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Effective use of Parallel Texts. | ||
Tags: Bilingual texts | Reading | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5512 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 1 of 13 26 January 2010 at 8:48pm | IP Logged |
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I was wondering how parallel/interlinear/bilingual texts helps in the language learning process (or even how much it helps). I am learning Koine Greek, and having browsed the forums a bit, have noticed that some of you get books in your native language and in your target language to read together. Since the primary text I am using at this point is the Bible, this would be very easy to do (since I have it in multiple English translations, as well as in the original Greek. Furthermore, since everything is broken up into chapter and verse divisions, it is not hard to find the corresponding text from one language to another). Also, is there preferable technique or approach to reading one text in multiple languages in order to achieve the maximum benefit?
If you guys have anything else informative to share about reading parallel texts that I have not inquired about, please feel free to share it as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ovaltined Tetraglot Newbie Portugal Joined 5401 days ago 6 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish, French Studies: Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 2 of 13 29 January 2010 at 10:35am | IP Logged |
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If the translation is more or less literal (as opposed to a translation that takes several liberties in translating) it might help. I have done this before. Sometimes it's great help to be reading the foreign language text and then comparing our translation with the translation given or checking it for words we don't know (which sometimes can be easier than getting a dictionary if you're reading on the street, etc) but I have found that with translations that take more liberty with certain expressions (or in the case of words that don't have a direct translation) it can get a bit trickier. I don't know what your level of reading is, but I'd recommend (if you're a beginner), trying to find a more literal translation of a simpler text. However, if you're keener on the Bible, then make sure you find one that takes a more literal approach to translating the text.
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| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6754 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 3 of 13 29 January 2010 at 1:47pm | IP Logged |
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If you wanted to use the Bible, you'd also have to make sure you were using the right Greek text. (You wouldn't
want to use the Textus Receptus along with a translation based on the Codex Sinaiticus, for example.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| didaskolos Newbie United States Joined 6828 days ago 10 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek, Modern Hebrew, Sign Language, Mandarin | Message 4 of 13 31 January 2010 at 3:19am | IP Logged |
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A summary of my experiences might be of use to you.
I first started learning Koine about 25 years ago using "Beginning Greek" by Stephen Paine. The first half of the book is based on the gospel of John. The second half goes to part of Book I of the Anabasis by Xenophon. I liked the book then and I still like it now. I took the (all too typical) approach of memorizing paradigms and "reading" Greek by parsing each word at a time. I would estimate the level I achieved at that time to be about 1 year's worth of a 3 to 4 credit college class. I could "translate" things by using paradigm tables and lexicons. However, I was not close to my real goal of being able to pick up a Greek text and being able to read it. Over the following 20 years, I'd occasionally dabble with Greek again, but the goal of achieving reading fluency seemed to be something beyond my capabilities. I probably could have passed any Greek class with a solid A by doing well on answering questions *about* Greek. (That's how I got A grades in 2 years of college German but really couldn't do much useful with it.) About 3 or 4 years ago, I started working on Greek again. I earned an extra few thousand dollars consulting and picked up just about every major Greek lexicon and grammar book (including things like the "Great Scott"). Being a physicist and mathematician, learning paradigms and grammar was trivial for me. Having a good memory, learning vocabulary was no issue. The problem was I was not internalizing the language at all. I was learning a lot *about* Greek, but not really learning the language. About 2 years ago, I picked up a CD set of an Audio Greek NT by Spiros Zodhiates. He uses Modern Greek pronounciation (which is not that far off from the Hellenistic pronounciation of Greek). The text he uses seems close to the NA27. I'm guessing the few discrepancies are simply the result of reading into a microphone for several hours and losing concentration occasionally. I used this in combination with an old Greek/English interlinear (by George Ricker Berry) based on older manuscripts. There are some differences, but nothing major. The progress I have made in the the past 2 years is nothing short of incredible compared to what I had been doing. In a nutshell, I'd listen to a chapter a number of times following in the interlinear. I used the English as a quick crutch to catch the meaning of a word and then immediately looked back at the Greek. I'd then listen to that chapter following in an NA27 (Greek only) text. Since I walk to work, I'd listen to this on an MP3 player while walking. I started off going through the entire NT a handful of times. However, I found that focusing on single chapters in a single book produced better results for me. At this point in time, I can pretty much *read* the gospel of John. I can also understand large portions of it purely listening with no text. I'm now working through Luke. I'm at about 90% comprehension and can read a few of the chapters with complete understanding. I decided to work through the narratives first since it is much easier to comprehend sentences such as "He spoke to the crowds..." rather than some of the more intricate sentences in the epistles that theologians have been arguing about for centuries. A few months ago, I found (much to my surprise) that I can quickly achieve a fairly high comprehension of texts from the LXX and Church Fathers with little effort. I have also found that I have internalized the Modern Greek pronunciation so that I can read aloud fairly smoothly. I'm also finding that I have internalized many of the paradigm tables via usage rather than the much less successful rote memorization I had been using. I find I am simply reacting to such things as noun cases without having to think about them. In summary, now that I am treating learning Greek like learning to play a musical instrument rather than as a mathematical equation to be solved, I am starting to reach my goal of being able to *read* Greek rather than to clumsily parse/translate it. I think my prior knowledge of grammar and paradigms certainly accelerated my learning via listening/reading. The bottom line is that I am now at a sustainable point in my studies and am starting to expand into some other Greek authors. I should say that my goal still remains to pick up Greek texts and read them. I'd guess that many NT scholars would probably not be happy with this approach since it doesn't emphasize active parsing and using advanced grammar books to produce detailed explanations of what something "really" means. I just simply love being able to read things with moderate understanding. Over time, I'm sure I'll pick up more nuances of meaning as I've read more texts. The free word order of Greek has a beauty to me that is lost when over-analyzing and translating. Proverbs 1:20 (LXX) Σοφια εν εξοδοις υμνειται εν δε πλατειας παρρησιαν αγει. Wisdom, in the (quiet) alleys, sings! in the wide (public) streets, openly speaks! (poor literal translation on my part). Compared to the Brenton English version: Wisdom sings aloud in the passages and in the broad places speaks boldly. It is a good translation and can be read with poetic pauses. However, I'm finding it's just not the same to me. As an FYI, I'm probably putting in an average of about 10 to 15 hours a week listening, reading, and listening/reading. About 2/3 of this is on my focus study (which is currently Luke). The remainder is miscellaneous reading with parallel or interlinear versions of things that strike my fancy such as portions of the Anabasis, Enchiridion, Homer, and the LXX. My plan is to try to finish off working through the NT this year and to spend the next year working through some other texts. I hope this rather lengthy post describing my experiences with my ongoing process of learning Greek is of some help to you. I would guess my approach is probably not typical of what most Koine students do. However, it is working for me for my desired goals. 16 persons have voted this message useful | |
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5637 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 5 of 13 31 January 2010 at 3:40am | IP Logged |
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I have used translations, some parallel and some merely the best and most literal translation I could get, for Classical Persian, Arabic, and now a bit of Biblical Hebrew. German, too: Goethe and Hesse. Depending on my level in a language, I read whatever I can, maybe write out a translation, maybe not, and only then look at the crib. In my "infancy" with a language (as now, with Hebrew), I'm happy to get any comprehension at all. As time goes by, I gradually gain knowledge and confidence,and then get to the point where no translation is needed. There's nothing magic about this approach. The trick is simply to keep doing it, day after day, for years. I'm terrible at memorizing anything, vocabulary or paradigm tables included. But I do internalize the "rules" in some way. The original cloud of unknowing gradually takes shape, and my comprehension of meaning gets more and more solid with time.
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| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5512 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 6 of 13 03 February 2010 at 5:52am | IP Logged |
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Thank you for your input Didaskalos. The goal of being able to pick up a text and just read is definitely my goal. While understanding the nuances of the grammar has its benefits (particularly when doing exegesis and so on) it is of a somewhat lesser importance to me. However, I imagine that going through Bill Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek and perhaps even other more advanced grammars would be of greater benefit as the language becomes more intuitive.
The translation I use (in case anybody is interested) is the NASB (one of the more literal translations out there. I like it because of the liberties it does not take with the text). I definitely recognize how a less literal translation would cause some grief. (In my copy of the septuagint, it has a translation on the side that is not very literal in parts, and thus I cannot rely on it). I definitely would like to try a variation of your approach. I doubt I will be buying the Greek NT on Audio CD. However, with a quick search via Google, I have located a few free sets of audio recordings available online. The first is www.greeklatinaudio.com. However, it seems to be using a modern Greek pronunciation. However, when I took Greek Last year, the pronunciation we learned is much closer to an Erasmian pronunciation (I just barely discovered this term). I tried following along in Mark Chapter 4 with the modern pronunciation, and found it quite difficult (though not impossible) to follow along. Then I tried a set of recordings (which seem to be a work in progress right now) that use an Erasmian pronunciation (found at http://www.davidpfield.com/audio-gnt/AudioGNT.htm). I was immediately able to read along with a greater degree of ease, since this is the pronunciation I am accustomed to. Well, I will have to try your approach with an online interlinear bible (http://interlinear.biblos.com/) and see how that goes. Thank you once again for sharing this, didaskalos (Teacher). <Edited to tidy up original post and add some additional material> Edited by Sir Lunch-a-lot on 03 February 2010 at 9:09am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6689 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 7 of 13 03 February 2010 at 1:14pm | IP Logged |
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I have dedicated a whole thread to the use of translations in my guide to learning languages, part 2, so I'll be brief here.
For me using a side by side bilingual or - even better - interlaced bilingual text is a shortcut to dealing with texts that you would have no end of trouble with if you just had the original text and a dictionary. Quite generally a text is too difficult if you have to solve it like a riddle - and any teaching method that converts language learning into riddle solving is wrong. Knowing the meaning of the sentences before you study them is something that can make too difficult texts much more manageable, especially if you can find a fairly literal translation where the elements in the original text can be identified with a corresponding element in the translation. But traditionally this has not been the important consideration when translations from target into base language have been used in language teaching - instead it has been seen as extremely important to present a translation that expressed the thought behind the foreign text in impeccable base language. Which is totally irrelevant for language learning. Of course a translation should not misrepresent the meaning, but if a literal translation leads to this result then the solution is not to change the structure of the translation fundamentally, but to supplement it with a comment. This unfortunately means that many, if not most 'literary' translations are of limited value because they tell you the meaning, but at the expense of identifiable vocabulary and grammar. I have personally come to the conclusion that even ridiculously flawed machine translations are better than free translations when it comes to 'cracking' a recalcitrant foreign text. And since I discovered that taking a copy of a Google translation and copying it 'as text' to Word effectively gives you an interlaced bilingual text this has been my preferred method to get reading skills in languages which I normally can't read. You should not use Google or its competitors to make translations into your target language because there you can't see the sometimes gross errors - but from target language to a base language they are not nearly as dangerous: in your base language(s) and armed with some minimal knowledge about the target language you can mostly see when the translation is seriously wrong, for instance because a negation has been ignored. Btw the Lexilogos site has a 'machine' that can produce side-by-side bilinguals from the Bible in a wide variety of languages. Edited by Iversen on 03 February 2010 at 3:46pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6137 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 8 of 13 03 February 2010 at 4:09pm | IP Logged |
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Didaskolos, it sounds like you've independently discovered the Listening-Reading System, that has been much discussed on this forum. You've adapted it in a similar way to myself, in your use of pure listening while walking to work, as well as listening/reading . As far as I remember, the original system always advocated the use a parallel text during the listening.
I don't think the method can be used at the very start of language learning, as there are too many new grammar points contained in an average text. However, your previous Greek study, means you've truly activated the language as a living breathing entity. Using your musical analogy, it sounds like you've been studying sheet music for a long time, but only heard the orchestra play recently. Edited by DaraghM on 03 February 2010 at 4:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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