Would translating novels be a good way to get more proficient in my language?

I've got two asian language sunder my belt at the moment. One for school and the other for my own enjoyment, I have professional classes for my school one and am much further ahead in it than korean. I was wondering if novels might prove to be a good way to expand my vocabulary and become more proficient in the language?

 

...yes and no, yes because you get to expose yourself to more diverse methods of using the language, no because the tone in novels are often set in informal, which means it is rather bad if you take reference and write a report using the sentence structure of novels, but useful if you are writing a short story for your examination.

Vocab wise there will be slangs and swearings, good luck using them in your official exams.

 

Luckily I won't have any exams for this language until I decide to since I've also got my school language~

 

Then knock yourself out, have you decided to join which group? Check before joining the translation group because some has clause. If you are starting out on your own, good luck with creating a site and managing blog.

 

I'll prob start out on my own if I do as I'm probably nowhere near the level of other translators yet

 

Personally, i don't find that it helps with strengthening my second language because of some reasons.

A) the tone and words are rarely used in everyday life
b) there's not much reinforcement in learning (Unless you create flashcards for vocabulary and rote memorization)

 

Yes, ofc. There is a lot of novels vocab just waiting to be picked up by you.

 

Please translate Yuri/GL novel

 

Little Potato's comment on flashcards is similar to what I was going to mention, that if you are in a rush to translate and don't pause to learn/memorize along the way you likely won't absorb as much as you could. Especially if you start getting late to some deadlines you set.

 

Sadly I cant find any korean Yuri novels

 

To be honest, if your goal is to become more proficient in one of those Asian languages, it'd be more effective to translate from English to said language. That way, you'll be actively working on finding new expressions/words that fit the meaning, which will help you expand your vocabulary.
On the other hand, if you translate from, let's say, Korean to English, most of the time you'll end up "roughly understanding" what is being said in Korean and trying to make that general meaning fit in an English sentence, which is way easier if you're already proficient in English.
Reading X word in a sentence and googling its meaning won't have the same effect as having to come up with X word by yourself in order to write that sentence. The same way as watching someone solve a math problem won't have the same effect as solving it by yourself.

 

Sadly, with how my vocab is at the moment I would just be searching up what it I'd in korean too and I'm still struggling with grammar and the like so it wouldn't be even a decent translation.

 

the language you learn for your enjoyment, i assume you don't use it normally in your daily life? i'm not sure about your level of proficiency, but i think that if you want to translate novels using the language you learn for your enjoyment, it might be good for you to have a proficient translation-checker (human). since, then, you'll improve on the language better by having someone proficient in it to help you check.

 

My suggestion would be to not translate for others. Maybe grab something that's already translated, read the raws, make your own fun translation and check using the already translated work (trying to not rely too much on it). That way you keep it for your own entertainment and you avoid the pesky whiny comments.

 

Solo TL for your own fun, yeah, at times helps improve your grammar and vocab...But the flip side is that the novels you’re TLing are themselves written by amateurs and you get introduced to incorrect grammar patterns at times.
If you really do wanna bring in novels into learning a language, just reading one is better imo...TLing is just tiring after a point
Also, it depends on the genre you TL. Many Japanese don’t know the kanji for Mahou(Magic), but it pops up frequently in fantasy novels. Modern-day novels are much more helpful than fantasy/isekai, but also mean less readers, if it’s views you’re after.
I frankly learnt more Japanese from 6 months of checking out the NHK easy site and Dōgen’s videos than 2 years of TLing

 

Generally, yes. But if we're talking about inherent aspects besides of vocabularies (and kanji or similiar things) in linguistics like tone, grammar, and other things, it really depends on your source. Try using proofreaded commercial books (classic novels is far better than LN, but both is still valid) rather than WNs, since most of the time it was self-edited by the authors.

 

Here are all the ones that have been requested in the Pick-Up section: https://forum.novelupdates.com/search/55162006/?q=girls+love&t=post&o=date&c[node]=1019&c[prefix]=13

("The Indecent Relationship between Four Lovers" turned up in the search, but it's not yuri.)

 

There were lot of untranslated Korean yuri novel. I sent raw Link in yuri garden.
https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/faraway-cyprus-sea-gl.98008/ - Mermaid Fairy Tale Lesbian, Mermaid love princess rather than prince.

https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/gl-cherry-blood-kiss.98031/ - Vampire Cold-blooded Female lead
Human Naive Female Mc. Modern, sweet school life romance fantasy

https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/runaway-darling-otome-games.98034/ Yandere Otome games GL

https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/gl-the-count-is-unmarried-gl.98027/ Aristocracy Nobles, Western romance. Count x Female Knight,

https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/princess-of-the-moon-gl.98005/
Moon princess X Hot Devil Princess. My heart is excited that I wanted read it

https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/because-you-are-there-gl.98039/ Historical romance, Remind me of Her Tales Of Shim-Chong.

https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/sol-the-time-you-didnt-know-me-gl.98049/ rebirth, second chance, noble, politics, historical dramA

https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/the-mermaids-hunting-noble-gl.98055/ Noble, fantasy romance

https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/beauty-and-the-witch-gl.98040/#post-5371645
fantasy romance, witchXbeauty

https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/gl-the-secret-bride.98063/royal, noble and historical, marriage

[GL] 금란지교 historical romance
https://ridibooks.com/v2/Detail?id=425126474

 

you can improve if you translate printed novel~
hmm better if you translate novel aim to adult audience
for learning young adult novel is good one but imo you can do that with normal WN
for specific thing you can try translate text book or something like that~ wikipedia is way to go~
for faster improvement you can try translate A to B then use the result to reserve translate back to A

 

I prefer to think of them as real grammar patterns, as opposed to lies written in a textbook. Whichever way common people speak is the real one, while language only used by professors isn't actually useful.

As an example, I believe coffee should have neuter grammatical gender in Russian, even though elitists try to push that it has masculine grammatical gender.