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L-R and parallel texts | ||
Tags: Listening-Reading (L-R) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6874 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 25 of 34 12 February 2008 at 12:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
No, I meant, was the original text Italian or English? I'm just curious to know which language was being translated. I'm guessing it was Italian to English. Just because.
Russian, which I know fairly well. My copy of Bulgakov's "Heart of a Dog" arrived today. Unfortunately, it's not a parallel text, as I had thought, but all Russian, with tons of notes for English-speaking Russian learners. The CD should arrive any day now. I'd be curious to try this with a language I know nothing about. It seems like a worthy and rewarding challenge. Definitely not easy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6874 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 26 of 34 12 February 2008 at 1:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Forgive me, I'm slowly reading through all these responses. I'm proably responding too soon. I am no expert in this, in any way. But something a Russian teacher taught me once was about translation is that it's not the words being translated, but the "meaning" of the groupings of the words. I'm too tired to get more into it. Maybe the other responses explain it better. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6456 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 27 of 34 12 February 2008 at 6:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Ah, thank you for clarifying; that makes much more sense. Yes, you're right; it was Italian to English. The translator went a little overboard, and the pieces have fairly different feels; the Italian is much better. http://ercoleguidi.altervista.org/anthology/ginger.htm is the location of the parallel text.
It's fun, though! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6720 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 28 of 34 12 February 2008 at 7:59am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I have asked myself how big the differences between different editions really are. So I took the first couple of sentences in "The New CLothes of the Emperor" by H.C.Andersen (Danish author) in several English translations:
For mange år siden levede en kejser, som holdt så uhyre meget af smukke nye klæder, at han gav alle sine penge ud for ret at blive pyntet. [the original] http://www.hca.eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id= 39&Itemid=63&lang=da For mange År siden levede en Kejser, som holdt så uhyre meget af smukt nyt tøj, at han brugte alle sine penge på at blive pyntet. [modified Danish version] http://www.dansklf.dk/multimedia/kejserensnye.doc Many years ago there lived an Emperor who was so exceedingly fond of fine new clothes that he spent vast sums of money on dress. To him clothes meant more than anything else in the world. http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Emperors-New-Clothes.htm Many years ago there was an Emperor so exceedingly fond of new clothes that he spent all his money on being well dressed. http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/h ersholt/TheEmperorsNewClot hes_e.html MANY years ago there lived an Emperor, who was so excessively fond of grand new clothes that he spent all his money upon them, that he might be very fine. http://www.bartleby.com/17/3/3.html Many, many years ago lived an emperor, who thought so much of new clothes that he spent all his money in order to obtain them; his only ambition was to be always well dressed. http://hca.gilead.org.il/emperor.html Many years ago there lived an emperor who loved beautiful new clothes so much that he spent all his money on being finely dressed. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type1620.html#andersen Now, which of these translations would you want in a bilingual version? My answer would be: the one that is closest to the original at the expense of literary value, and in an interlaced version even closer than any of those above - the best here would be an ultra-literal translation with a note whenever the real meaning of an expression is impossible to guess without aid. But the commercial prospects of selling such editions are probably too gloomy to tempt any commercial enterprise. Instead you get more or less close 'literary' translations that may be better than nothing for an L-R session, but they aren't quite the right thing. Edited by Iversen on 12 February 2008 at 8:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| vanityx3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6478 days ago 331 posts - 326 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 29 of 34 12 February 2008 at 8:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I feel that the higher the level in a language your learning is, the less literal the parallel translations need to be.
Fo instance, if I decided to learn Spanish with parallel texts, I would want my English translation to be ultra-literal, since I have very little knowledge of Spanish. But with my French studies, I started by using literary translations, because I already had a good knowledge of French and French grammar. I was also able to catch where the translations didn't match up exactly and change the translation to make it match. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6720 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 34 12 February 2008 at 8:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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When I have reached the intermediate level I stop using translations
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| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6874 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 31 of 34 12 February 2008 at 10:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I've never used a translation before. Perhaps I am wasting my time trying this with Russian.
The only reason why I'm compelled to try it, in any language, is because I trust that the translator has a sense that I do not. Even with this Italian sentence perché io da sola con uno scarafaggio vivo non ci dormo, punto e basta. with a dictionary, I got a clear meaning of that sentence. I wouldn't translate it the same way as the translator, but that's because I don't speak Italian. I would use the closest words I know in English. But that shows the difference between words and meanings. "Vivo" might translate literally as "alive," (or "bright" or "lively" according to my dictionary) but it doesn't carry the same emotional weight, or revoltion, of a scarafaggio vivo. Because now, when I see scarafaggio vivo, I'm seeing a cockroach bobbing about. Yuck. That's the advantage of a good translation. I can see that having even different translations as an advantage, because no two people are going to translate a phrase or sentence the same way. This sentence also tells me a lot about how Italian uses word order for emphasis. Notice all the words between the subject and the verb. I'd next be really curious to hear the audio of this, especially by a good actor. Maybe even just a dictionary, the original and good audio would be enough. But a translation can show you just a little bit more. Anyway, those are my thoughts about this one particular sentence (I also really like "punto e basta"). I feel like I just learned something about Italian that's much more exciting to me than what I might find in a textbook. I feel like I've just started decoding it. That's so much more interesting to me than knowing how to ask where the bathroom is. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| zvilleboy Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6172 days ago 4 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 32 of 34 14 February 2008 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Here is some Italian podcasts lessons which feature mini stories that are in parallel text format. They are pretty
entertaining and best suited for beginners... http://tltc.la.utexas.edu/ra/episode.php?p=01 1 person has voted this message useful |
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