Learning Japanese by translating and generating content

In today’s article, I will talk about what I do to deepen my study of Japanese. I personally have a great difficulty in studies, I am a big procrastinator. I can’t find the time to read and study the way I want, so the best way for me to do this without feeling bored is by writing for the site. This ends up generating some questions:

• What are the benefits of studying Japanese by writing articles?
• What content to study and write?
• What is the correct way to generate content and study at the same time?
• How to be sure that what I am writing is correct?

The main objective of this article is to provide encouragement to you Japanese learners to collaborate with the site while also increasing progress in studying Japanese. Therefore, I invite you to be part of this family and help you study Japanese through research and writing articles that can also help other people learn Japanese.

By the time you finish reading this article, you will know in detail how to create your own study material, and thus we encourage you to send the content generated by you to our site through the Submit Article page. This way, we can increasingly generate and share content with the public.

What content to study and write?

Suki Desu encourages people to study in a free way, just absorbing content and texts. Below is a list of things we encourage you to study and that we are also developing for our members area.

• Study songs;
• Study manga;
• Study anime;
• Study texts;
• Study poems;
• Study Kanji;
• Study games;

Practically any material or media can be used to learn Japanese, even signs, messages, and labels. To carry out this study, we encourage people to examine each sentence and word of the content they wish to study. You can simply take a notebook or Word document, write the sentences, and below them put the word in Japanese, the reading, and the detailed meaning; while doing this, you are generating sentences for Anki.

How to generate content and be sure it is correct?

We have already mentioned that to generate content and study at the same time, we encourage studying sentences from texts or manga. A great example of how to create content is the Japanese songs we break down on our site. See an example of a sentence studied in the article Translating songs – Oto No Naru Hou – Goose House.

でももう平気　ひとりでは背負わないでいいんだよ
Demo mou henki hitori de wa seouwanaide iinda yo
But it’s okay, you don’t have to bear it alone

• でも – but, however
• もう – interjection used to strengthen the expression of an emotion
• 平気 – okay, calm, relaxed, unconcerned
• ひとり – alone, one person
• 背負う – to overload, to take on, responsibility, to carry, to be in front 
  • 背負わない – negative

This should be the structure of the sentences from the studied material. Now, how do you discover the meaning of each word and fully understand the meaning of the sentence? First of all, you should not use just one dictionary or translation tool. When translating and discovering the meaning of each word, I check in several places that I will list below:

• I search for the word on Jisho. (English site);
• I search for the word on Google;
• I translate using Google Translate;
• I study its use in other sentences to understand the meaning;
• I translate the English translation of the Japanese word into Portuguese;

Most words you can only find the meaning on English sites. This is not a problem, since you can use Google Translate to translate the page, just be careful not to fall into the traps of these automatic translators; that’s why we check the meaning from various different sites and even research the meaning of the translation from English to ensure the real meaning of the word. (In the VIP area of our site, we teach step by step how to research and do this).

If you simply throw the word into Google to get a translation, you will certainly have some error, but if you research in various sources, see discussions about the meaning in forums, usage examples, it is very unlikely that you will end up making a mistake. At the same time that you do this, you are studying and memorizing that word in your mind without forcing it.

Benefits of studying by creating content

There are countless benefits to studying by translating texts and generating content. I will list some below:

• By translating and generating study content, you can share and help others learn and study Japanese;
• By translating and thoroughly researching the meaning of words on Google, you enhance your research skills, aid in memorization, and even end up learning a bit of English;
• Studying by translating texts and songs is a perfect way to overcome procrastination, studying in a fun way without feeling bored;
• Studying sentences is the best way to learn and memorize any language. It tends to be 10x more effective than trying to memorize vocabulary tables or fill in gaps on a sheet;
• Over time spent studying each sentence and word, you also learn the grammar of the Japanese language;
• By studying sentences without worrying about writing, you end up memorizing various Kanji without even realizing it;

By studying and sending your study content to our site, you are strongly contributing to the creation of content for the site. Don’t waste your time, study, write, translate, research, and send it to our team; we will review, publish, and even improve it. Remember that you don’t have to limit yourself to this way of studying; you can write anything related to the Japanese language or about Japan and send it to our site. xD