, how easy you think grammar and grammatical rules are to pick up. Different languages are differently complex in this regard, and German is notorious for really tricky and complicated grammar. Japanese is famous for quite simple grammar.
Another thing would be reading skills. If a language is tricky to spell it can be a bit of a barrier. Likewise, picking up new alphabets is easier to some than to others. And there is some fascinating research about how dyslexia in kanji and in the Latin alphabet are actually two different phenomena in the brain, implying that a dyslexic in English might struggle less with reading kanji.
There's a big factor that is environment. I've been picking up a lot of Portuguese over the last couple of years because i hang out with a bunch of Brazilians. I have German co-workers, but no Japanese ones. My situation would make it easier to pick up German, but in Japan I'd be much better positioned to learn Japanese.

And so on. A lot will be affected by the languages you already know. A lot won't.
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UnfairRepresent posted...

ssjevot posted...

Just your native language. For native English speakers German is much easier according to every study you can find.

Such as?

I posted the FSI data earlier in this topic. They also claim Japanese is harder to learn than any other language in its category, meaning they consider it the single hardest language to learn for native English speakers.
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scar the 1 posted...

ssjevot posted...

Just your native language.

No, not just your native language. That's naturally a big factor, but there's more. For example, how easy you think grammar and grammatical rules are to pick up. Different languages are differently complex in this regard, and German is notorious for really tricky and complicated grammar. Japanese is famous for quite simple grammar.
Another thing would be reading skills. If a language is tricky to spell it can be a bit of a barrier. Likewise, picking up new alphabets is easier to some than to others. And there is some fascinating research about how dyslexia in kanji and in the Latin alphabet are actually two different phenomena in the brain, implying that a dyslexic in English might struggle less with reading kanji.
There's a big factor that is environment. I've been picking up a lot of Portuguese over the last couple of years because i hang out with a bunch of Brazilians. I have German co-workers, but no Japanese ones. My situation would make it easier to pick up German, but in Japan I'd be much better positioned to learn Japanese.

And so on. A lot will be affected by the languages you already know. A lot won't.

Your conjecture doesn't really count for data. You are making a lot of assumptions based on nothing but your own ideas there and then also throwing in individual situations that don't mean anything for trying to figure out average difficulty. Environment matters for learning everything, that doesn't say anything about the average difficulty of learning a given language. Japanese grammar is for instance not notoriously easy. If you aren't Korean it's the opposite. And I know some German, grammar was never a problem with it for me. Not even close to as hard as Japanese is. The only difficult aspect of German grammar for English speakers would be gender, but you learn it along with words and as shown earlier you could learn German twice in less time than it would take to learn Japanese once, so clearly it isn't a hangup for the average English speaker.
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ssjevot posted...

Your conjecture doesn't really count for data. You are making a lot of assumptions based on nothing but your own ideas there and then also throwing in individual situations that don't mean anything for trying to figure out average difficulty. Environment matters for learning everything, that doesn't say anything about the average difficulty of learning a given language. Japanese grammar is for instance not notoriously easy. If you aren't Korean it's the opposite. And I know some German, grammar was never a problem with it for me. Not even close to as hard as Japanese is. The only difficult aspect of German grammar for English speakers would be gender, but you learn it along with words and as shown earlier you could learn German twice in less time than it would take to learn Japanese once, so clearly it isn't a hangup for the average English speaker.

I didn't say Japanese grammar was easy, I said it was simple. Which it is. Sure, it's not so simple as, say, Chinese, but still. Although I'm willing to give up this point, because it's quite messy to try and quantify a language's grammatical complexity. It's not really a path we'd get anywhere pursuing. I think what I referred to being notoriously simple was Japanese verb conjugations, since those are a lot simpler than the German ones.

It's really telling that you're saying I'm making assumptions with no data, after providing just your own opinion and numbers on staff of the US State Department. Those don't really contradict what I'm saying (though I'd be happy to see more studies if you have them off the top of your head, it's an interesting topic).

What I'm saying is that which language is easier to learn depends on a lot of things. I agree that the languages you already know is a big factor. That's also true for whatever you want to learn, your previous knowledge is the biggest factor in how easy it is to learn something new. Still, there are differences in how individuals think, and in the structures they use to digest information. You call this an assumption of mine. Part of my job is teaching, so I experience this firsthand all the time. Students need different explanations to make things click. Some students have better memory, which significantly lowers hurdles like vocabulary. Some students really take to rules, which lowers grammar-related hurdles.

So again, no, prior knowledge isn't the only determinant when it comes to learning a new thing. That's what I'm saying, and that's what you contradicted. I don't care if Japanese takes longer to learn than German in the US State Department, TC is Australian. For all I know, their proximity to Japan might mean that it's easier to find good classes, or practical uses, for the language, which would make things a lot easier.
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I lived in Japan for a good bit of my life. I can somewhat speak and understand the language, but I cannot read a lick of it lol.

scar the 1 posted...

So again, no, prior knowledge isn't the only determinant when it comes to learning a new thing. That's what I'm saying, and that's what you contradicted. I don't care if Japanese takes longer to learn than German in the US State Department, TC is Australian. For all I know, their proximity to Japan might mean that it's easier to find good classes, or practical uses, for the language, which would make things a lot easier.

It won't. Most foreigners who live in Japan never even learn the language beyond a few phrases. You describe a lot of access to resources as a form of ease in your post. But that's not what is being used in those calculations. If you move to Japan and spend all your time talking to people, watching Japanese TV, reading, etc. that is a form of studying called immersion. It's not a separate thing from studying. So you are arguing about the most effective study methods and ability to access them rather than difficulty. When people talk about difficulty to learn a language compared to another they assume equal access to resources. That's why the FSI doesn't list a bunch of random stuff about blank being easier if you happen to have access to X or Y resources. They provide native speakers and materials designed to teach you a language quickly and effectively. It's their entire purpose.
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This might sound clich but only you can determine if learning a language is worth it to you.

What I can say is, your reasons will change all the time. Sure, now you want to learn Japanese "just to play untranslated games" but maybe later once you'll get a better grasp of the language you'll start finding other things you can do with it that will also bring you joy, or start appreciating things that you weren't even aware of before starting. This has happened to me, with the same language we're talking about.

Any reason is a good reason to /start/ learning a language. Of course, as long as that reason is not something illegal. >_>;
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ssjevot posted...

scar the 1 posted...

So again, no, prior knowledge isn't the only determinant when it comes to learning a new thing. That's what I'm saying, and that's what you contradicted. I don't care if Japanese takes longer to learn than German in the US State Department, TC is Australian. For all I know, their proximity to Japan might mean that it's easier to find good classes, or practical uses, for the language, which would make things a lot easier.

It won't. Most foreigners who live in Japan never even learn the language beyond a few phrases. You describe a lot of access to resources as a form of ease in your post. But that's not what is being used in those calculations. If you move to Japan and spend all your time talking to people, watching Japanese TV, reading, etc. that is a form of studying called immersion. It's not a separate thing from studying. So you are arguing about the most effective study methods and ability to access them rather than difficulty. When people talk about difficulty to learn a language compared to another they assume equal access to resources. That's why the FSI doesn't list a bunch of random stuff about blank being easier if you happen to have access to X or Y resources. They provide native speakers and materials designed to teach you a language quickly and effectively. It's their entire purpose.

...I know? But TC doesn't work at the US State Department. For him, there won't be this ideal situation. Access to immersive environments makes a language a lot easier to learn. Not just because you can spend more time learning with an efficient method, but also because it adds motivation to the student. That's quite crucial for someone learning a language on their own. I mean yeah, if you want to equate "difficulty" with "number of hours spent", then fine. I'm not talking about that, though, because there are more factors at play when you're teaching yourself a language.

For example, how much use will you have for the language, and how soon? If you're into a specific video game, you can start playing and enjoying it quite soon while learning at the same time. This will affect how quickly you pick up a language, since it'll affect how willing you are to spend time learning. If you're likely to put off learning because you have no immediate use for the skill, then the difficulty will be perceived as higher. Making sweeping statements about which thing is harder to learn is not exactly useful, or accurate. Difficulty is something subjective, and is not reliably quantified by how many hours it takes to reach some arbitrary level of skill.
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If you are using TCs situation as an example why are we talking about other languages? He wants to learn Japanese. Some dude just randomly claimed German was harder. This is a side discussion. TC doesn't want to learn German as far as I know.
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0% worth it

However, having a shit ton of available content to use for learning is great, so if you're gonna learn a language you can certainly do worse than Japanese in that regard.

Playing through the games right now (never played the US releases, so it's 100% uncharted territory for me), and as long as you're not having to bust out the dictionary every other sentence, it's good learning material and very entertaining. Hell, even if you have to struggle through it with a dictionary it's probably OK, but knowing 98% of the words and grammar is sort of critical to a game like this where small details make worlds of difference.
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Learn Japanese so you can get you a qt3.14 Japanese wife.

ssjevot posted...

If you are using TCs situation as an example why are we talking about other languages? He wants to learn Japanese. Some dude just randomly claimed German was harder. This is a side discussion. TC doesn't want to learn German as far as I know.

Do you understand what my point is?
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Not really. If it's that different people have different access to resources and depending on their situation some languages will be easier to study than others, then yes I get your point. If it's that the average Native English speaker can learn German more easily than Japanese, then no, we aren't on the same page. And I am defining ease of learning a language as how much studying is required to obtain proficiency. Not how easily can you access good study material and methods.
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Ok it's good we took a step back then. My point is that "how easy a language is to learn" varies with a lot of factors, not just prior knowledge. And when I talk about difficulty, I talk about perceived difficulty, not about how many hours people on average spend before they reach a certain level.

And I'm specifically not talking about averages, evident by the fact that I started out by saying that it varies.
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Why are we talking about difficulty at all? Learning ANY second language is going to be difficult. But that doesn't mean it's not worth the effort.
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TBH I'm more afraid of the notion of learning Spanish or French, "easy" languages, on the basis of

- verbs appear to be a nightmare
- pronunciation

I don't doubt that they're probably easy ish to learn, but there's no escaping the pure time factor. Someone who puts forth some hours of effort every day and exposes themselves to a language continuously will eventually learn it.

The problem is that most people never make it to the part where you can sink those hours without even realizing it. Some of the best days you learn, you won't even notice because you'll just be cruising along. It won't even feel like effort, and if it does, it won't be because of the language, but because you're just getting tired of doing x or y thing.
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YonicBoom posted...

TBH I'm more afraid of the notion of learning Spanish or French, "easy" languages, on the basis of

- verbs appear to be a nightmare
- pronunciation

I don't doubt that they're probably easy ish to learn, but there's no escaping the pure time factor. Someone who puts forth some hours of effort every day and exposes themselves to a language continuously will eventually learn it.

The problem is that most people never make it to the part where you can sink those hours without even realizing it. Some of the best days you learn, you won't even notice because you'll just be cruising along. It won't even feel like effort, and if it does, it won't be because of the language, but because you're just getting tired of doing x or y thing.

In my experience, spending a significant amount of time on actually figuring out the rules of pronunciation and spelling really really helps down the road. For what it's worth. And another thing when it comes to roman languages in general: Once you learn verb conjugations of one language, the other languages will be easier to pick up, since they are quite similar to each other.
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Here is what I can recommend TC, and this what Aeon Genesis is currently doing. Right now he is trying to get his translations to be more official (basically making it his job at this point) and he has been successful so far.

If you're willing to go this route go for it.
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