Should you use Bilingual Books with English and Japanese Side by Side?
Bilingual Japanese books are a learning resource that have been around for a very long time. The concept is simple. Take a book, and every time you turn the page:
- The left page is written in English
- The right page is written in Japanese
- The two pages correspond exactly with each other, so you can follow the story in both languages at the same time
Surface positives
This type of reading sounds super beneficial. It gets you reading real Japanese stories, with training wheels to give you support. Any time you have trouble with a Japanese part, you can check in an instant if your understanding was correct. You can proceed smoothly through any story with 100% understanding by rapidly switching back and forth. You’ll learn a ton of new words, grammar, and sentences, without the need for a dictionary.
That’s a lot packed in one small resource.
The big problem
Eternal translation mode: translating in your head forever, and never thinking in Japanese. This is an issue that I feel bilingual books reinforce in the worst of ways:
- It gives you false confidence. Kind of like the way subtitles in anime make you think that you are understanding the Japanese, but the second you take them away you understand nothing.
- The translations are going to be loose. These are fully translated sentences that need to tell a story. Creative liberty is taken to make the sentences sound good in both languages.
- It’s going to keep you away from a monolingual dictionary.
- You are going to have a full blown case of second guesseritis.
- You get repeated unintentional English exposure to definitions you already know in Japanese.
Worth a shot?
I don’t like to give a firm “NO” to any Japanese learning resource. Because I know people who swear by bilingual stories and have said that they were the main reason they become fluent. Just like there are plenty of people who never touch a monolingual dictionary and still do fine. This might be you, and this might be an invaluable resource you like.
If it’s the only thing that would get you reading Japanese novels, then it is definitely better than nothing.
How I would use it
Read the entire English version first, and then the entire Japanese version second (or vice versa), with no reference to the other at all. This is a method many people use for everything from anime, to manga, to novels. This takes away the translation problem, and just helps you understand the major parts of the story without worrying about getting lost. I did this with a number of books when I started out.
The only thing you’d have to be careful of is the tempting nature of having both texts side by side. You might be better off just ripping the book in half and pasting together two separate books…
Give bilingual books a go?
Have you ever used bilingual books to learn Japanese? Did they work for you? Do you have any techniques that helped you along the way?
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
Valid points. As with any tool, there are pros and cons and it can depend on the application. I often read scripture, which is strictly translated, and I find that the English can be useful as an occasional comprehension check when primarily reading in Japanese. For example, if a long Japanese sentence didn’t quite click, reading the English can help me understand where I goofed or missed something important. Then I can go back to the Japanese and practice reading the sentence with a proper understanding, looking for the pieces I missed the first time through.
Reading Japanese and English together can also be a good chance to pick up on corresponding phrases and idioms that don’t match literally or are otherwise difficult to look up directly, but maybe I just need to use a better dictionary.
Kind of on the same note, I think there is also some value in reading the Japanese of an English text you’re intimately familiar with. When something isn’t translated like you would have expected, it can help you better understand the proper usage of Japanese words and phrases.
Finally, while I agree that you should learn to think in Japanese alone, there are times when my English wasn’t as connected to my Japanese as it should have been. For example, before the beginning of a school event, a teacher mentioned feeling “kinchou” and wondered what the English would be. I understood the word and the feeling pretty well, but I couldn’t come up with a satisfying translation…”nervous,” “suspenseful,” and “anxious” didn’t quite feel right but I had a hard time thinking of something better. It was a long time (like days) later before I realized “tense” was probably the best fit.
Interesting – I’ve heard of some other people who love bilingual books for religious texts. That may be an area where they provide a special boost.
Super glad you posted this now, very timely. I recently learned about Language learning with Netflix chrome extension. It has been in the back of my mind ever since that maybe I should incorporate it in my learning at some point. I have been very hesitant though because if the j-e. I have worked so hard to go J-J and it felt like a step back. But it also seemed like it could be really helpful.
This article is enough that I think I’ll back off and not touch it. I’d rather watch in English and then in Japanese 100%. Though usually now adays watching with jsubs is enough to follow everything. I’ve been watching with no subs then again with jsubs to try to improve listening.
Yeah, I know how far you’ve come with J-J, so I don’t think you need it. There are a lot of tools we run across that might have been helpful at one point, but trying them at this later point could produce less than desirable results.
I also came across this plugin and now I’m using it extensively.
Even though I understand the whole point of going full immersion and full Japanese only style… But for me at the 2.5k words mark it’s just a lot more fun to watch One Piece in Japanese, and each time I don’t understand a word I just need to hover over it, instead of searching for it in a dictionary.
I think everyone has to find his own way. What works for me right now, is to learn 15-20 new words in the Jalup App, and watch Netflix with Japanese subs. This might now improve my hearing skills at the same speed as it would without, but it definitely helps me to understand words a lot more.
Each time I come across a word, I just learned in Jalup, it helps to keep it in memory.
It might not be 100% efficiency when improving reading skills and not 100% efficiency when improving writing skills, but maybe 50/50 and the main point for me is, that I enjoy it most this way.
I finally found a system that I feel I can maintain for many months.
1k new words per 2 months so 5k till the end of the year is going to be my goal. :)