TLDR; Which one would you choose? waiting for a patch 5 or 10yrs or learn the language yourself even if is hard?.
So the other day I was talking to this friend of mine and he reminded me of this game he wanted to play for years but has never been translated and how there was supposedly a patch that was being worked on but progress on it had stalled, and how he was waiting for it, at the time I told him that instead of waiting he should just study the language because I had the feeling it was going to take a long time or never see the light of day, now fast-forward to today and 5yrs have passed, the patch never came out and AFAIK no progress has been made or published and now my friend knows enough Japanese to play the game from start to finish and enjoy it, he is grateful that I told him to do that, but of course he is the one that put all the effort and thus deserves all the praise.
Funnily enough I told the same thing to another friend too at some point and she got really pissed and told me to fuck off and mind my own business, she's one of those people that would rather wait 10yrs for someone to make a translation than to ever even try to learn the language by herself.
Personally I don't understand this mindset but I'm biased since I went through the same in the early 2000s, in fact the translation I was waiting for never came out and I ended up being the one who worked on it along with other people, but before I did, I checked the website for the project multiple times a month for 8 years! until one day I said fuck it I'll do it myself
Just imagine this, in the time it takes for most patches to come out 2~5yrs (if you're lucky, specially for games with big scripts like JRPGs) you could potentially study 1~3 hrs a day everyday and learn enough to play the game yourself, you won't be like a native but at least you will able to consume media especially simple stuff like a lot of games. Heck given how long these patches take by the time they're out you could even translate the game yourself!
I don't know... this is something that was on my mind and I find it funny and kinda sad too, I kinda want to know what people think too, which one would you chose? waiting or being pro-active and put the effort yourself even if it's hard and you might even quit at some point.
In my case now I've been learning Japanese for 19yrs and is a life-long journey for me, there's always something new to learn and I'm also an obsessive perfectionist and I like to be even above the average native, heck I've been learning English for the past 25yrs since I was child too and now a couple of other languages like Korean since 2020, perhaps it is asking too much to want everyone to learn the language of the things they're interested on, perhaps because I've been learning them for so long I've lost touch with reality lol, who knows.
