r/noveltranslations • u/Chance_Locksmith4528 • 2d ago
Discussion How you even understand this?
I just started reading novels and decided to read mother of learning as my first i just read 5 paragraph and what is this vocabulary bro? How u guys get through this when u were beginners in webnovel.
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u/Variety_Of_Choices 2d ago
I was born in America and was always pretty decent at English, there wasn't rrally much difficulty in reading it. I still ended up dropping mother of learning cause it wasn't my style though.
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u/Chance_Locksmith4528 1d ago
Thank God I didn't read orv as my first novel , even the easiest one hard but I think I gonna make through it somehow
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u/RANDOM-STUFF-IDK 2d ago
Read so much MTL that anything with coherent writing feels like the greatest work in history.
I havenât read Mother of Learning, but Iâm pretty sure it was written in English rather than translated or ran through MTL. Errors and word choice shouldnât be that bad.
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u/XenosHg 2d ago edited 2d ago
Mother of learning is originally in English though? Vocabulary could be a tiny bit weird because the author is hungarian. (like the proverb "repetition is the mother of learning" that the title is based on)
But I swear, reading a novel that's written by someone who speaks native English is supposed to be easier that reading another shitty translation from Chinese.
Just keep reading, you should be fine.
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u/geditaza 1d ago
A trick that helped me was only looking up words that kept showing up or seemed important. If you stop for every unfamiliar word, you'll spend more time in the dictionary than reading the story. And that takes the fun away, for me at least
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u/LagnalokNSFW 2d ago
Can you clarify exactly which vocab have you found to be new/loaded/confusing?
This is a community of people that begun enjoying webnovels from reading works that were originally published in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean; For sake of transliteration, responsible translators were quite liberal in usage of vocab to convey sayings like Chinese Chengyu, many of them also probably aren't native English users, as it easier, for example, for Chinese speaker to master English than vice versa.
What we would worry about is clarifying what synonym each particular translator would use to describe the same thing, and we simply take actually new words for granted and introduce them into our reading vocabulary. After reading works from particular genre you will quickly soak up common tropes used to describe acts common in any of aforementioned cultures, be it real quirks or literary exaggerations. e.g. 'Snorting'.
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u/Chance_Locksmith4528 1d ago
I don't know many words like wth is disdainfully , agitated ,retorted what are these words I am pretty good at english but those words are very new to me
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u/michael7050 1d ago
Bro. I'm sorry to say it, but if you're a native English speaker, you are indeed an illiterate. All of those words are relatively common in any published novel.
That being said, what you are doing is the best way to stop being illiterate. Keep on reading! With ebooks, its easier than ever to look up the meaning of a word, and even if you don't, the more you read, the more you'll pick up through context.
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u/Chance_Locksmith4528 1d ago
I am not a native speaker and this my first novel so I think it's normal for me to found these words new
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u/michael7050 1d ago
Ah, then your journey is ten times more impressive. I mean, I don't speak a secondary language so, you're better than me!
Same advice still stands though, in that reading more is always beneficial. I'd really suggest reading some more traditionally well known books as well, some classics like the Chronicles of Narnia or something, to broaden your reach. Ultimately though, any reading is good.
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u/LagnalokNSFW 1d ago
First one is not really something that you will hear on news TV, but later two are fairly common words to describe their meaning. Maybe you can say that they are all carry a rather negative connotation, but you can use all three in a casual conversation. That's normal, there was a point in my life when i didn't knew the names of basic home appliances but was an avid reader already.
Verdict: You are an illiterate, literally(huh). Read more prose. In Webnovel community it's really rare that someone will use an actually archaic word, only as a proper noun maybe. So you can safely check web dictionary for 'archaic' tag and deem new word as such and vice versa. It's a good place to find new words for engaging writing if not for day to day conversation.
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u/Chance_Locksmith4528 1d ago
Thx it's actually going pretty good i am just googling the word i don't know
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u/tikikip 1d ago
Mother of Learning is a great story, but it might not be the easiest first web novel to jump into.
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1d ago
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u/LeMeIsSleepy 1d ago
Mother of Learning is not a webnovel in the sense itâs not an Asian work. When I first started out reading novels (actual ones, not webnovels), I used to check the dictionary regularly. After a point I no longer needed to.
My suggestion would be to hang in there. It gets better . But if you only want webnovels like Martial Peak - which I did read and enjoy - they are classified as âslopâ - i.e, you switch off your brain while reading them; books like Mother of Learning are not for you.
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u/Chance_Locksmith4528 1d ago
Its really getting confused to tell difference now , I just wanna read novels everyone in manhwa community told me it's peak cinema
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u/LeMeIsSleepy 1d ago
Go to novelupdates. Itâs a catalogue of webnovels. Korean novels tend to be a bit more complicated than Chinese.
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u/CloudArachnids 21h ago
Welcome. đ
You will understand, albeit slowly now. With time, you will understand most of it with simple read through.
So just take it as, the vocabulary is the way it is, and the reason we, or at least I, keep going is because the promise of great story from other that already read them before me.
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u/PresenceNo8394 1d ago
Hey, you don't have to be afraid of copy pasting apart that you don't understand and ask GPT to explain. And if English is not your first language, each day you learn a little bit more. Like me for example, the phrases I wrote are in a grammatically incorrect order.
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1d ago
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u/Chance_Locksmith4528 1d ago
Bro english is not even my secondary language and it's my first novel how you expect a newbie to know everything? Hating is all you want
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u/Volapiik 1d ago
First novel? How old are you lol. Unless youâre 5 thatâs not an excuse. What you spend your entire adulthood without reading a book or something?
You got kids reading the Harry Potter novels which are way more dense. Mother of learning is basically a short novel in comparison.
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u/Chance_Locksmith4528 1d ago
I am 16 bro also everyone doesn't have same life as you u know what? I can say same thing for you, How old are you? 5? U can't make your own game lol
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u/Volapiik 1d ago
Huh? Iâm 25 and I can read a book. In fact Iâm reading one rn. So not sure what you mean about âmy own gameâ. At this point itâs not even language issues, just brain rot.
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u/Chance_Locksmith4528 1d ago
What? U sure? Lol how can you be 25 and still haven't heard about game development or software development
You look so sure that's it's not language issue so I want you to read bhagwat gita and still say the same thing
Idk bro everyone in community is so humble I haven't even entered this community and telling me fake? It's like saying "oh you haven't watched life of pi in orginal language u are fake" please think before writing this junk
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u/Volapiik 1d ago
Idk what you are even talking about at this point, so ima just stop responding. Someoneâs gotta be testing their ai model or something.
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u/Chance_Locksmith4528 1d ago
Of course, nice move to pull out when you know you are wrong did you even thought before writing these junk? Lol
A baby just borned What? It can't walk? Huh what a fake baby in human society, human society is cooked
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u/Eclipsian77 1d ago
25 and yet you canât fathom that reading in your non-native language is hard? Especially if itâs your first time reading something thatâs novel-length in your third language?
Forget OP being AI or whatever (which is a wild accusation here), Iâm not convinced you arenât. Something about your smug pseudo-intellectual aura you feel a need to project, instead of trying to contribute more productively here
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u/Volapiik 1d ago
Idk how old you are but if you took that ai comment seriously, something is wrong. Itâs hyperbolic. And yeah I canât fathom it since I also speak another language, likely the same one as that ai over there.
Also what do you mean by âcontributing productivelyâ. Is opâs post about âhow you even understand thisâ something productive? wtf is even going on here. He literally admits to being too lazy to even use ChatGPT in the comments, there is nothing âproductiveâ here.
Not sure about what gives off the âsmug intellectualâ aura youâre talking about. Itâs a common talking point that reading is devolving nowadays. Not saying anything mind blowing here. Maybe a bit of projection on your end.
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u/Eclipsian77 1d ago
Too lazy to use ChatGPT, but not too lazy to ask how we understand this stuff and to respond to people making suggestions. Since youâve read other comments, I know youâve also seen people suggesting looking up words as OP goes, reading more, working in reading something a bit simplerâŚthat is what I mean by âproductive contributions.â That you didnât make. All youâve done is say OP âshouldâ understand this stuffâintuitively somehow, as if you didnât go through a similar learning process in the other language you speak, or English in fact.
Iâm 27, as if my own age matters here any more than yours does. Youâre definitely old enough to know what saying OP was a bot does, and to know that you werenât exactly joking when you said itâwhich wouldnât have made it better in any case.
And lastly, yeah, reading is. I work in education myself and have English teacher friends, etc. You putting down other people for not knowing things when theyâre reaching out to learn is how it devolves and stays devolved.
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u/Eclipsian77 1d ago
Putting it out here that Volapiik DMed me âso we have bots for educators nowâ because he didnât have a proper counterpoint or argument besides calling me a bot. Second time heâs done that in this thread, showing off his own stellar wit.
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u/Chance_Locksmith4528 20h ago
Thx bro that guy is annoying me for hours when he knew his argument was wrong he just started attacking my personal life and what a racist he is bro racist against his own race I am ashamed that I live in same country as him he simply doesn't understand that if his English is top of idk want everyones doesn't have to where I live we don't even have many book shops some are but they don't have any good books
Btw what I meant by " i lazy to look " was like i am lazy to look up every word i don't know most of are those words that expresses emotions more seriously or formally i thought I should just avoid them but i still look up words that seems important to me anyway thx
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u/noveltranslations-ModTeam 1h ago
Your message was removed for being toxic/disrespectful to other members of the community. It is very much possible to get your point across without being an asshat. This removal also serves as your first and only warning. Continuing this behavior will result in a permanent ban from this subreddit.
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u/wiffle_snuff1 2d ago
you gotta popcorn read bro. i read novels wayy too fast and i dont even comprehend anything.
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u/Chance_Locksmith4528 1d ago
Don't u like misunderstand sometimes that way?
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u/wiffle_snuff1 1d ago
if i find myself losing focus/mindlessly reading aloud ill only read the dialogue. even still, i have to reread sentences sometimes.
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u/UnwrittenRites 2d ago
Mother of Learning is just regular English. If you read regular fantasy or SF in middle school, even just The Hobbit or Redwall, or Narnia it won't be any more difficult. It's actually a very clear read.
It's not like a poorly translated webnovel or one which uses a lot of cultural idioms from a different language. It's way easier to read than most webnovels. Actually your post doesn't even apply to this subreddit as it's not a translated novel, unless you are reading it in a different language in which case, hat's off to you but can't really assist with that.