NewCultivator all i could say is goodluck.
Download pleco, it's a good dictionary.
Maybe start small, find some easy manga, more pic, less characters.
Oh and remember, one thing about Mandarin is that you cannot translate character by character, most of the time they're in chunks and quite flowery.
Get a chinese friend to help.
But if you reaaaally wanna learn, hit me up, I got a ton of resources. I have been doing this for a while but it's haaard when you're doing it on your own. T-T