An Aero-Gamer’s Guide to Using ATLAS

Playing eroge WITHOUT using Machine Translators?

The use of machine translators receives a lot of criticism, much of which is probably called for. Though hard-core advocates of MTs may say otherwise, deep down we all know that machine translators are “bearable” at best.

This section cover how you can play VNs and eroge without the use of MT. So if machine translations make you rage, you may wanna consider the following methods. Be warned, these methods are no walk in the park, and require a decent amount of effort on your part. No would would blame you if you just SETTLED with translated games =3.

The Machine Assisted Method

I’m pretty sure there isn’t any official name for this method, which makes referring to it a bit annoying. So for the purposes of this section I’ve decided to call this method the “Machine Assisted Method”. I know of quite a number of people who use this method and it’s also what I currently use to play eroge. If this method is used properly, you can understand up to 100% of an eroge.

Unfortunately, this method takes a lot more time and effort than the using machine translators because you’ll be essentially reading a game raw. The difference is that you’ll have a real time dictionary on the side to help with vocab and kanji. This method requires a decent understanding of Japanese grammar, and the ability to read hiragana. So you don’t need go as far as learning Japanese,  but you certainly need to get quite familiar with it. This method is an on-going learning process, and whether you achieve 100% accuracy is solely dependent on how much effort you put into using it.

So if I haven’t scared away, I’ll very briefly explain how you would go about using the “Machine Assisted Method” to play eroge.

1)      Learn to read Hiragana

If you don’t know what Hiragana is, it’s one part of the Japanese writing system. The Japanese writing system is split into 3 main parts:

• Hiragana
• Katakana
• Kanji

You can think of Hiragana as the Japanese equivalent of the English alphabet. In order to use this method, being able to read Hiragana is the minimum requirement.

Katakana is similar to Hiragana, but not nearly as common. Katakana’s generally used for words that have a foreign origin. I suggest you leave katakana as something to learn later down the road.

Kanji characters originate from China and unfortunately there are A LOT of them. I think you need to know somewhere around 2000 kanji in order to comfortably read Japanese literature. Kanji can be used individually, in combination with hiragana, or in combination with other Kanji. Many people give up on reading Japanese because the Kanji hurdle is a real bitch. However don’t worry, Mecab and Jparser can help for MOST of your kanji needs.

There’s actually another part of the Japanese writing system called “Romaji”. Romaji is basically Japanese text expressed using the English alphabet. Anyone reading this guide will most likely be very familiar with Romaji because it’s often used for the titles of anime and manga. In fact, the terms “anime” and “manga” are technically Romaji. For native English speakers the use of Romaji can be very tempting. However, I would advise relying on Romaji as little as possible because it’ll hinder the learning process.

Anyway here’s an example of all of the writing methods:

Hiragana: ねこ

Katakana: ネコ

Kanji: 猫

Romaji: neko

Unfortunately, I can’t really give a recommendation on how you should go about learning hiragana. There are TONS of resources out there for learning hiragana, so just find something that suits your learning style. Just make sure you learn both the sound of each Hiragana character and what it looks like.

Just for reference, I personally learned Hiragana by writing out the whole Hiragana chart a few times.

2)      Get a feel for Japanese

Though learning Japanese would be the best option, for the purposes of this method you only need to have achieve a decent feel for it. So with the goal of you achieving this, I suggest you read “Tae Kim’s Japanese Grammar Guide”

Tae Kim’s grammar guide covers a large range of Japanese grammar, and includes examples for each point covered. It doesn’t use that much Romaji, so learning Hiragana is a prerequisite. You may be interested to know that this guide also talks a lot about Hiragana and Katakana at the start. So you may want to use this guide to as a resource to learn Hiragana.

Ideally after you’re done with Tae Kim’s grammar guide you should:

A)      Have a feel for Japanese grammar in that you have knowledge of which grammar forms exist and what they mean; and

B)      Be able to recognise the various grammar forms when looking at Japanese text

I’ll illustrate what the above two points mean with an example:

In the above image I have used Jparser to get the meaning of the following word:

「集中できない」

Jparser tells us that the underlined word means “to concentrate”, and also tells us that the word is in the “potential negative” grammar form.

“A” would mean knowing what the “potential negative form” represents. With the information from Jparser you should be able to reach the conclusion that the above means “can’t concentrate”.

Being able to do “B” would mean that you are able to recognise the grammar form without using Jparser. In that case, it would mean that you could recognise the word is in the “potential negative form” when you see characters「できない」.  Being able to do this would significantly help with the speed you play at.

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you can’t do B very well to start off with. B should naturally develop for some stuff as you play more and see the grammar forms used in actual context.

Anyway read Tae Kim’s grammar guide and read it well.

Alternatively you can use some other good Japanese grammar resource that you find out there. However, chances are that any resource you find will attempt to TEACH you Japanese grammar, whereas Tae Kim’s is really more of a grammar reference resource. Whether you choose to actually learn Japanese is entirely up to you. But remember;  for the purposes of this method, all you only need is a feel for Japanese grammar.

3)      Starting off

After doing the above you should be SOMEWHAT ready to start using the Machine Assisted method. Sorry for being vague here, but whether you’re ready or not is solely dependent on how well you did the above two steps.

If you have not done so already, set up TA, ITH, Jparser, and Mecab as I have covered in the guide. If you have any machine translators enabled, turn them off.

So just how do you go about using this method? It’s simple really:

i)                    Read the Japanese; then

ii)                   Use Jparser to help with vocab, kanji, and grammar

THAT’S IT. There’s no special technique or anything, and you’re essentially reading the game RAW. Here’s an example:

If you’re new to Japanese, you’ll probably be using Jparser for basically EVERY word like I have done above. In one of the images above, I have underlined one of the words and circled a couple others. Jparser has interpreted the text incorrectly, and as a result, given incorrect dictionary output. It should be pretty easy to tell that あまね is a person’s name, especially when you listen to the audio. Jparser has also incorrectly interpreted the SECOND instance of んち (where it’s after the name “あまね”).  This one is trickier to spot, but again, should be somewhat easy to figure out once you’ve listened to the audio dialogue of the scene.

The rough Translation of the above sentence: “Sneaking into someone’s house as you please again! Isn’t your house is next door?” [The question is rhetorical]

In the unfortunate situation where you find yourself not understanding ANYTHING, you probably need to go polish up your Japanese grammar more. YES, I KNOW IT SUCKS. I said this was an alternative method, but I never said that it was an EASY one.

If you decide to give this method a try the first game I suggest you play is the visual Novel “Hanahira”, the game I used for the above example. Hanahira uses very simple Japanese and something like 95% of the text is voiced. I recommend Hanahira SO much that I’ll provide download links for it:

Download links:

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The “Sono Hanabira ni Kuchizuke o” series is made by the same company as Hanahira and has a similar level of Japanese to Hanahira. So give those a try if you feel like you aren’t ready to tackle harder level eroge yet and/or if you want to see some REAL yuri action =3.

After you build up a little confidence, I recommend moving onto the slightly more difficult eroge “Lover Able”.

Example:

Rough Translation: “To be honest, I’m surprised. To think that you would come and save me like this”

Where you proceed from here is entirely up to you. I recommend sticking to games which use easy Japanese, such as chara-ge or nukige. If you’re interesting you can check my list of complete eroge, which also shows which method I used to play the game.

4)      Practice, practice and more practice

As the saying goes, “Practice makes perfect”.

As you play more, you’ll start being able to recognise a lot of vocab simply because you’ve seen it so many times. As well as this, your ability to recognise grammar will develop and grow as you see it used in context. However every so often you might want to check to see if you’re satisfied the amount of grammar you’re recognising. If you’re not satisfied, you may want to skim through Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide for a quick refresher.

5)      Kanji?

Unlike vocab, kanji is a lot harder to pick up from repeated exposure.  Fortunately Jparser somewhat takes out the need to learn Kanji.

However complete dependence on Jparser for Kanji will mean that the fastest speed you’ll ever achieve will be limited. So if you’re interested in attaining a faster reading speed, it’s probably best to at least have SOME knowledge of kanji.

For total beginners to kanji, I recommend using the book ‘Remember the Kanji’ (aka RTK) by James Heisig. This book teaches you to make ‘stories’ using the various components of a Kanji is made up of to memorise a single assigned meaning. RTK gives you some stories for the some of the beginning kanji, but the bulk of the book just tells you what components make up each Kanji character. In that regard, I suggest you use this site:

http://kanji.koohii.com/

This site focuses on learning kanji using RTK. Here members share the stories they create to remember various Kanji. The site is very well made and also includes a flashcard system to help you ‘remember the Kanji’.

After you’re done with this book, you’ll be able to recognise and associate a single meaning to over 2000 different Kanji characters. Once Kanji characters hold more meaning to you, picking up combinations of Kanji should become a lot easier.

Just know that this book does nothing in the ways of actually learning to READ Kanji. However going into that area would be entering the realm of learning Japanese, which isn’t necessary for the Machine Assisted method of playing. If you’re interested in learning Japanese, read the section below.

Learn Japanese

Learning Japanese is probably the first thing that comes to mind when you think of playing untranslated games. In fact, eroge is the exact reason why I started studying Japanese. Naturally this is path is very difficult. If you do decide to learn Japanese, it’s very likely that you’ll adopt the Machine Assisted Method.

Unfortunately the only thing I can do here is suggest a few useful techniques and resources that I have stumbled upon to help you with the general learning process. I don’t know of any “magic” method that lets you learn Japanese within so and so time-frame.

If any of the below resources require a password, it’s “amaenbou”

• GENKI (no links)

This textbook series is what I used to start my Japanese self-studies. The content is spread into 23 lessons over the two textbooks. Each lesson contains a dialogue conversation, a vocab list, grammar explanations and lots of practice exercises. Accompanying audio for the dialogue conversations is extremely useful and the workbooks provide even more practice exercises for you apply the knowledge you’ve gained from each lesson. Genki also has accompanying kanji lessons and you learn about 317 kanji characters in total. A number of Universities/Colleges use Genki for their Japanese courses, but I believe that it’s also a very good resource for self-study. However if you use it for self-study, it’s probably wise if you have access to the answer book.

A 2^nd edition for this series was released in 2011. I’ve used both editions and I can easily say that I prefer the 2^nd edition by far. The 2^nd edition has improved grammar explanations, higher quality audio, and replaces out-dated terms used in the previous edition. So if possible, you want to use the 2^nd edition.

• A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar (Basic, intermediate and advance)

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This series of dictionaries provide very detailed explanations of Japanese grammar and also provides a number of examples for each point covered. These dictionaries are the ideal resource to accompany your Japanese studies or even as a resource to learn Japanese grammar from. The “basic” dictionary uses “romaji”, which beginners to the language might find to be helpful.

• Remember the Kanji

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Though I talked about this a lot in the section above, I’ll speak about my own experience of using RTK here.

Despite being Chinese, I had very little knowledge of Kanji when I started learning Japanese. So basically I started off with no advantage and had to learn kanji from scratch. I found RTK to be a very good method to learn to recognise Kanji and to learn how to write them.

However the usefulness of the book is limited to just those above two benefits and you don’t learn ANY Kanji readings.  If you’re serious about learning to read Kanji, I suggest you go through this book as fast as you can and then move on to learning the actual readings for Kanji.

• Flashcards

The use flashcards is an invaluable resource when it comes to learning vocab and kanji. Hell, it can even help you learn grammar. The flashcard program that I’m currently using is called Anki and it makes use of the “spaced repetition” learning technique. As you continue to correctly answer a given flashcard, Anki will slowly increase the due review period for that flashcard. For example assuming you continue to answer a particular flashcard correctly:

Day 1 – next review in 2 days
Day 3 – next review in 5 days
Day 8 – next review in 11 days
Day 19 – next review in 25 days
Day 44 – next review 43 days

… And so on.

Anki can be found here: http://ankisrs.net/anki2.html

The format you use for your flashcards is entirely up to you; do whatever suits your needs. Over the time period I’ve been using Anki, my flashcards have undergone a number of changes. The current format I’m using looking something like this:

Front – Example Sentence
Front – Expression
Back – Reading
Back – Meaning
Back – Type of word

As for where you get flashcard materials, I personally get vocab and kanji from eroge. Every time I see a word I don’t know, I’ll copy the sentence into a word file and highlight the word for future reference. After I’ve accumulated a bunch of words, I search them up on jisho.org. Here I get the details of the words and find appropriate example sentences. If no sentences are available, I use the dialogue I extracted from the eroge as the example sentence.

Flashcards are most effective if done on a daily basis. I personally feel guilty if I don’t complete my days’ worth of flashcards =3.

• Pimsleur’s Japanese

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This collection of audio files aims to teach users to speak and understand essential Japanese. The material is split into daily lessons, each being 30 minutes long (90 lessons in total). The lessons progress move at a nice pace and previously covered material is repeatedly reviewed.

Now let’s move onto the bad points about Pimsleur’s.

The ‘voice actors’ for disc 1 provide very clear and authentic dialogue for you to learn from. However these voice actors change from disc 2 onwards and these new ones sound TERRIBLE. In particular the woman voice is particularly bad and she sounds like she’s sarcastic all the time. However the actual content of the lessons is the same quality as that of the first disc.

More importantly, the Pimsleur doesn’t address grammar forms at all. Forgot creating the different grammar forms, you aren’t even taught the NAMES of them. Each grammar form of a particular word is taught to you as new vocabulary, which trust me, isn’t very efficient.

Despite these downsides, I can say that Pimsleur’s Japanese is a pretty neat resource for beginners to Japanese. However I suggest you use it in conjunction with resources that teach you Japanese Grammar.

• Shadowing

When I took up formal Japanese lessons at the start of 2012, this is one of the techniques that were taught to me by my Japanese lecturer. Shadowing is a technique where you repeat Japanese speech directly after hearing it. By doing this repeatedly you learn to speak Japanese at a more natural speed, learn to properly pronounce Japanese terms, retain vocabulary and retain grammar.

Like with flashcards, shadowing has a better effect if done on a daily basis. Anyways as far as shadowing material goes, you can use basically anything. Japanese dramas, anime, visual novel dialogue are just a few examples of what you could use for shadowing. Another resource you might find helpful is the “shadowing let’s speak Japanese” series. Here are links:

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• Watching anime using the “subtitle technique”

I learnt this technique from the site ‘Japanese through Anime’ and all credit goes to Ken Cannon. The technique is pretty simple; watch an episode of anime with subtitles, then re-watch it without subtitles directly afterwards.  This method is pretty good for retaining vocab and for practice recognising various grammar forms. However this method is only as good as the subtitles you have for a particular anime. So try to find some good qualities subs if you’re use this technique. This technique has better effects if used with anime that you’ve never seen before.

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