The results of my placement test? The results of 3 years of highschool Japanese?
-Japanese 102-
I'm not terribly suprised, nor am I terribly dissappointed. I got a step above 101 which means skipping the alphabet, basic greetings, and the te form song. It's been a while since I've had a language class, so I'm fine with easing back into that sort of rythm.
But! Getting into 102 makes me eligible for "Independant Japanese Practice" an additional 1 credit on top of Japanese 102. Japanese 169 apparently is an independant study of Japanese on any topic of my choosing. I would meet with an advisor once a week, and check up with them and show them the sort of work I've done.
Now I see here an opportunity. When I came to Japan I decided to leave my board games and card games at home because I didn't know how to translate them into Japanese. However, if I have a professor helping me, I could do research into Japanese board games (I'm assuming they have some) as well as video games (I know they have those) and work with translating them back and forth.
I asked the woman in charge of the department about this after she'd given a small presentation, and she seemed keen on the idea. Apparently manga translations are a popular choice, I hope I can make mine more practical.
We'd come up with syllabi ourselves with help from our advisor. If I could learn enough Japanese to explain a board game or explain controls in a video game, this trip will be invaluable to my abilities as a designer.
-A Word of Encouragement-
To all my friends in college, and to all my friends who have a multitude of resources around you. Never be afraid of putting forth any sort of crazy schemes, or creative endeavors to the people around you. Not only are people willing to help, but many will have idea's and enthusiasm that will help you succeed in ways you never thought possible.
Not always, but more often than you think.
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Ahaha, you sang the te form song as well? I didn't realize it was so widespread among Japanese teachers, but it's definitely an excellent memory device.
ReplyDeleteI've never really heard of any Japanese board games aside from Go and Shogi...mostly video games and a massive variety of collectible card games come to mind. It'll be very interesting to see what you find!
I think there are actually many variations on the -te song. Ours was "Twinkle Twinkle," but I've heard and seen others doing a version to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
ReplyDeleteTrying to go from playing a Japanese card/board game or a [relatively] simple video game and translating it for an English speaking audience would be easier for starters. Going from your native tongue back into a learned tongue is usually considered much more difficult and prone to the cliched problem of lost in translation. (This is according to the singular translation and theory class I took as an undergrad, so perhaps my view is somewhat irrelevant.)
As far as available material, I think Rob might be right. I don't recall there being many board games aside from Go (and its variants) and Shogi. I must admit that the thought of an attempt at bringing the Japanese into LNOE or RFTG or PR puts a smile on my face - you should do it.
Thanks for the advice guys. I figure that I'll start out with hanafuda sort of stuff for words like "draw, discard, deck, play" and things like shoji for "piece, move, take, objective"
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping that I can find someone that knows a bit about traditional japanese games, and maybe shed some light as to why there seems to be so few contemporary analog japanese games.
I figure if I manage to get a group of Japanese students together to play some sort of simple board game, they're reactions will tell me a whole lot.
I think I will definately have better luck with video games though. I'm hoping that I can find one that is very light on kanji.
Also our te-song was to the tune of "Oh Christmas tree". Which was pretty memorable apparently because I keep using it.