This is the second language learning post.

If you’d like to just do the survey and skip scrolling to the bottom, then click here. Otherwise, keep reading…

Peak and Language Learning Updates

So…this post was meant to come out at the end of July originally. (I’ll schedule a new version of the language learning post for then, haha…) I’ve been reading Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool and it seems to have some immediate applications to my language learning…

…well, my enthusiasm is good and all, but…since last time, the only significant progress I’ve made, language goals-wise, is chipping away at some of my TBR pile. I haven’t gotten anywhere with the Shin Kanzen Master books and if I had taken the July test in a different city, I’d probably be in trouble at this point because I would need to start cramming practice tests in June, but…that didn’t happen, so here we are.

So why did I bring up this book, which seemingly has nothing to do with anime and manga? I linked that review for you earlier so you don’t have to read it, but it basically suggests a framework which has obvious applications for my language learning goals – it says the things I’ve been missing are:

• defined goals as benchmarks for which to measure improvement (…as you know from the very first post, I sort of have those already – for example, reading the difficult manga – but I don’t like to be boxed in by such specific goals that I would keep setting them.)
• feedback (I can easily incorporate that – for example, the answer key at the back of Shin Kanzen Master would traditionally be saved as the last thing anyone reads – and indeed, that’s what I was intending to do up until I started reading Peak – but correcting as I go gives me feedback.)

I’ve since abandoned the poetry competition (mentioned in the 1st language learning post) because while winning it would be good and all, I don’t know if I want to specialise in literary translation. I mean, I don’t know what I want to specialise in yet and I’d be open to specialising in basically anything, but I could always end up specialising in a completely different field…(At this stage, I’d like to think I’d specialise in tourism translation because that’s the kind of translation I like, but…I don’t know. I’m open to anything.)

I haven’t done much in terms of listening since the last post, although surprisingly, I sat behind some Japanese-speaking ladies on the way to a job interview earlier this month and, even without the full picture, I was able to follow each conversation as it happened…which I’d say is a success. I’m at the point where my Japanese understanding is mostly subconscious, so while I can pull this off enough to scrape by in the JLPT, there’s still errors in my comprehension from when I took a hiatus in my 3rd year of undergraduate studies – for example, I’ll get the subject of the sentence wrong (I do that a lot and for a language like Japanese which is prone to omission of the subject, it can be rather fatal).

Update: I managed to stay motivated about my goals for some days while reading Peak, but because most of those days happened to be days when work shifts occurred…after correcting everything and analysing where I sucked, I only managed to do a single day of grammar, then a day of reading. *sweatdrops*

Motivation

I also realised I haven’t really addressed my backstory regarding translation, which is a critical thing when it’s basically the backbone of this blog as it stands now. There’s a short version on the about page, but originally I was just learning Japanese for compulsory high school language classes. I chose Japanese because it was either that or German and I was already learning (simplified) Chinese in both daytime and extracurricular classes, so Japanese wouldn’t be too hard to master, right…? As I note in another post, yes and no. When you have a similar background to what you’re trying to learn, it’s easier to learn some things and not others because you have to “unlearn” what you learnt in one place to make it work elsewhere.

I found myself finding motivation to keep learning by myself through my hobbies – finding vocabulary led to finding and explaining puns as a way to explain how the pieces fit together, then comparing translations to explain how those pieces fit together…the thought processes behind this are basically my bread and butter as an anime and manga blogger now. (It’s rather telling, but I see translation as a puzzle where the pieces may not seem related at first. This work in my translation studies called translation a “palimpsest“, which also works.) Retroactively, I also found more reasons to love Japan through memories of friends and food.

Interestingly, at one point I had the chance to get into a sport class known as “Fit 4 Life” (number included) – essentially “sport for the non-sporty”. I hate sports because thanks to my…unique…way of walking and balancing, my physical limitations are much lower than others’. Thus, I wanted this class because it was more focussed on maintenance of overall fitness, rather than… whatever else sport classes do. This was something (I thought) was pretty revolutionary about a decade ago. The career advisor I saw at this time placed precedence on Japanese over this sport class due to some priority system the class scheduling had, but as you already know, the butterfly effect kicked in here.

A few years past this point and I swapped Chinese for Japanese in extracurricular classes. Despite the handicap I had – due to a discrepancy in how classes were run between the languages, I was put into the Japanese class above my actual level when I made the language switch – I rose to the challenge. I received an award for Japanese around this time and I began to see myself as someone who could really do this as a career, although I prioritised cybersecurity, since it was my big moneymaker and I could simultaneously challenge the status quo of “dudes in tech” that way.

Seeking the next challenge, I started translating tweets about a magical boy series for fun and language maintenance – this eventually became Magical Girls…and Cerulean – then I branched out into scanlation from there.

After failing on the cybersecurity and scanlation fronts (plus starting the Spellbook), I took a good look at what I had left. By this point, my identity as a student of Japanese language and culture had become impossible to unlink from my identity as a person – it was effectively connected to a lot of things that made me “me” – but I’d set Japanese aside because a minor was only meant to be a certain amount of classes and pursuing a major in it would have meant I exceeded that amount at the cost of neglecting international studies. I still loved international studies enough to complete the major, but by the time I made Japanese my second major by replacing what I’d failed (therefore enabling me to take the translation Master’s), I’d been about 10 months out of Japanese practice. The damage was done.

Now you understand where I come from, I want to declare job-wise, I’ve decided I want everything – that is, to be a blogger and translator with a side hustle of eBay selling to keep me afloat in tough times. (It sounds greedy, but haven’t you seen how successful bloggers tend to be things like “consultants, bloggers and podcasters” or some weird mishmash like that?)

I’ve gone through Ifeanyi Omoike’s motivational email series (as of the time of writing, the website I got it from – My Savvy Mind – doesn’t seem to be available) and so the motivation to make the leap is there…like my language goals, the problem with my job transition is I just don’t have the track record to back it up. I feel like I can’t get rid of all the hard work I’ve done to get where I am now for each of these things, even if trying to be the best at so many things will inevitably send me barking up the wrong tree a lot.

Moving Forward

…all this rambling brings me to this survey (which will give me clarity for the blogging side of things and, for you, a peek into what might be coming next). I would like to reiterate to you, as of the time of writing (in mid-June 2023), I’m not in any financial trouble and all this fretting over my student debt has revealed money is secondary to happiness for me (although I am slightly broke from a bunch of big payments). No matter the outcome of this survey and what I do with it, I will probably be fine.

Keep seeking the magic,

Aria.