Curious what were the most helpful resources that helped you to get good enough at portuguese to translate arkanis without captions? I try to tune in and listen but they’re going so fast that usually I give up when captions aren’t available.
anon I wish I could be so much more helpful, but most of the way I do it is by pattern recognition from having watched so many streams, as much as I hate language ppl saying this and offering nothing else, the immersion really does help </3
over the years I've used language apps on and off, bought many portuguese dictionaries, but I'm not a booksmart person and I will say my portuguese is nowhere near what it should be after like 3 years! however translating arkanis clips is really helpful practise for me, lately I've been watching yt vids in pt with pt subtitles to improve comprehension, matching my brain up with the words so I can kind of visualise what a word could be if I haven't heard it before.
with arkanis vods I have far too much free time so I will just go back and forth on the same clip until I understand every word said, which thankfully has got me to a place where if I can't access captions on a livestream that I can pick out the important bits of a convo if i lock in hard enough (ofc there are also times when my brain simply isn't switched on enough lmao). Usually what I like to do is write down translations word for word (ultimate nerd mode), underlining specific tenses or words i need to remember or simply write down phrases I haven't heard before to come back to.
I'm also a guilty google translate user, I have the app on my phone and will type in or say a phrase out loud into the transcribe feature if I can't figure out what a word could possibly be written as, and oftentimes it does help bc it can help contextualise an entire portion of a discussion that you missed! I will say I'm a lot better at translating lore than say, casual conversation, bc streamers tend to use a lot less slang and speak somewhat slower in actual lore moments, but with arkanis' voice changers and the many streamers who do speak very fast no matter the situation, I do enjoy the challenge >:)
so yeah!! tldr, vod watching and the -10 sec button on your keyboard (or double tapping on twitch) are your best friends, don't be afraid to watch things with portuguese subtitles bc it rlly does put the words in your brain for you - I translated an entire ep of hexatombe for a friend one time with only pt subs on just from pure vibes - and yeah! listen to music too, it's good for comprehension and picking up on random words out of nowhere, and most importantly, have fun with it! it's so rewarding double checking something you're sure you misheard and realising you translated it right after all, feels like magic sometimes.