Editing User talk:Rpapo (section)

== Fukukaze ==
Thanks! I'm glad to be a part of the site! To be honest, I wanted to join Baka-Tsuki ever since I discovered the community and contribute some stuff to it, but I guess I just kept postponing that until now, huh? Though I'm still not a full-fledged Japanese translator, I always try my hardest on whatever I'm working on! I wanted to go and study Japanese at college, but my parents didn't let me, saying I should study some languages that'll be more suitable to find work with in the translation business in the future. They also said it's no problem if I study it in my free time for now and then later on pick up a 6-month course for it or something after I graduate. After that, I can always choose what step I'll be taking next. Anyway, if you don't mind, I'll start translating the postscript of volume 5 (2 pages). When I'm done with that, we'll see what I can work on next. I have to mention though that I'll still be somewhat busy for about 1 week, as I've got a few semestrial tests coming up and a few presentations I'll have to bring as well. But, I'll translate whenever I've got some time to spare. -- [[User:Fukukaze|Fukukaze]] ([[User talk:Fukukaze|talk]]) 22:18, 25 November 2015 (MET ~ UTC+1)

:Your parents know something.  I am not a professional translator, but rather an old time computer geek, having been paid to do such work for nearly forty years now.  Translation, for me, is a hobby and a source of mental exercise not connected to my job.  I am fluent in Spanish, having learned it after college, in the early 1980s.  But I've never needed to use that fluency as a job, and frankly, my normal job pays far better than I could ever dream of doing as a translator.  Translation, as a job, doesn't pay very well.  At least that is what I have seen over time.  --[[User:Rpapo|Rpapo]] ([[User talk:Rpapo#top|talk]]) 23:41, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I know, they want to assure that I'll have a bright future ahead of me. Therefore, I do try to listen to their input and from that make a final decision that'll make both of us happy. I am well aware of the fact that translating isn't the most well-paid job out there, but still, I'd rather do something which I'm able to put my whole heart into than do something which I don't even feel like getting out of bed for. I love it, because, when your finished work is published you can look forward to the reviews that will soon come out. Even during translation, no matter how boring you find the series to be, the thought of possible happy fans always makes it that much more worthwhile and exciting. But I see, you're in the IT business, huh? I studied IT management at high school before switching to languages at college. From my research at the time, it's definitely true that some jobs in the sector do pay incredibly well. Perhaps, if the pay as a translator isn't enough, I could do some freelance work as a webdesigner. Though, I'd have to study up on that quite a bit to pull it off. Also, never expected someone of your age to be "working" as a translator for B-T, hahah. Even so, the same might happen to me too. Becoming an otaku is by far the most interesting thing that happened in my life up till now (yeah, you're right, I'm quite dull). I hope I stay fascinated by this world that I discovered 2 years ago. Though, that is probably what every otaku youngster says at his/her age. A lot can happen over time; a lot might have stayed the same, but, just as much, a lot might have changed. Who knows, in 2 years from now, I could suddenly be obsessed with opera, listening to classical music, while reading the poetic works of Samuel Beckett. (laughs) I'm curious, and I'm not kidding when I say I ask this to every translator I meet, but what made you decide to start studying Japanese and, on top of that, become a fan translator? -- [[User:Fukukaze|Fukukaze]] ([[User talk:Fukukaze|talk]]) 12:55, 26 November 2015 (MET ~ UTC+1)

:Why Japanese?  The challenge.  Becoming fluent in Spanish seemed too easy.  In any case, years before I was exposed to anime or manga, or anything otaku-ish at all, I had chosen Japanese as a challenge to myself.  Years after that, and independently of that, my daughter became an anime fan (2002), and I was enlisted to drive her and her friends to a local anime not-convention (conventions were against the rules in the particular university where this was happening).  They all cos-played, and got to play the indulgent father and driver.  The shows were good, though, and the people funny.  Anyway, fast forward a few more years.  My employer of the time suddenly started sending me to various non-English speaking places in support of the product I cared for then.  Twice to England (2005,2006), once to Brazil (2006), once to Poland (2007) and once to Italy (2008).  Before going down to Brazil I tried to cram on Portuguese, thinking it would be easy since I was fluent in Spanish already.  Nope.  Fortunately everybody there could understand my Spanish.  I had many months notice before going to Poland, so I studied quite a bit that time.  And before Italy, I tried to cram a bit, but I had very short notice on that trip.  After getting back from Poland (early 2008), I found myself in a book store and found the Pimsleur CDs for Japanese.  I bought them, and that started a time of rather obsessive study in Japanese.  During that time, I returned to the anime my daughter had showed me, and bought more.  Soon, I discovered manga as well.  I discovered the manga Toradora, which led to the anime version, and eventually to the Baka-Tsuki light novel translations of the same.  Finding myself in need of some way to learn better how to translate, I started working on Toradora Spinoff 2.  It took me two weeks to do my first page.  Thousands of pages of translation later, I am a little bit better now.  --[[User:Rpapo|Rpapo]] ([[User talk:Rpapo#top|talk]]) 14:18, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting story indeed. So, if I understand correctly, you can speak about 3 languages rather fluently, besides English, namely Spanish, Japanese and Polish (?). Plus, you know a bit of Portuguese and Italian as well. That's quite the assembly of languages you have under your belt. Compared to that, I'm almost analphabetic. (laughs) My story isn't as interesting, but I'll share it with you anyway. It all started back in 2013, when I was rather obsessed with the Pokémon games, battling with others online in a competitive and professional (with this, I mean that I came up with my own strategies and didn't just use random moves) way. Though, in the second half of that year, my interest suddenly started to diminish (I was into it for almost 2 years by then, after all). It started to sway more toward general gaming, more in particular, horror games. So then, this became my main hobby at the time for about half a year. During the summer of 2013, I got this sudden feeling of nostalgia, while listening to some of the soundtracks of the first Pokémon movie (I truly love some of them), to go and rewatch Pokémon. After doing so for about a month, I looked for something similar. As I never really properly watched Digimon, I gave that series a watch. Nearing the end of my summer break, I wanted to end it with watching Beyblade. I knew they were all originally Japanese series, but I hadn't heard of the term "Anime" yet at the time. Since I finally ran out of ideas for what to watch next (staying in the animation category), I searched on Google for some recommendations. While doing so, I noticed the term "Anime" being mentioned several times. Therefore, as I was curious to the real meaning behind it, I looked it up. Then, I found out "Anime" is a term that western people use to label "Japanese animation". Seeing as I became interested in this new kind of animation that I hadn't heard of before, I looked up some awesome shows in that particular style. After this, I started watching series like ''Bleach'', ''The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya'', ''Amagami'', etc. That was the turning point. Having watched several Japanese "Anime", I finally became what people call someone who is obsessed with Anime and Manga, an ''Otaku''. From there on, my interest in the Japanese culture increased tremendously. A little while later, I also acquired an interest in learning the language, as it's quite neat. So, I began studying the language, soon afterwards already trying out translating music. At present, my Japanese skill level lies somewhere between "Advanced Beginner" and "Competent", following the 5 stages of acquiring expertise. -- [[User:Fukukaze|Fukukaze]] ([[User talk:Fukukaze|talk]]) 17:05, 26 November 2015 (MET ~ UTC+1)

:While I know full well that my Spanish is near college level, I would not try to rate my skills in Japanese.  My Japanese is highly skewed in the directions I have needed, and is not at all what professional teachers would consider to be a 'balanced' education.  I am pretty sure I would flunk most of their basic skills tests.  And forget about verbal skills.  Without somebody to practice against, my skills are almost entirely in the reading and translation area, and even there are far from fluent.  --[[User:Rpapo|Rpapo]] ([[User talk:Rpapo#top|talk]]) 16:28, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I hope my Spanish will improve a lot too. By the time I graduate 3 years from now (if everything goes well...), I am sure that I will be able to hold some basic conversations with natives, at the very least, though, I am aiming higher than that. My Japanese, as I have also studied it by myself, is indeed pretty slanted. Still, I learned the basics as they should have been learned, I think, starting with memorizing all the katakana and hiragana. Afterwards studying some of the basic grammar and common phrases. However, after that, I mainly learned more by analyzing others' translations, watching anime, reading visual novels and trying to read manga myself (raw). I would probably flunk most of their basic skills tests as well, as I still struggle a lot with the readings of Kanji. Also, it's the same here. My understanding of Japanese itself is decent (at best), but don't ask me to start conversing with a native from the language or write Japanese sentences from scratch. To be able to master those, I certainly need a few more years. -- [[User:Fukukaze|Fukukaze]] ([[User talk:Fukukaze|talk]]) 19:14, 26 November 2015 (MET ~ UTC+1)

:You will never truly master a language except by living it.  I knew a girl who studied four years in college to teach Spanish here.  Even at the end of those four years, I could run rings around her in Spanish, and her accent was atrocious.  Then she went to Spain for a year.  After that, she truly did know the language.  My mastery of Spanish comes from having lived 16 months in Peru, and from having brought home my wife from there, thereby ensuring language practice forevermore.  I have no such advantages with other languages, and for that reason have not mastered them.  --[[User:Rpapo|Rpapo]] ([[User talk:Rpapo#top|talk]]) 19:41, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

:If you're curious, you might want to look at the program I originally cooked up back in 2010 to help me with translating for Baka-Tsuki, but which has been for quite a while now my 'secret weapon'.  It is not perfect, and in fact still needs a lot of work, but I have been more concentrating on teaching myself Japanese than on teaching a computer to parse it.  I just placed a copy over in DropBox.  --[[User:Rpapo|Rpapo]] ([[User talk:Rpapo#top|talk]]) 13:59, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

That certainly sounds interesting, though, I'm having difficulty installing it properly. I bumped into this thread regarding the program: https://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=4691&hilit=Honyaku and read this: "To anybody lurking here and reading all this: don't try this unless you are running Windows X64 (preferably Windows 7 X64), with at least 6GB of memory installed on your machine. Doing so with less RAM may work, but it sure won't work very well and will certainly run slowly."

I have the required 6 gig of RAM, but sadly, it won't even install on my Windows 8 64-bit computer. Giving the error: "There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected". Any idea of why this might be occurring? -- [[User:Fukukaze|Fukukaze]] ([[User talk:Fukukaze|talk]]) 19:03, 03 December 2015 (MET ~ UTC+1)

:It is almost certainly running out of memory (or some other resource) while building the dictionary.  That used to run fine on my old machine, which was Windows 7 X64 6Gb, so I have to guess it is running against another limit somewhere.  Unfortunately, I cannot just ship you the completed dictionary file, as it is over 1.5Gb in size.  My current machine has 32Gb, which I got not for the Honyaku program, but rather for the sake of Photoshop.  --[[User:Rpapo|Rpapo]] ([[User talk:Rpapo#top|talk]]) 18:12, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it's my memory, as I still got about 30 gig left on my local hard drive. My processor is an Intel Core i7-3630QM CPU @ 2.40GHz 2.40GHz, perhaps that's the issue? I'll try it on my desktop too somewhere tomorrow to see if it works on that computer. Sadly, if it turns out that it runs well on that one, the program won't be of much use to me, since my dad uses that computer most of the time. Anyway, if there's any information about my computer that you need, because you think that might be the issue, let me know and I'll look it up for you. -- [[User:Fukukaze|Fukukaze]] ([[User talk:Fukukaze|talk]]) 22:45, 03 December 2015 (MET ~ UTC+1)

:Memory (RAM) space and hard drive space are not the same thing.  My program requires about 1.5 gigabytes of hard drive space, and during installation requires about 6 gigabytes of memory (RAM), though it will run with less memory once the dictionary has been generated.  --[[User:Rpapo|Rpapo]] ([[User talk:Rpapo#top|talk]]) 22:16, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I know. That's why I think it's weird that my computer refuses to install. I mean, I have the supposedly necessary 6Gb of RAM + the required 1.5Gb of HD space. Therefore, I'm curious to know what's causing the hiccup. It's sad, really. I'd have loved to check out the program, as it might be a good source to learn some more Japanese, while translating. -- [[User:Fukukaze|Fukukaze]] ([[User talk:Fukukaze|talk]]) 23:38, 03 December 2015 (MET ~ UTC+1)

:What the program is good for is taking transcripted Japanese text and breaking it up into words, and then looking up the words in the dictionary.  It speeds things up quite a bit, though it is far from perfect in what it does.  --[[User:Rpapo|Rpapo]] ([[User talk:Rpapo#top|talk]]) 22:38, 3 December 2015 (UTC)