How are you supposed to know if your interpretation of a word or sentence is correct
Question:
I still don’t really get how you are supposed to know if your interpretation of a word or sentence is correct without at least checking the translation.
Eventually you will figure out or realize there was a misunderstanding. If you never figure it out then it wasn’t important and was inconsequential to your life, so there’s no point in worrying about it.
I went through the entire first volume of Spice and Wolf thinking a certain character was female (mostly because it was changed into a woman in the anime) and only realized at the very end of the volume that it made no sense for that person to be a woman due to how they talked and how everyone else referred to them in the story. It was a big “wow wtf how did I not see this before?” moment when I was reading it. But also not a big deal. It’s a character that appears at the beginning of the story, then almost completely disappears (aside from some passing references in conversation) until the very last part of the first volume, so to me it affected my understanding of the story close to 0 whether or not it was a woman or a man. Not a big deal. And in the end I did realize I was wrong, because it became relevant to the story.
And, honestly, why is it that important? Who cares if you don’t get 100% perfect understanding on stuff. You will always have misunderstandings, jokes or references that fly waaay over your head, nuance and doublespeak stuff that you are not meant to know. Kids watch cartoons all the time without getting most of the more adult/implied jokes, it’s not like they are having less fun because of it. They don’t know those jokes and hidden meanings are there, and they couldn’t care less.
