Intermediate to Advanced Japanese language material with English translations

[Seneca30]

Hi all,

I have studied Japanese on and off for several years and am a high intermediate level. I can fare reasonably well in most all situations in Japan, but I am far from perfect and there is a lot I cannot understand and a lot I cannot read. I have identified a few areas I need to address to really get to that solid high intermediate - advanced stage (I failed N2 by a few points last year):

Grammatical subtleties - I have trouble with particles and how they change the sentences, especially in regular conversations
Vocabulary - Need to know more words and review more fundamental words

I think the most efficient way to address the grammatical issues would be to review material that has English translations of the Japanese text. Unfortunately, most of the intermediate to advanced textbooks I've come across don't seem to have English translations.

Does anyone have any recommendations on textbooks or other resources that contain bilingual text that would help me round of my N2 level skills?

Thanks in advance!

[Speakeasy]

Welcome!
@Seneca30, welcome to forum! I look forward to reading your contributions on many subjects here on the forum. Now then, as I have not studied Japanese I am not familiar with resources for the study of this language. Nevertheless, you might wish to begin familiarizing yourself with the “Japanese Resources” list and the “Japanese Study Group” sub-section of the forum.

Japanese Resources
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2907/

Nihongo wakaranai
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=9473

Intermediate/Advanced Resources (Generally Speaking)
My own limited experiences in language learning suggest to me that materials at the Intermediate level are often conceived with a view to assisting the advancing student make the difficult transition from the basics of spoken language to more difficult constructions and more advanced vocabulary in the L2 both spoken and written. Typically, course manuals designed for classroom use will have very little in the way of English texts and even these may be limited to brief glosses or notes. Advanced materials are generally in the L2 only. In addition, despite many publisher’s inflated claims and exaggerations, I have yet to come across what I would consider to be “true” intermediate level materials for the self-instruction of a foreign language. Still, there just might be something out there that meets your needs…

Living Lanuage Ultimate Japanese: Advanced (sic)
Although the Living Language “Ultimate” series is now out-of-print, copies can still be found. My experience with this publisher’s German courses leaves to conclude that their “Advanced” series is really more a review of grammar at the CEFR A2-B1 level coupled with exposure to additional “practical” vocabulary. The dialogues are accompanied by English translations and all of the explanations and notes are in English. So, this just might fit your bill. Should you be interested in using this course, I would suggest that you read carefully the Amazon Customer Reviews, both the positive ones as well as the 1-star review.
https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Japanese-Advanced-Language-Courses/dp/0517885042/ref=sr_1_3?crid=5SE0L1HOKDD4&keywords=living+language+ultimate+japanese&qid=1561216802&s=gateway&sprefix=living+language+ultimate+japanese%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-3#customerReviews

Japanese Parallel Readers
Perhaps Japanese parallel readers might be of some use, providing you can locate ones at your level. A word of caution: in my experience, the sourced texts are not your average “pulp fiction” CEFR B1 affair for native speakers, particularly the collections by Dover and Penguin. Rather, they are often drawn from the finest examples of the L2 literature that even many natives might find challenging or, at the very least, too esoteric. Thus, from the point of view of an intermediate student, these readers can be a real struggle (but then again, life itself is a struggle).
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=japanese+parallel+text&crid=19JDXFIWEJT1U&sprefix=japanese+parallel+%2Caps%2C146&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_18

Good luck with your studies!

[Sayonaroo]

have you read tae kim's grammar guide? http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar

I get how you feel since that's how I feel about Spanish (I find the english translations extremely helpful) but for Japanese I didn't have that problem since I found Japanese grammar simple. I just remember that after working on Tae kim for month I could read/understand stuff fairly well using the pop-up dictionaries on the internet browsers (yomichan/rikaikun/rikaisama/etc). I don't know what you're into in terms of Japanese entertainment but there's a lot of subtitle files (Japanese and English) that are available for anime, drama, some of the stuff on the Netflix, viki, etc so that might be a good source for you. Also there's a lot of subs2srs decks that are floating around online so you don't even have to make the anki deck.

[tuckamore]

I don’t have any textbook recommendations, but I second Speakeasy’s recommendation of using parallel text. I can personally speak for these 4:

(1) Read Real Japanese: Fiction by Michael Emmerich
(2) Read Real Japanese: Essays by Janet Ashby
(3) Breaking into Japanese Literature by Giles Murray
(4) Read Real Japanese by Janet Ashby

Each story or essay in (1) and (2) are translated by sentence or sentence fragments, and have wonderful notes on specific word usage, grammar points, culture tidbits, etc. The English translations aren’t written as an unbroken piece, but it is very easy to compare the original Japanese with the translation. The writings in both of these books are from modern authors. Highly recommend!

Breaking into Japanese Literature (3) is truly a parallel reader. It gives no explanations, but has a very good translation and an inclusive glossy on each page. Much care was given to English translation to make it relevant to Japanese learners. Unlike (1) and (2) the English translation is unbroken and you can read it independently of the Japanese. It contains classic works by Natsume Soseki and Akutagawa Ryunosuke. Although some of the vocabulary and kanji used may be a bit rare these days, the stories were very accessible to me even when I was at the lower end of intermediate. I think there is a second book like this one, but I haven’t used it.

The last one in this list (4) is similar in structure to the fist two, giving explanations about certain word usage, structure, and culture notes and contains writings by more modern authors. But, it gives me a headache to find the information I need because the Japanese in the explanations and translations are written in romaji (why? romaji! why?). It’s almost impossible for me to scan to find the information that I need. But, it was the first one I bought and, at the time, it was totally worth my effort. Of the 4 I list, this is the only one that does not come with audio (as far as I know).

Otherwise, the Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advance Japanese Grammar (Seiichi Makino) come with lots of sentences for almost every grammar point you can think of and all of them have English translations. Besides browsing through them at the library, I haven’t used them myself, but they may be what you are looking for.

[Seneca30]

Hi everyone,

Thanks so much for the detailed replies with this. I have seen Tae Kim's website before, but never used the grammar guide. I will take a look at it and see if it works for me!

@tuckamore
I think I tried (1) and (2), but not (3) or (4). I think (1) was a bit beyond my level when I looked at it a few years ago, but that has probably changed since then. I should perhaps take another look at (2), because I am typically more interested in essays, so that might be more relevant to me now. I should to get my hands on (3) because I really like parallel texts and find that I learn best using those. But the vocabulary and kanji may be a bit much for me still.

Are there any other readers or any other authentic resources that anyone would recommend? I need to search more for these because besides travel guides, I seldom read authentic Japanese material for leisure.

[Speakeasy]

... Are there any other readers or any other authentic resources that anyone would recommend? I need to search more for these because besides travel guides, I seldom read authentic Japanese material for leisure.

Although the following resources may be not have been written originally in Japanese, even as translations, they might be of some use to you ...

Learn With Oliver
https://www.learnwitholiver.com/

Languages on the Web
http://www.lonweb.org/