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The reason real-time translation is difficult: sometimes you have to wait for the end of the sentence.
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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I've often wanted a direct literal translation in the subtitles.
Like, I want my subtitles to read
Because then at least I can learn to understand "Watashi" is self-reference, and match up the phonetics with the words.
I love this idea!
The translation isn't as direct as the lines in the image imply though. "Watashi wa" becoming "I" hides that "wa" is a grammatical marker for the topic, kind of, of the sentence. More complete it's like, "I, as the topic of this sentence". You end up with a direct in place translation of "I, as the topic, a hotel's across the street, as a location, a shop, as a setting, exists, saw a suit, to which, wearing as a desire, is true"
Transliteration of individual characters is a surprising good way to understand/learn Chinese. A colleague of mine once read the whole Tao Te Ching this way.