Where can I find a good textbook that will teach me how to do Japanese-English translation?

Answer 1

barnes and nobles.

Answer 2

Are you fluent in both Japanese and English?

Or, do you just want a quick assist to discover the meaning of some characters (kanji)?

Translating between languages is a difficult prospect. What is said or intended in one language may not even be expressable in another. A translator must convey the cultural meaning and intent from one language to another, often changing the individual words and expression quite drastically.

When I was learning to read japanese, I used a children's book that my son read in English. The English title is "Frog and Toad are Friends." Subject, verb, object; nice little sentence. The Japanese title is "ふたりは　ともだち” Futari-wa tomodachi. This exactly translates to "Two people friend" in English, but the meaning is really something like "These two are friends", with the Frog and Toad aspect, and the verb, implied to the reader.

As the sentences, concepts, and cultural differences become more complex, the idea of translation also becomes more difficult.

If you want a single book on tarnslation, I would recommend the book "Nineteen Ways of looking at Wang Wei" by Octavio Paz, which shows the reader 19 different translations of a single poem, and discusses them in depth. It is about a Chinese poem, but the discussions of translation are universal.

Good luck in your quest, Sato-San. Please let me know how it goes.

Answer 3

If you are referring to actual translation, there is not a book in the world that will actually teach you how to translate Japanese into English. It's one of the most diffiuclt language pairs to translate, and takes years of on-the-job training.

Answer 4

I don't think there is a book for that. Knowing and understanding Japanese and English would just naturally lead to being about to do proper translations. It just comes down to studying the language and learning it very well. (Such as gaining a major in it at college.)

However, Kodansha makes some good books [in my opinion] when it comes to teaching you how to learn Japanese as well as seeing how the language functions. It's a large and well-known company, so a local library probably carries at least one or two of their books and can help to save you some money.

Answer 5

i used books called kimono level1 then kimono level 2 (i took the class for an easy a cuz i'v known japanese since i was 4)

Answer 6

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