I’ve been studying Japanese for years now. Yes, I probably could get farther if I started studying much more seriously, and honestly, I really should. But I’ve been studying long enough to become familiar with the language in the way beginners aren’t – even though my grammar and vocabulary are still fairly substandard. There are some things you just pick up by exposure. In this way, even though I’m only N5 level, I think I do have some advantages over beginners.
One of the biggest advantages is that I have come to almost intuitively understand that the Japanese language is very much context driven, and many words and particles are intended to convey gradations of intention rather than actual, concrete concepts. This stands in stark context to English, which is not a subtle language at all and relies very much on specificity. If you say something in English, you’ve said exactly what you intend to say, with as little room for interpretation as possible. This is not at all the case in Japanese, and it’s both a very different way of seeing language and something that makes translation (and by extension learning) very difficult.
Allow me to give a few examples. (I’m going to use romaji not because I don’t know the kana but because I can’t be bothered to type them right now.)
The first things I want to talk about are the particles “yo” and “ne”. These are foundational to the Japanese language, and are also very difficult to accurately translate into English, because they don’t have direct translations. “Ne” is a particle that implies uncertainty. It can be used to express the concept of “right”, as in “This is pretty cool, right?” (kore wa kakkoi desu ne), searching for agreement, a in “that’s pretty awful, isn’t it?” (sore wa chotto hidoi desu ne), etc. But there’s no exact words to translate, you have to kind of figure out what they were trying to say and choose the correct wording in English, which may actually vary.
“Yo” is another particle like that – it implies certainty. Duolingo, for example, has a very difficult time translating this particle. They use an exclamation point or “you know” (like “that’s pretty neat, you know”) but neither of those are exactly right. It could be something like “I’m 100 percent certain this is the case”, or something like that – it’s got elements of exclamation to it, but there are other constructs that fit exclamation a little better. The point is, that it’s the connotation and implication that’s important, and that’s really not and never is directly translatable. You just kinda have to take what fits best and use that.
“Yoroshiku onegaishimasu” is also rather difficult to translate, usually translated to “I look forward to working with you”, but it’s more that it’s an untranslatable phrase that has that connotation. That’s not its literal translation. Other words like that are “onegaishimasu”, “itadakimasu”, etc. All those words don’t really have direct translations, you just kind of have to pick the ones that are best for the situation.
As much as I don’t really like the work of many translators and/or localizers when it comes to anime, their job isn’t an easy one, and for this exact reason. While “time to dig in” is a VERY BAD translation of “itadakimasu”, it’s not entirely indefensible, mostly because that’s kind of how most Japanese people actually seem to use it. It’s just something you say before eating, like “Good bread, good meat, good God, let’s eat” (though that’s kinda seen as rude in American culture when you’re asked to say Grace at the table). I am not entirely sure that even the Japanese people see it as anything more than something they’re culturally indoctrinated into saying. But even then, it still has this connotation of ritual gratefulness, which “time to dig in” doesn’t convey at all.
This rears its ugly head in two situations: when you’re trying to learn Japanese, and when you’re trying to translate Japanese. If you don’t understand the culture, the connotations of what they say are completely obscured by the English translations chosen.
This, I think, is what actually makes it a difficult language. The rest is just mechanics. Particularly interminable and endless mechanics, but still, just mechanics.
By the way, this doesn’t give bad translators and localizers a pass. It’s the very ambiguity of Japanese language that makes it so easy for localizers to put their own unique (and borderline evil) stamp on anime localizations. They don’t understand the culture, they have no intention of understanding the culture, so they attempt to localize Japanese culture into American culture. That, well, doesn’t work, and they’re too ignorant to even understand that. This is why I’m learning Japanese. That’s the only real way to get rid of their rot. Once you understand Japanese, you can actually look at English translations and guess which words the Japanese people actually used, and work backwards from that. You can get a lot out of a scene that way that you couldn’t get otherwise, even if you don’t have access to the original Japanese for whatever reason. Localizers ruin that, and intentionally.