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Ok i am not sure where this thread should belong so sorry if its in the wrong section.
A few questions about Light novels~
what degree of japanese would you need to completely understand it. Such as what grade lvl? Grade 1, 2 ,3 ?
Are the any groups that scanlate light novels?
And are there light novels that are up loaded to the internet for download? If so where can i find them？
After watching certain animes, a fire sparked inside me to read light novels x.x
Thank you.
First off:
http://www.baka-tsuki.org/
If you want to read them in Japanese, I would imagine that you need to be fairly competent in Japanese (I don't know how the grading system that you speak of works), but it could also depend on the novel you want to read. You would most likely need to have some knowledge of common kanji.
You need to be reading at least a junior high school level, with an emphasis on knowledge of both kanji and colloquial expressions. Most light novels have furigana, but knowing at least the first thousand-odd kanji (those taught in elementary school) means you aren't looking up every other word in the dictionary. My sense is that you want to be where you're looking up maybe one or two words a sentence.
I'm working up to that point -- currently I'm ratcheting my way there by reading books at the mid-elementary school level (I'm about halfway through 大きな森の小さな家 (if you can't read that title, you have a long way to go)) and shoujo manga (my local used book store has a lot of that, amusingly enough). Well, my goal isn't light novels per se, but older out-of-copyright works at roughly that level (such as 銀河鉄道の夜), which are available through Aozora Bunko, the Japanese equivalent of Project Gutenberg.
If you're really out to read the original, you've got a large but satisfying project in front of you. がんばってよ!