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lenskij · 4 years ago

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The StoryGraph's Translation Challenge 2021 - a reflection

Today I just finished this 10 prompt reading challenge! I had so much fun doing it, especially since I’ve for years wanted to expand my reading beyond the same old and familiar I’ve been reading until now, but I didn’t come around to actually do it until I came across The StoryGraph's Translation Challenge 2021.

The rules are: pick a book for each prompt that has been translated from a language that isn’t English. For myself, I added another rule - it can’t be translated from any language I speak, either. I also wanted to find an individual book for each prompt - if there was a book that would fit in two prompts, I counted it for only one of them and chose another for the other.

I wanted to share my little translation journey with everyone here, hence this post. The prompts, what book I chose for each, and my thoughts on them are below the cut!

Also: I’m always on the lookout for non-English books! Bonus points if they’re from outside of Europe ^w^ Hit me up with your recommendations!

1. A translated fantasy or sci-fi novel

Stanisław Lem: Солярис (Solaris) Translated from Polish to Russian by Д. Брускин

This book has been living on my sister’s bookshelf for years, and while I was visiting her I read it. It didn’t impress me in any way, it felt like any regular old sci-fi, although a bit creepy (and just a lil dash of sexism).

2. A book written by a Black woman in translation

Marie NDiaye: La Cheffe (La Cheffe) Translated from French to Swedish by Maria Björkman

This is a lovely novel, even if it focused on French food - and the detailed descriptions reminded me that French food is overrated. I loved the character la Cheffe, it was highly enjoyable to read about her relationship to people and her profession, and the narrator had sweet heart eyes that shined through the text.

3. A translated book originally published before 1950

Choderlos de Laclos: Farliga förbindelser (Les Liaisons dangereuses) Translated from French to Swedish by Arvid Enckell.

This prompt was the easiest to fulfill, and I had several choices for it. I've spoken about this book elsewhere on this here blog - it's morbidly fascinating to read about terrible, terrible people.

4. A translated non-fiction book

Romaric Godin: Klasskriget i Frankrike (La guerre sociale en France) Translated from French to Swedish by Johan Wollin

For this prompt, I went to a local bookstore and asked the seller for help. She had to dig around for a while before she found something that wasn't originally written in English - like she pointed out, most academics choose to write in English, even if they're not native speakers.

I picked this one because I've seen snapshots of the yellow wests in the news, but I know barely any of the context. Although the book is short, it's a pretty detailed overview of recent French economic history, with an emphasis on explaining why and how French neo-liberalism ended up looking like it is today (and why French neo-liberalism is different from the neo-liberalism in the rest od Europe). This tickled my inner economics nerd.

5. A translated novel 500 pages or longer

Isabel Allende: Andarnas hus (La Casa de los Espíritus) Translated from Spanish to Swedish by Lena Anér Melin

Another book that has been sitting on my sister's shelf! I absolutely loved it - a family saga, in a time of social change. Look, my favourite part about any book is when the characters feel like humans, even if they're not relatable, I can still understand them.

6. A book translated from Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish or Icelandic

Vigdis Hjorth: Arv och miljö (Arv og miljø) Translated from Norwegian to Swedish by Ninni Holmqvist

In my case, it meant a book translated from either Danish, Norwegian or Icelandic (I do have to pepper in the fact that I'm a polyglot, after all). It's my sister who recommended it to me, and she was right when she said this was good! I loved the three separate timelines, the prose, and the family drama.

7. A translated book by a South American author

María Sonia Cristoff: Håll mig utanför (Inclúyanme afuera) Mariana Enríquez: Det vi förlorade i elden (Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego)Translated from Spanish to Swedish by Hanna Axén

What? Two books?? Yes, when I searched the library catalogue it spit out these two - because they have the same translator - and since they both seemed interesting I checked both of them out.

Unfortunately, these are the two books of this challenge that I liked the least. The first one didn't have a premise that worked with me - the main character chose to listen more than she spoke for a year as an experiment, and as an introvert, to whom this is how I've always lived my life, it was hard for me to understand what the big deal was.

The second was just my personal taste - these short stories had bloody ghosts, and ended abruptly without quite resolving the story - that creepiness just doesn't vibe with me.

8. A translated book by a Chinese author

Eileen Chang: Ett halvt liv av kärlek (Banshengyuan) Translated from Chinese to Swedish by Anna Gustafsson Chen

After quite a slow start I suddenly was drawn into this book. It's such a lovely read on when life doesn't always work out the way you want, and you still do your best to be happy. It felt very real, without being a 'happily ever after', or it's opposite of endless tears - that sweet middle ground spot.

9. A book translated from Arabic

Rajaa Alsanea: Flickorna från Riyadh (Banāt al-Riyāḍ) Translated from Arabic to Swedish by Tetz Rooke

I found this when messing around with the "similar books"-algorithm on Storygraph (I've just finished Unmarriageable, and liked it a so much I wanted to find something similar). When this one popped out I noticed the Arabic author name, and checked it out from the library. I've actually never read any book set in the Middle East, and I loved seeing a glimpse of life there (naturally, this isn't a comprehensive illustration - the main characters were all from well-off families). The most interesting thing was how the characters adjusted their behaviour as they travelled between Europe and Saudi Arabia - the social rules are different depending on where you are (and if you meet a fellow Saudi in London, your day is ruined - because suddenly you have to behave in accordance to Saudi rules).

10. A book translated from a language spoken in India

Vivek Shanbhag: Ghachar ghochar (Ghāchar ghōchar) Translated from Kannada to English by Srinath Perur; translated to Swedish by Peter Samuelsson

At first I was cranky about that this is a translation of a translation - but in the acknowledgements I read that it was the author's request that the book is to be translated from English. I assume it's because the English translator already has made the inevitable tradeoffs between language and form, which the author approved, and so the Swedish translator wouldn't have to make the decisions all over again.

This was a short book, just over a hundred pages. It barely had any plot, but it didn't need any - the description of the family members' relationship to each other was juicy enough.

In conclusion

This challenge was a great opportunity for me to also try genres I never would have tried otherwise - I was limited to what my library had, and especially for the smaller languages, it's a limited choice. I've been talking about this translation challenge to everyone I know because I've had so much fun! And the best part is - it's only ten prompts. That means I wouldn't need to scram to finish it in time, even while also reading the regular same old books I do still want to read. While I'm waiting for the 2022 challenge, I'll be doing another round for these prompts - I've already checked out a short story collection originally written in Tamil, and a nonfiction about Syrian resistance originally written in Arabic :)

#liz talks #books #i had so much fun guys!#do give me translation recs :D #look the only thing that brings me joy nowadays are books and talking about books #but i also feel inspired to write an evil onegin essay so maybe im slowly turning back into my old self #for better or worse lol #thank you to everyone who actually read the entire post i do really appreciate it

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huilianwrites · 5 years ago

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Here’s a little rant about this whole COVID-19 situation. I read somewhere that historians from the future would love it if more people write about what’s going on on a day-to-day basis, especially in times like this (hi future historians! *waves*), and I do think it’s useful for me to let some of these thoughts out instead of just keeping them all to myself, so here’s a little rant.

The COVID-19, or the coronavirus disease of 2019, apparently, became really pronounced around the Chinese New Year of 2020. I’m Indonesian of a Chinese descent, but now I’m studying in a university in Canada. So, at the start, I was just, okay, whatever. It’s spreading in China, and there’s a few cases in Canada because people travel to their hometown in China during Chinese New Year and come back, no big deal. They can lock down the city, and keep people who do have it and have traveled back to wherever they live in quarantine and nothing big will happen. Oh boy was I wrong.

My friends started joking about the coronavirus at first. It’s really not a big deal for us in Canada, and we have much, much bigger concerns, like finishing our problem sets and our next midterm. So they started joking about it, and I didn’t think anything of it other than noticing how my brother can’t go back to university in Hong Kong because they are closing the universities there. Oh, and let’s not forget, my brother hasn’t been in school for a couple months because of the riots of Hong Kong, and now he can’t even go back. People were joking about how the Chinese government develops this virus to end the Hong Kong riots.

Then, as things started to get worse, racism happened. Yay. As I said, I’m of Chinese descent, so I look Chinese, Even if I don’t, I’m Asian, and people started to suspect EVERY SINGLE ASIAN PERSON to have the virus. At this point I haven’t even left Canada in months, because the flight time home, even for winter break, is horrendous, and if I had the virus it would be because someone gave it to me in Canada, which means the odds of you getting it is about the same as me getting it. It reaches a point where I’m scared of coughing in public, because people will then think I have the virus.

Not to mention that I’m still monitoring how things goes in Indonesia, since it is my country. Until months after the outbreak happened, there is no single case in Indonesia. And people started to think that it’s because Indonesia just doesn’t have the capabilities of testing for the virus. Like, are you kidding me? I’m all about criticizing how the Indonesian public health system is, but you don’t have a leg to stand on by saying how Indonesia is a possibly dangerous country to get infected with COVID-19 when you already have the cases of COVID-19 in your own country. Yes, I’m talking to you, Australia and Singapore. Shut up, and deal with the people in your own countries.

But then, of course, things don’t just stop there. More and more cases started to sprout up, and with it, of course, more and more misinformation. Theories about how the COVID-19 is about China developing this virus to take over the world. Like what? And things about deaths because of COVID-19, people spreading panic, and of course, because of smartphones and social media, people who have no idea how to filter information spreads this information even further. Unfortunately, many of my families are amongst them. There are so many misinformation about the virus, but people are not getting the most important information about all of it, which is to WASH YOUR HANDS! They talk about wearing masks, which, does not really help unless you’re already sick and trying not to infect people. Some people wear the N95 respirator, but they don’t do it properly, and leave gaps between their faces and the mask. Some people went further and wore googles and gloves on top of the respirator.

Then things start to get even worse. Italy started to lock down, along with many other countries. The primaries in the US became disrupted because a lot of people got the virus. Indonesia finally had its first case, and the numbers grow exponentially. People are starting to get really scared.

Students start to petition universities to shut down, because 500 students in one room is prime breeding ground for an infectious disease. WHO finally decided to call this a pandemic, which, I’m still bitter about because they only do it once European and American countries started to get lots of cases. But I guess for WHO the definition of a pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease. (And the WHO only considers the world to be Europe and America anyways, but that’s my own thoughts and another discussion.)

Finally universities started closing, including my own. All my classes went online in a VERY short time. I applaud all my professors who had to figure out how to went from face-to-face instructions to online classes in a span of about two days. And they managed to make the best of this situation too. Cheers to you, profs! (I’m aware that this has not been the case for a lot of students, and I’m sorry to hear that.)

Canada declared emergency, and all events are canceled, including a lot of performances. The National Ballet of Canada canceled their performance of Romeo and Juliet, which I’m kind of looking forward too. All of the dance crews in my university also postponed or canceled their performances, including my own. We had two big performances scheduled at the end of the semester, and both of them got canceled. My friends who are in performing arts programs got it the worst though. Their year-end performances, which they must have been working on for months, got canceled. I can’t even imagine how disappointed they are. Even I’m already disappointed, and I only dance as a side.

Then famous people started to test positive for COVID-19, including Canada’s prime minister’s wife. Actors and athletes started to test positive. Though, there’s weird and insensitive things that’s happening. First of all, since the COVID-19 mortality rate for people under the age of 60 is not high, a lot of young people thought this is not really a concern for them and continue their travels and parties anyways. Even if you don’t get infected, other people might come in contact with you and then THEY can get infected. And the parties? Come on, people are dying and getting sick. Once classes got canceled a lot of my friends spent the entire weekend partying. You do realize that classes do not end, right? They just got moved online?

Secondly, people started to hoard things. Toilet paper, for once. That one was weird. I don’t know why people want to hoard toilet paper. But then they start to also hoard food and soap and hand sanitizer. Apparently a guy bought 10,000 bottles of hand sanitizer. That is super weird and insensitive. Why would you even need 10,000 bottles of hand sanitizer?

But there’s good things happening too. There’s a video online that’s basically just a bunch of Italians, singing from their balconies because they can’t go outside. There’s also news about how people are donating things to the communities impacted by the COVID-19. And the little things, like people offering to do stuff like grocery shopping for the people most at risk. This COVID-19 also shows how deeply rooted capitalism is, and this made a lot of people to start to notice how capitalism is not an inherent part of human nature.

There’s this thread online about how the COVID-19 is like a trial run for climate change, which, I sort of agreed. Governments stopped for COVID-19. They change their behaviors and stuff. They could have done that for climate change too, but they don’t, because climate change does not really affect them as a person. I guess that’s too general, but COVID-19, a virus, can literally hit even the most powerful person on earth. It has hit famous actors and athletes. It has hit the prime minister of Canada. They see it happening and they know that it can hit them too. So they act. While for climate change, they see it happening but they don’t care because it doesn’t affect them. They are not the ones starving because of climate change. They are not the ones having to relocate again and again because of climate change.

Someone online (and don’t you see a pattern about how I’m taking information online?) wrote about how most young people are so nonchalant about this disease. And in part, I guess it’s because of how the risk for younger people are lower, but also because the younger people have been fighting against imminent end of the world for years now. We know that the world would die if we continue to act the same. This is just another part of it.

Anyways, I thought that even though universities are closing, residences would not. At least not my residence because my university has a lot of international students. But a couple of days in, my dining hall started to only offer take out meals, and I had a sudden realization that this is going to get worse. So I called my parents and asked them whether or not I should go home. I really do not want to be stranded on a country, thousands of miles across from my own country where I have no family. I called them, I booked the ticket (while arguing with my father because he doesn’t think I should), and then started packing. I booked the ticket on Tuesday for a flight home on Wednesday, so I literally only have hours to pack my entire room. I went to grocery stores to ask for cardboard boxes to put my stuff in, and ended up taking one from the dumpster because none of their cardboard boxes are big enough. I arranged for a storage company to come pick up my stuff, but because everything is very short notice, I couldn’t get them to come when I’m still there, so I had to ask my friend to hold it for me until the storage company can come pick up. And then, on the afternoon, there’s an email saying that residences will be closed on Saturday. Wasn’t it lucky that I had booked a flight home before hand?

Oh, and even throughout this, people are still dissing Indonesian government’s ability to handle the crisis. My friends, who are also Indonesian, talk against going home because they don’t trust the Indonesian health care system. Bitch, I also don’t trust the Canadian health care system, and there are more cases in Canada anyways. So they decided not to go home, but then residences started to close and then I had no idea whether they all decide to go home or not. But for the most part, they had families in Canada, and some of them had families in the US. So I guess they could go there. I’m still offended about them not trusting the Indonesian health care system though. What is it about people and not trusting Indonesia? They are Indonesian citizens. It’s people like them who made Indonesia stuck in this weird limbo of being a developing country. And don’t even mention people from Malaysia and Singapore, and how they look down on Indonesia. But that’s another rant that I will maybe write with better sources.

Anyways, so I packed my entire life in two suitcases, a duffle bag, a backpack, and three boxes in the span of several hours. Then emailed my profs because I have two (TWO!) midterms in the days that I will be traveling. Thankfully they are very accommodating. I started my 20+ hours of flight, plus and additional 10 hours on transit.

It’s super weird to be in a flight with people all panicking about the COVID-19. I saw people wiping every single surface down with wet wipes before the flight. They double on masks and wear goggles. Some even wore hazmat suits. As for me, I know that I shouldn’t touch my face, so what I do is I wore make-up. Normally I don’t wear make-up on a daily basis, but if I had eyeliner on, I’m not going to touch my eyes for fear of smudging that off. Same with lipstick. That worked for me, including in the hours of flight that I went through. I also wash my hands plenty, until my skin felt like they’re cracking off because of how dry they are.

In airports, there are officials who checked everyone’s temperature with the laser thermometer. And in one of the flights everyone had to wear a mask. That was such a weird experience. And then there are forms I had to fill when I land, specifying where I had been and where. All of this experience is so surreal.

And then I got home, and my dad started to tell me to go shower, yada yada. Then he put all my stuff out in the sun, and told me that I shouldn’t meet with my grandmother for a while. All of which I know. And then he started JOKING. HE STARTED JOKING. He jokes about how I shouldn’t be allowed to come into his room, and how after I touch something then other people shouldn’t touch it. Like, that’s the hill you wanted to die on? THAT? I’m super pissed. I am perfectly aware that I should self-quarantine for 14 days, but that’s not how you go about doing it, FATHER. That’s just plain rude.

It’s like he doesn’t even want me back home. Like how I should have just stayed in Canada. Fuck you, Father. Fuck you very much. If you don’t want me home, then you should have said before I fucking book the tickets. Now I’m just swearing, but fuck you very, very, very much, Father.

And that ends my rant about this whole COVID-19 situation for now. It’s 5 whole pages of unorganized ranting. Let’s see how much of this rant I would have in the next couple of days.

Peace out, Huilian

#covid-19 #lian writes #rant

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kikaykim · 6 years ago

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Taiwan Trip 2018

I’ve always been curious about what the heart of Asia can offer and by taking advantage of its government’s initiative for Free Visa to attract more tourists, it’s time to get to know this neighboring country.

I turned to AirAsia for cheap flights and got a good deal for Taiwan from Dec. 17-21. The dates are the best as they’re literally 1 week before the holiday break kicks off so I don’t need to worry about the “back to reality” dillemma that we get right after spending a holiday away from home then going back straight to work.

I did a lot of research by reading blogs and watching vlogs on Youtube. The information I got from the two mediums really helped me out in planning my 4 days trip. AirAsia flights to Taiwan from Clark are always at night so I only have 4 days instead of 5.

The next thing I did after securing my flight tickets, I looked for discounted hotels/hostels. I always turn to Agoda because they have the cheapest accommodation deals. Been booking hotels with them since 2016. I never had an issue and their customer service, although the queue is too long, you’ll spend a tantamount of time waiting on the line for a rep to attend to your concerns, is superb. Agoda also have the options for “pay nothing until” or “pay at the property”. I also considered looking through Airbnb but in the end, I found myself booking two accommodations via Agoda. Mind you, always read the reviews of people for that hotel you want to book. It will definitely help you decide if it’s the right one for you.

I also thought of booking activities, buy tickets and rentals online (aside from flight tickets) when planning my trip. I turned to two travel applications: Klook and KKday.

Klook:

-Rental of 4G Wifi Mobile Broadband I got on Sale. My usage is 5 days. The pickup location is right at the Arrival Area of Taoyuan Airport T1. It was an easy transaction, instructions on the Klook voucher is accurate. I presented the QR code on the voucher on my phone, my passport and Debit card (credit card can be used too). The card is required so when you loose or damage the device, they’ll charge you. Signed the receipt and that’s it! The device was low on power charge though, so I got to use it the next day but boy, it’s so fast! No lagging anywhere I go in Taiwan. The price shown below is for 1 day use only. So the price will multiply depending on how many days you’re going to use it.

-Taichung World Flora Expo Ticket. This ticket is for the entrance fee of the three world flora expo sites. I’ll go into detail of the itinerary later on.

KKDAY:

-booked a Day Tour Package for three tourist spots: Yehliu Geopark, Shifen and Jiufen.

What you need to know for first time travelers in Taiwan like me:

1. If your arrival time and immigration process allows it, catch the airport MRT going to Taipei or any other places in Taiwan. Otherwise, take a bus or Uber or Taxi. I was lucky to catch the MRT. MRT Airport Operating hours: 6am - 12am only.

2. Purchase the Easycard. It’s going to be your bestfriend in going around the city and neighboring states/provinces. It costs NTD$500 - there is a NTD$100 fee so your balance on the card will be NTD$400. The Easycard can be used both in MRT and Bus. This is available to purchase at any Information booth in MRT stations. Taiwan has a very systematic and easy to understand transportation system so I’m really happy about it. It’s so easy going up and down stations to your destinations.

3. It’s December, it’s Winter. Do you need to wear a jacket? I would suggest to search for the weather forecast from the duration of your stay. In my case, it never rained. It was sunny. The lowest temperature I experienced was just 17degrees Celcius -at night. Temperatures tend to get low at sun down. During the day, while wearing a fleece jacket, puffer jacket and a sweater, met with humidity and highest temp of 28degress Celcius, I got too sweaty!! So on my last day in Taiwan, I was wearing a sando and shorts. No sweat, no cold feeling though I attracted attention for wearing differently. I can’t help it, I’m a tropical island girl so 17, 20, or 28 degress are not cold enough for me except when I’m about to have my period, my body temps get low, I’m shivering at 20 degress at the office aircon. Lol. But you will notice the Taiwanese people are still wearing layered jackets I think it’s because they just got used to wearing those clothing during Winter months. And anyway, most of the year, it’s raining in Taiwan and the rain adds to the cold temperature so yeah, maybe that’s the reason. I was just lucky I guess that the duration of my visit was sunny, no rains at all.

4. Taiwanese are very friendly, accommodating and helpful that in spite of language barrier, they will proactively help you out when they see you confused or trying to figure out which way to go. That alone made my journey very easy and I really felt safe there.

5. Speaking of language barrier, taxi drivers speak little to no English and they’re having a hard time understanding what you’re trying to say. So I suggest that you prepare an address of your destination that’s written in Chinese. When I was going to the hostel from Taipei Main Station, the taxi driver was clever enough to call the hostel to get the address in Mandarin.

6. There’s plenty of climbing and walking from stations to stations and hiking trails. So you must wear comfortable shoes, and you should be an active person to prevent yourself from suffering painful legs and knees.

7. Get a copy of the Taipei Metro Guide pamphlet. It will help you navigate which train line to take to get to your destinations. You can get it from the Information booth or train officers around the stations. You can also get a soft copy online at english.metro.taipei -just type it as it is on your web browser.

Here’s my detailed itinerary..

Day 1. A DIY trip I planned:

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial

Elephant Mountain

Mala YuanYang Hotpot

Chun Shui Tang Milk Tea

Maokong Gondola

Longshan Temple

Taipei 101

Ximending

Shilin Night Market

What I actually able to fulfill: all of the above except the ones written on RED. Yes. I ran out of time, I wasn’t able to squeeze them to the schedule.

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial - this is just a walking distance from the hostel I stayed in. No entrance fee as it is a public place. I was in awe at how huge those traditional structures are and how spacious the whole park is. It’s magnificent! Also, the Exit 5 of the Chiang Kai-Shek MRT station is right in the compound.

Elephant Mountain - it’s a hiking trail where you can get a great view of Taipei 101 and the city from afar. It is a popular destination for both locals and tourists alike. This is where my knees got in real trouble, I could use a wheelchair! The steps are too steep going up, I was not able to finish the trail and get to the boulders because my legs, specially my knees were giving up. This is the price to pay for not being an active person. Though, there is a spot, a balcony where you can already take a photo and see the city from there without going up to the boulders. That’s where I stopped and got the below 2nd photo.

How to get here: from any MRT station in my case, Chiang Kai-Shek Exit 4 station, take the RED line to Xiangshan station and go to Exit 2. From Exit 2, go straight to the park then turn left at the end of the park, go straight then turn right. Continue walking straight until you see the sign on the above photo on the left side of the street. When in doubt, just Google then look for the result from “Guide to Taipei”. Tried pasting the link here but this silly tumblr can’t save it, the app crashes.

Mala YuanYang Hotpot at Ximending - took a lunch at this unlimited hotpot that is popular to tourists. This place gets really crowded mostly by Korean tourists. The lunch costs NTD$545 and dinner is NTD$635. You can have unlimited premium meats, seafood and other hotpot essentials, unlimited drinks with plenty of varieties and this is the most exciting part: unlimited Häagen-Dazs and Movenpick ice cream!!! Aside from other desserts like fruits, puddings and egg tart. The only limited though, is time. Your lunch and dinner is limited to only 2 hours. It is located in Ximending which is also happens to be Taipei’s shopping district. So in this stop, I was able to hit two places in one go. And I think Ximending is livelier at night. So if you want to get dinner instead of lunch at Mala Hotpot, then I think that’s a better idea.

How to get here: Ximen station is your drop point station. It is in the Blue and Green lines as it also serves as the transfer station for Green line. Blue line has transfer stations from Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center station and Zhongxiao Fuxing station from the Brown line, Taipei Main Station from the Red line, Zhongxiao Xinsheng from the Orange line, and Ximen station from the Green line. From where I was at Xiongshan station of the Red line, I dropped off the Chiang Kai-Shek station then transferred to the Green line and stopped at Ximen station.

Taipie 101 - the most famous landmark of Taiwan. It’s astonishing! Since it’s sunny on the day I went up the Taipei 101 Observatory, I was able to see the whole city, crystal clear! What I forgot to do though is to get to the 91st floor observatory. The main observatory is at the 89th floor and it took us 37seconds to get there from the 5th floor where the ticket for the observatory is being sold at NTD$600 per person. It is indeed the fastest lift!

How to get here: Take the RED line going to Taipei 101/World Trade Center station.

Maokong Gondola - it’s a gondola ride with three mountain stops. The last stop is the Maokong village where there are a bunch of tea shops. It is better to get there before sunset to see the city sunset while enjoying a tea. Unfortunately in my case, I got to ride the gondola past 5pm. Night time comes early at 5pm. But I get to see the city at night while riding the gondola and enjoying the cold breeze.

How to get here: from Taipei 101 station which is in the RED line, take the same line to Daan Park station which is the transfer station for the Brown line. Take the Brown line going to Taipei Zoo station. From Taipei Zoo staition, just follow the signs that leads to the Maokong Gondola. It will cost you a total of NTD$200 for a round trip from the gondola.

Chun Sui Tang Cultural Tea House - based on Google search, it is the one that started the Milk Tea craze! They also have the Taiwanese Beef Noodle soup which is also a famous Taiwanese dish. Hitting two birds with one stone. This is where I had my dinner. The milk tea tastes bittersweet which I really like. The beef noodle soup tastes good too! The servings are huge!

How to get here: Take the Red line going to Chiang Kai-shek station. Go to Exit 5. The restaurant is located just under the stairs of the Chaing Kai-Shek Concert Hall.

And that’s a wrap for my first day in Taiwan. My next posts will detail my journey for the rest of my 4 days in the country.

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brigdh · 7 years ago

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Book Blogging

A Tyranny of Queens by Foz Meadows. The sequel to the portal fantasy I read last month. Most of the plot here is fallout from the climax of that book: Saffron has returned back to Earth from the fantasy world of Kena, but can she re-adjust to a 'normal' life? And if not, what choices will she make? Yena's adopted sister died in the final battle, but can Yena reclaim religious rights for her sister's funeral and learn more about her mysterious heritage? The evil king has been overthrown, but escaped – where is he and what caused his actions? What's up with the mysterious magic artifact he left behind in the castle? Sadly, I didn't like this book nearly as much as its predecessor. The biggest problem is simply a shift in the use of characters; whereas the first book divided its pages fairly evenly among a vast cast, A Tyranny of Queens is hugely dominated by Saffron and Yena. And I'm sorry to say it, but they're the most boring characters in this series. Both are an example of the 'normal teen girl dealing with events outside her experience' archetype, which is a fine enough archetype as far as it goes, but not one that's particularly exciting unless you give her some sort of distinctive personality trait, anything other than 'determined', 'hard-working', 'smart'. Buffy wanted to date boys and wear cute clothes; Katniss wanted to be left alone and was unexpectedly ruthless; Saffron wants... ? The characters who did grab my attention in An Accident of Stars are pushed mostly off-screen here. Yasha, the grumpy, staff-wielding elderly matriarch who was revealed late in the first book to be an exiled queen, gets something like ten lines of dialogue in this entire book. Viya, the young, spoiled but trying hard to improve noblewoman who is named co-ruler of Kena at the end of the first book, and thus should be navigating the delicate balance of maintaining equality of power while still learning to handle so much responsibility, gets literally two scenes out of three hundred pages. And so on through a whole list of really cool characters. Instead we get multiple chapters of Saffron arguing with her guidance counselor, then her parents, then her social worker over whether she should apologize to one of her high school teachers over a minor incident caused by a bully. Exciting fantasy! My second problem with the book, unfortunately, is much more fundamental. The plot revolves around discovering that the evil king wasn't really evil after all, but was brainwashed. I'm sure this is an attempt to do an interesting redemption arc, or to look at how even the worst-seeming villains have their reasons, but it didn't work for me at all. It felt like a cop-out to remove blame from the king by passing it on to a historic figure from centuries ago (who never gets an explanation for his evil actions, so Meadows hasn't really complicated the role of villains so much as pushed the question a few steps outside the main narrative). None of the many people who died in the wars he started or were tortured in his pursuit of knowledge get a voice in this second book, so I kept feeling as though the suffering he caused was conveniently being swept under the rug to get readers to feel sorry for him. In addition, for a book that tries so hard to be progressive, ending with 'it's not the king's fault! He was manipulated by a foreign woman who made him fall in love with her!' is, uh... not a great look. All in all, a disappointing book. But there was enough good about the series that I'll give the author another chance. The Written World: How Literature Shaped Civilization by Martin Puchner. A nonfiction book that makes its way through human history via the medium of literature. Each of sixteen chapters focuses on a particular classic and shows how it both influenced and was influenced by contemporary events, from Homer's Odyssey giving Alexander the Great a hero to model himself after to The Communist Manifesto inspiring revolutions across the world. A subthread is the development of the technologies of literature itself – the inventions of the alphabet, paper, the printing press, ebooks, etc. It's a pretty neat idea for a book! Unfortunately the execution is terrible. I started off being annoyed that Puchner never seems quite clear on what he means by the term 'literature'. He implies it only includes written works (in the Introduction he says, "It was only when storytelling intersected with writing that literature was born."), and yet many of the pieces he choses to focus on were primarily composed orally (The Odyssey and the Iliad, The Epic of Sunjata, the Popul Vuh, probably the Epic of Gilgamesh, certainly at least parts of One Thousand and One Nights). And yet there's never any discussion of what it means to go from an oral mode to a written one, a topic I was eagerly awaiting to see analyzed. It's just... never addressed beyond a passing mention here and there. Okay, fine, I thought to myself, Puchner means 'literature' as in 'stories'. But that doesn't work either, since once again many of his choices don't tell any sort of narrative (Saint Paul's letters, Martin Luther's theses, Benjamin Franklin's 'Poor Richard's Almanac', Confucius's Analects, Mao's 'Little Red Book'). So what does Puchner mean by literature, the central organizing principle of his whole book? God alone knows. My irritation with the book deepened when I got to Chapter Four, where Puchner claims credit for inventing the concept of the Axial Age: "It was only in the course of trying to understand the story of literature that I noticed a striking pattern in the teaching of the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus. Living within a span of a few hundred years but without knowing of one another, these teachers revolutionized the world of ideas. Many of today’s philosophical and religious schools—Indian philosophy, Chinese philosophy, Western philosophy, and Christianity—were shaped by these charismatic teachers. It was almost as if in the five centuries before the Common Era, the world was waiting to be instructed, eager to learn new ways of thinking and being. But why? And what explained the emergence of these teachers?" Sure, dude, sure. You came up with this vastly original idea all on your own. (To be fair, if one choses to read through the endnotes, Puchner does cite Karl Jaspers, though he still insists his own version is ~so different~.) He then proceeds to get basic information about the Buddha completely wrong. For example: Some form of writing may have existed in India during the Buddha’s time (the so-called Indus Valley script may not have been a full writing system and remains undeciphered). This sentence. I can't even. I almost stopped reading the book right here, it's so incredibly incorrect. It's like saying, "Thomas Jefferson may have been literate, but since we find no Latin engravings in his house, we can't be sure." Let me lay out the problems. The Buddha lived around 500BCE; the last known well-accepted use of the Indus script was in 1900BCE. That's a gap of nearly two millennia. The Indus script was used on the western edge of South Asia, in Pakistan and the Indian states of Gujarat and Haryana; the Buddha lived on the eastern edge, in Nepal. At minimum, they're 500 miles apart. There is no chance in hell the Indus script was remotely relevant to writing about the Buddha. And in fact, we don't need to guess at the script of the Buddha's time and place. It's called Brahmi and it's quite well attested – though Puchner doesn't once mention it. He does include a photo of an Indus seal, because why not waste more space on utterly irrelevant information. Let's quickly go through the problems on the rest of this single page: What mattered above all were the age-old hymns and stories of the Vedas, which were transmitted orally by specially appointed Brahmans for whom remembering the Vedas was an obligation and a privilege. Though the Vedas do have an important oral history, they were certainly written down by the time of the Buddha, and possibly as early as 1000BCE. The oldest Indian epic, the Ramayana, was also orally composed and only later written down, much like Homeric epics. The Mahabharata is generally considered to be the older of the two epics. Despite my disillusionment at this point, I continued on with the book. And to be fair, I noticed many fewer mistakes! Though possibly because I know much less about Renaissance Germany or Soviet Russia than I do about Indian history. I did hit several problems again in the chapter on the Popul Vuh, the Mayan epic. To begin with, the chapter opens with a long dramatic scene recreating the Spanish conquistadores' capture of Atahualpa, the Incan emperor. Incan. Who lived in Peru, in South America. The Classic Mayan culture was based in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize – North America and a bit of Central America. This time Puchner is literally on the wrong continent. Once he finally makes his way up to the Mayan homeland, he focuses his narration on Diego de Landa, a Spanish priest who did indeed write an important ethnography of the Mayans of the 1500s. The Classic Mayan Era was over by 950CE, introducing a discrepancy Puchner does not deign to acknowledge. Even aside from that small problem, Puchner describes Landa's writings multiple times as "an account [...] that has remained the primary source of information on Maya culture." This entirely ignores not only the Popul Vuh itself; but the multiple other Mayan codices that survived Spanish colonialism; the many Mayan writings carved on their pyramids, palaces, and stele, and painted on their pottery; their murals of war, sport, and history; the enormous archaeological record of their cities, technology, and diet; and, oh yeah, the fact that Mayan people are still around today. Oh, my bad – Puchner does remember the Mayans still exist. Here's what he has to say about them: "My journey began in the Lacandon jungle. A bus dropped me at the border of the Maya territory, where a beat-up truck picked me up at the side of the road. The village of several dozen huts was located in a clearing in the jungle. Everyone but me was dressed in what looked like long white nightgowns. Men and women both wore their black hair shoulder length (I thought of the shipwrecked sailor who had gone native), and most of them walked around barefoot, sometimes donning rubber boots." That's it. That's literally the only mention of the modern Mayan people. (Puchner's in the area to learn about the Zapatista uprising, to which he devotes the rest of the chapter.) I'm so glad he spent ages detailing that and de Landa's biography instead of devoting any space at all to the contemporary persistence of Mayan beliefs, language, or rituals. When I first read its blurb, I looked forward to the rest of The Written World. Unfortunately it's the closest I've come to hurling a book at the wall in a long, long time. I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.

[DW link for ease of commenting]

#books #book reviews #foz meadows #martin puchner #netgalley

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rigelmejo · 5 years ago

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Advice I’ve found helpful:

1. For ‘easier’ immersion materials, pick things you have some familiarity already with. So: shows/books you’ve already read in your native language, or watched/read in the target language with some kind of context (seen subs before in your native language, a summary, you’ve looked up lots of words etc). I definitely find immersing in stuff I have some context for much easier, because at least sometimes I can place what certain unknown words mean/what is going on in the plot, even when I don’t actually ‘know’ all the words.

Personally: I like using some absolutely new unknown materials for immersion, just because I like to test how much I’ve ‘improved’ with something I’m sure I have nothing to rely on ahead of time except for what I have learned. But when I’m immersing with something I want to find more comfortable/easier to immerse with, its easier for me to use things I’m already familiar with - otherwise I have to pick graded material/learner materials instead of using target language native materials.

2. Once you find some study materials that work for you, stick to them. Specifically if they progressively teach new stuff - like textbooks, grammar guides, apps with lessons, teaching podcasts, flashcards that add grammar points/new words, etc. Anything that builds up knowledge over time.

I used to have a bad habit of switching these kinds of materials often, and would keep ‘restarting’ myself in beginner materials, when really I should have been moving on and studying new things. I have found that even if my ‘book/guide/tool’ is imperfect, if I stick to it then I make more progress and improve at a more dependable rate.

3. For immersion material, feel free to pursue things based on interest. You don’t have to finish one material before moving to the next.

I’ve noticed that I tend to get demotivated or disinterested sometimes in materials (which happens in english with my hobbies anyway too), and its definitely better for me to just move to new material that’s interesting me in the moment (so a new show, new story, new audio). I’ve found that as long as its target language native material, its all exposing me to common things I should review, and new things I ought to pick up/learn, so regardless of the material its going to challenge me and solidify what I’ve studied already and teach me new things. Meanwhile... graded readers would fall into point 2 - but with a special caveat - if the graded reader has a Subject i’m not interested in, I need to just switch to a new novel at a HIGHER difficulty level at a certain point. Basically - regardless of if I stick to a graded reader all the way through, or if I drop it and move to another, once I’m very comfortable with that reading level, I need to move to prioritizing higher difficulty level material. This might apply to immersion content a little - as in, its better for me to work in some dramas/audios/books with more words I don’t know, so I get more comfortable. But with target language content made for natives its less of an issue since pretty much everything made for adults is constantly teaching me new stuff right now.

4. Its BETTER to do something consistently, than nothing. So better to study any minutes a day then never. Likewise - its better to study using ANY method that’s helping you make progress, than to not study at all because its not ‘the best way.’

I’m sure I’m not the only learner who’s had this issue studying languages, but its easy to wonder if you’re doing things right or doing ‘enough.’ And in the end? For me it boils down to ‘anything where I make any progress, and don’t give up IS enough.’ No method’s perfect for everyone, not everyone can stay engaged in the same methods, etc. Yeah some advice says ‘don’t ever speak before X time’ but some people only stay motivated if they speak from day one, so they might as well speak! I’ve seen plenty of advice for chinese to ‘focus on listening/speaking first’ instead of focusing on reading so early on. But I get motivated/interested by reading, so here I am doing more reading from day 1! It’s worked well enough for me! It got me this far!

5. At some point, focus on all for skill areas because eventually you need all of them: listening/reading, speaking/writing.

This seems basic as can be but I’m guessing its still easy enough to overlook. There’s a reason good textbooks/teachers try to make sure they cover all these skills for the level you’re supposed to be comprehending/communicating at by the time you finish their class. I self-study mostly, and its easy to forget about one or multiple of these areas, especially if they don’t align as well with your goals/interest areas/preferred study methods. It’s just important to cover them all eventually, if you want roughly balanced skills in the language. I personally think its okay to have imbalanced skills - depending on your goals, and your preferences. For example: if you want to read but do not want to prioritize speaking due to low need to speak to anyone, it seems fine to spend more time on reading and work on speaking more later when its a goal or need to. Or, maybe you specifically need to speak regularly to people in your workplace/living situation/life, then it would make sense to prioritize daily needs conversation study and skills way before you bother dedicating a lot of time to reading etc.

Thankfully, there’s usually a variety of study methods to improve each skill. Though unfortunately, usually to improve in production you must eventually practice Producing language, and to improve in comprehension you must eventually practice comprehending materials. By this, I mean that even with textbook grammar drill sentence exercises and repeat-after podcasts, you must eventually practice speaking to people and writing messages/paragraphs. Even if you study sentence flashcards or read graded readers, you must eventually try to listen to real conversations/audio/shows and try to read materials you’re planning to one day engage with (newspapers/websites/novels/games/whatever your goals are).

6. Prioritize learning the most common 500/1000/2000 words as needed.

(Unless your goals and needs are very specialized on other vocabulary needs - who knows, maybe you only need X language for mechanical engineering words?) I ran into this tip when studying French, and then variations on this tip from a lot of polyglot blogs. I’ve also noticed a lot of the youtubers who try to learn a language in ‘x days/x months’ tend to cram in a lot of vocab early on - I saw two successful learners who studied 2000 words in the first 1-2 weeks. Then they moved onto reading grammar points, reading actual books, immersing in television, trying to speak their conversational requirements etc. What boosted their speed-run intro to the language is usually a bunch of common words - which will be their foundation for comprehending some gist when immersing, and their source of words when forming sentences as they work on speaking skills. Now, of course, these people generally get into maybe A1-A2 level-ish knowledge in a month etc. But they still make a lot of rapid progress in that first ‘uncomfortable’ hump, at least from what I can tell. There’s many a article out there about how for most languages 2000 words covers 80-90+% of words in everyday conversation, and in many media like shows (and sometimes books).

Basically, usually at 2000 words you know enough words to start communicating anything you need to with at least basic words/ideas, and have enough words to start learning some new words from context in immersion (and will in general find immersion much less overwhelmingly difficult). I’ve personally found that it’s just a starting place - but its often a really Great starting place, at least for me. Usually its more than enough to make immersing in shows doable, and to make reading with a dictionary bearable. Its also usually enough, with a few months grammar practice/exposure too, to start expressing a lot of my basic thoughts/needs at least. I did this to some extent with French (maybe 1000 common words), then jumped into immersing and grammar books mostly. I do think if dropped into an all french country, I could read signs and forms/speak my basic needs if I were lost/needed help with X/thought something/wanted to speak with someone. I would probably sound like a wreck (since I didn’t work on pronunciation much and one day need to) but I think I could navigate having to go to a hospital/get a plane ticket/buy something/make a friend/ask how to get somewhere/read any book for gist main ideas/read the news. I could get by. And the foundation for that started with just around 1000 words to start me toward that. Ever since I’ve tried to learn common words with any language I study, and each time I’ve noticed it substantially make target language materials more % comprehensible, and make it easier for me to start having a foundation to express a lot of basic ideas (think maybe 5-8 year old that can start talking about a lot, but may need to ask for a lot of ‘what’s X word mean/what’s X thing about?’).

Its not a lot obviously, since there’s still much that’s incomprehensible, and there’s still lots that’s hard to discuss/follow the details of. But its enough to build from more easily. And I think its a great way to direct self-study before you start specializing - it prioritizes a ton of useful words before you start moving onto words with less ‘payoff’ because they show up less frequently and not in as big a variety of situations/topics. Even if using a textbook, I find using a frequency list too helps - since some textbooks teach pitifully little like 200 words, and some teach very focused on topic-specific words like ‘my classroom’ and ‘my job’ and ‘shopping’ when you may need words that show up in ‘news’ ‘social media’ ‘shows’ too based on whatever your goals are - a frequency list helps make sure words that show up in more places get learned, even if they don’t always fit in specific topics.

7. Read through a grammar guide. (Adapt this depending on where you get the advice: read a grammar summary, or just look up grammar points once for reference when you run into one that confuses you, or just skim through a guide before you learn, or just read a grammar guide later on if you need a stronger foundation etc).

I don’t think everyone needs this. Lots of people really LOATHE grammar, or think its ‘wrong’ to study it at the wrong point in time, whenever they think that is (beginning, or later on, etc). I personally find my life gets way easier when I read at least a grammar guide/summary on AT LEAST the basic past/present/future tense way of expressing things, on adjectives, nouns, verbs, conjunctions/notable grammar particles and features, as soon as possible. Covering this stuff makes my attempts at producing language SO MUCH EASIER since I’ve got at least a rough framework of how to express things basically. And immersing likewise becomes just SO MUCH EASIER with at least a rough idea of what I’m looking at that I can break down into meaningful parts. Even if I don’t know 1 word to even 80% of words in a sentence: if I can tell which words are nouns/verbs/particles/conjunctions/what tense the sentence verbs are in/if there’s any gendered nouns/if there’s any plurals - then I can figure out a LOT about the meaning of the sentence.

Take “Na no le mayy, ter le henent.” Here’s a sentence I just made up. Let’s say you know that ‘na’ means “there is” in this language. You know “no” is a particle meaning belonging like the japanese ‘no’ or chinese ‘de’ or english ‘s. “le” means masculine ‘the’ and is put before nouns that are masculine if a person, or objects/etc if another kind of noun. ‘ter’ you know means ‘is/are’ as a super basic verb, conjugated for a masculine person not object - now you know maybe this ‘le mayy’ is a person not an object - so the sentence so far means “this is my ‘person’.” You know le also goes before adjectives in this language to match the noun to which it refers, and ‘ent’ is a super common adjective ending in this language. So now you can guess the sentence means “This is my ‘person,’ (they) are ‘adjective describing them’.” Its possible the le henent is a noun spelled with this ending, so it could also mean “this is my ‘person,’ they are ‘noun probably describing them’.” This has narrowed down what the unknown 2 words in the sentence could mean by A LOT. Now if you understand some other context from the Surrounding sentences, you might be able to guess if the ‘person’ is a student/husband/friend/enemy, and maybe if the descriptor is something positive/negative more specific etc. Without any grammar study or overview ahead of time, the grammar pieces like ‘le’ and ‘ent’ and ‘no’ may have confused you or helped you less.

“Na shi wo de pengyou, ta hen hao,” might be how you say this in chinese, or, “Ill y a mon amie, ton est tres intelligent.” But this kind of grammar-helping-comprehension stuff translates to bigger more complex sentences, and sentences where you have less words you know and can rely on. This helped me a TON in french when i just dived into reading when I only knew a couple hundred words at first, and its constantly helped in Chinese - especially since i have no spaces to help me separate words, so recognizing how the grammar breaks down the sentences helps a lot.

8. Don’t be scared to immerse in interesting things over high comprehensibility things, if you want.

While I do think, absolutely, that things with high comprehensibility will be easier for you to relax and enjoy, and MUCH easier for you to pick up new stuff from context - i think its possible to learn from harder materials if you want. I do it all the time. Like that higher up tip about any study better than none - if engaging with more difficult stuff keeps me interested, then it helps me more than a boring material i would give up studying and therefore stop learning from. Also, personally I really both enjoy occasionally challenging myself to really push what I can do and prove to myself what I’m capable of versus where my ‘safe zone’ is, and I think I personally learn better when I regularly get difficult bursts that challenge me. I do think for some other people, this may have the opposite effect and possibly cause them to burn out/want to give up studying. But for me, while it makes me sad I’m never as ‘competent’ with real material as I wanted to be, I’m always better at it then I was before or at least confident in knowing I’m practicing/studying something I actually want to do one day. (In comparison to me doing like podcast lessons or self-teach beginner books, where I often feel demotivated because it starts with a lot of basic convo drills, often a bit unnatural, whereas I don’t plan to have those convos much, and for my goals want to do other kinds of stuff that those podcasts may not prepare me for after months if at all...). I’d much rather get a quick foundation then be thrown into the deep end, then a slow foundation with baby steps where I have little new material regularly pushing me.

Who knows how much this is a legacy of me being in all those honor classes/AP, and then being an engineering student in a bunch of accelerated/condensed courses taking way too many credits, studying too many hard classes at once ;-; - honestly studying anything I actually enjoy and am passionate is eons better than that past schooling. But I do think I developed a lot of my study habits back then around ‘do quick effective stuff to get basically competent then MOVE ON CAUSE THERE’S NEW HARD MATERIAL YOU GOTTA AT LEAST GET THE GIST OF IN LESS THAN A WEEK’.... aahhh. So um... I’m really skewed toward do bare minimum needed, and push difficulty asap constantly. NOT everyone is going to be able to do this, or even Want to do this. So, I’d say in general if other people apply this tip about immersing regardless of difficulty if you want to: you do not have to get the same benefits as me. I think even if the only benefit is that you’re enjoying the parts you do understand, or having fun even if its something you only do once in a while because you’re curious on how much you’d understand, that’s absolutely fine. A lot of people who do this focus on ‘comprehending the gist’ - which I guess would be me. And a lot of people who do focus on harder stuff sometimes, instead prioritize ‘focus on just getting used to it’ aka don’t worry if you can’t follow what’s going on, its okay to only catch a line or word once in a while, the familiarity you develop over time is also a benefit itself.

I do personally think, at the bare minimum, doing this does get you more okay with being dropped into situations that are harder for you and being okay with that. I imagine in language learning, eventually you run into a convo where you get lost, reading where you barely understand anything, or a show where you catch zero words! It’s nice to have the practice of not understanding but being comfortable, so that when you’re stuck in those situations you are less bothered and have possibly some other methods you’ve developed to help you cope/get by/tolerate it until you get through it or can grasp something comprehensible again or can find a way to redirect the convo/look up key words etc. In some languages there is just a huge amount of time you’ll deal with materials less than 98% comprehensible (which is comfortable level for most people), or less than 90% comprehensible (which is difficult but bearable in short bursts for most people). Also, the earlier you immerse/engage in conversation, the longer you’ll hit this ‘difficulty’ curve and either need to get used to it or else it’ll feel uncomfortable.

9. Write your GOALS down. Also, preferably, plan some SMART goals - or some study plan that roughly includes WHAT you plan to do, how you could measure it or it’s progress and test if its working or not-actually-helping-the-goal, how it contributes to your goal, and what smaller-step of your goal you want it to get you to in X time.

Writing goals, and plans for smaller achievable steps, helps in any goal achieving process. Helps a ton with language learning too, especially when self studying if you’re not sticking to a textbook or course with very clear definited steps/goals you can just copy and aim for. There’s been studies that literally just writing your goals down makes it more likely you’ll achieve them. Its also just much easier to stick to a self study plan if you know what you’re doing, where you’re heading, why, how to check that what you’re doing is actually making progress, and have something to hold yourself accountable to study (since there may be no one else expecting you to hit your smaller-goals or bigger ones). Also personal goals will motivate you - what do you want out of this study? Personally?

10. Make it enjoyable to you, again any study that you can keep doing and make progress is better than none. And any goal you personally will USE and Enjoy/will help you, is much better then some external goal (like oh X people will be impressed).

The enemy of progress is you giving up. Even if you Do give up - skip the being mad at yourself or feeling guilty, it is what it is and if you gave up there was a reason. Likewise, if you start studying or pick up from an absence, make sure you know what is driving you to study. Think about things you want to DO in the language - how do you want to engage with people, culture, language, that sphere of the world.

If you are studying it for some external goal - say you want to learn it to ‘be more appealing as a job applicant’ make sure there’s something you’d DO with it (do you plan to speak to those language speakers at a job? translate? read articles in the language to improve your knowledge in the field? work in that country? do you also want to chat with friends/make friends? do you work with that country a lot and want more bg on the culture and want language to use social media/watch shows/chat online/read their news more etc?), or do you have no plans to actually use it concretely - if the second is the case, maybe a different ‘job skill’ would also help your resume and would personally be more valuable to you (maybe coding would help your job prospects, and you also think you’d use it to make an art portfolio website, for yourself or some fun little games or text-choose-your-adventure stories, maybe you would like a job specifically that codes as a part of the regular tasks, or you want to do website/portfolio coding commissions on the side even if you don’t end up getting a job that codes).

If you’ve got some hobby reason - same things apply. Will you actually use the language if you could? How? These questions will help you form concrete goals, and possibly even help you pick the study methods you’ll want to use more. If convo and chatting is a big goal, conversation skills and practice will be way more important earlier on and also motivate you since you’ll be making friends sooner etc. If say chinese or japanese novels are a big interest of yours, and you even read painful machine translate messes of novels just to get updates or read ones never-translated that you’re into, it might really pay off for you to prioritize reading and maybe even be practicing translating yourself (for yourself) earlier on - since you may end up at the least, learning to translate fics you want to read a bit better than the machine translations you rely on (or at least so you’ll be able to double check the original writing when mtls are painfully incorrect).

All these goals will have pretty clear smaller-milestones you’ll already know you want to aim for, and those smaller goals will make what study methods you’ll need to use for them a bit clearer. If your goal one day is to chat with people about all kinds of things, a good small step is to learn small talk, introductions, then start branching out one by one (or by depth of convo) into things you want to talk about. If it’s to connect with people, language partners might be a fantastic thing, and you might study a lot by helping someone else with your language, then they help you with theirs, the whole time you get to chat and share ideas and develop friendships. If its to read novels, small steps are learning maybe to skim novels for key information - so if a mtl novel is painfully wrong, you can pinpoint what line you want to word-by-word translate yourself for yourself. Maybe you prioritize learning a lot of words, and characters, and basic grammar, quickly, so that skimming gets easier - and so that picking up details gets easier piece by piece. Maybe you start with more basic topic novels (or comics), get to read novels you’d want to read anyway in that language, then move onto harder stuff as you progress. If you watch tons of dramas, and already know you sometimes watch no-subbed and just desperately try to follow it anyway because you want to watch it NOW or you wanted to watch THAT SHOW but it has no existing subs in your native language... now you know a major long term goal of yours, that you’ll use. You can plan smaller goals that build up to it, and also allow you to accomplish things you enjoy. Maybe first you work on following short fanmade videos with scenes, or following trailers, or watching youtubers/etc that you like watching and would probably try to watch without subs anyway. You compare the subbed versions to no subs or target language subs, you look up common unknown words that come up, common phrases etc. You work up to episodes of shows you’ve already seen and had subtitles for, and try to follow it this time without subs. Etc.

Yes, with all of these goals you’ll eventually need to do the less fun less your-goal oriented more basic tasks, like grammar and vocab acquisition and pronunciation learning/listening etc (whatever you personally like more or less). But you’ll have reasons WHY you’re doing it that motivate you. You’ll have a REASON you’re willing to slog through vocab flashcards or a grammar guide or a pronunciation/convo learner podcast. Because it will directly help you do something you WILL like. And you’ll know at least a PIECE of your study, WILL be some tasks you do know you’d do/enjoy anyway - like trying to chat, or reading, or watching tv, or listening to music, or browsing the internet, etc.

#rant #advice

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rigelmejo · 4 years ago

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me discovering japanese musicals and plays:

well i guess i really DO need to learn well now ToT

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some april notes as the month is getting closer to the end:

i have read 2 full graded readers (butterfly lovers pleco reader, chinese short stories ebook). i’ve read also part of the 500 word Sinolingua book (and looked through the vocab index and know every word in it). And part of Journey to the Center of the Earth Mandarin Companion (I should finish it today as I know all the words in it ToT its one of those cases where its so simple its almost boring).

i watched through the about 2 hour japanese Dracula Musical - no subtitles, and the first time i’ve ever braved either japanese nonstop that long OR japanese audio with zero subtitles in any language to rely on. i feel really ;-; accomplished compared to what i’ve done before aha

i watched 20 minutes of a japanese Persona 2 Innocent Sin last night (japanese subs). i do actually think with lets plays combined with subs and my chinese hanzi recognition, i could pick up some new words if i just did it More Often. Anyway this is just notable since the Dracula Musical made me brave enough TO try this with a game i have no context for lol.

i watched 25 episodes of a show in chinese this month (Two Souls in One). Depending on when it ends i might have watched 30 by the end of the month, since its about to finish.

i’ve read a bit over 20 chinese chapters this month - i probably won’t get where i wanted with hanshe, but i’m doing a good amount and that’s what matters. i got distracted with graded readers (which i do think are helping me).

i studied about 350 common words in the nukemarine memrise course this deck, along with the grammar and kanji i already had done. i’m hoping i’ll get this number up a bit more before my japanese games come in ToT (my ideal would be at 1000 words but... i’m trying to be realistic and my motivation just is NOT there to cram that many right now probably). Still, 350 in a month is pretty good progress!

just in general both chinese and japanese are doing better than expected right now. chinese has been doing how i’d like it - the show i’m watching never requires me to lookup words to follow or enjoy the plot, just some replaying scenes to catch more details sometimes. reading wise: reading these graded readers is giving me a REAL sense of accomplishment - seeing what was once super hard for me take only 30 minutes to read, seeing a book full of unknown words now be full of words i completely know, seeing myself speed read over a book that i used to have to slowly glance through and re-read to grasp. i HAVE made progress in the year since i last tried to read these and it shows. i am super excited to see what reading the little prince will be like since i have memories of struggling through it before (and when i watched the youtube video reading recently it i realized i knew all the words in those videos). also - i am reading Guardian right now. I am reading my print novel of Guardian! that’s been a goal since i started! And as of now it IS something I can do right now, no dictionary (as long as i’ve read the english translation at some point prior). The reason i’m not doing it more right now is my reading speed for it is SO slow. So hopefully a bit more practice will speed it up. I’m seeing now with graded readers how much my reading of THEM has sped up, so there’s hope.

I also read a info page for the bilingual Dracula today and it mentioned a 26-29 hour reading time and that makes me feel a lot less bad about my reading speed? Last time I calculated how long it would take me to read hanshe at my current speed (roughly 15 minutes per chapter), 55 chapters left was going to take me 26 hours to read. Now... unfortunately the chinese novels i read tend to be 100-150 chapter long beasts. But - to see that a french/english book of about 800 pages would take me about as long makes me feel like i’m not reading so slow as it feels. i think i am reading chinese slower than english, but not dramatically slower. I need to actually MEASURE my reading speed sometime soon. But I’m pretty sure its like ‘slow speaking speed’ to ‘normal speaking speed.’ it unfortunately is not faster than speaking speed, but i do think for the most part its usually at least that fast.

update read 2 japanese graded readers (but they are Very Easy) - Tadoku Graded Readers: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1yr867g4mSoMJ0WKXVRdZf07tSyC7LMB1 . Level 0, Volume 1, on book 3 now.

update: just l r method chapters 1 and 2 of A Brief History of Human Kind. Will maybe do chapter 3 tomorrow. I have the files all emailed to myself so its super convienient to do. I think what helped? Its actually paragraph by paragraph, lots of numbers in text about years so I can catch my place if I get lost, and the audio file is very gratefully split into chapters that actually COINCIDE WITH THE ACTUAL CHAPTER START AND ENDS. so many chinese audiobook chapters just end whenever and do NOT correspond to text start/ends so this is fantastic. also its all history and i’m a nerd, and i don’t have to think too hard about it.

#rant #april #april progress #yes im considering buying that dracula book just to see wtf it looks like

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