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Raising multilingual children | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| parasitius Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5999 days ago 220 posts - 323 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Cantonese, Polish, Spanish, French | Message 17 of 24 26 September 2008 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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It seems I didn't make myself clear enough. The example was meant as an extreme case
only. In most other cases of bilingualism, at least one of the languages will be dominant and near-native if not indiscernible from native in most common contexts (chatting an hour or writing on a web board), but will not be native to the extreme degree that is required for really professional translation. I recall reading an article online that strongly implied that contrary to common belief it is actual monolinguals who have the best chance to become highly competent translators. (Of course, professionalism requires translators only translate FROM other languages into their native tongue.) I brought this up because I was hoping someone would be able to cite additional references to things similar to what I read, since I found it very surprising. My example was meant as nothing more than an interesting anecdote of an extreme case. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Budz Octoglot Senior Member Australia languagepump.com Joined 6374 days ago 118 posts - 171 votes Speaks: German*, English, Russian, Esperanto, Ukrainian, Mandarin, Cantonese, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Persian, Hungarian, Kazakh, Swahili, Vietnamese, Polish | Message 18 of 24 26 September 2008 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I think the statement that even the dominant language will not be native to an extreme degree is just plain wrong!! You need to give proper evidence not just anecdotal evidence.
And you're implying that you'll be able to tell that the speaker of the dominant language is different from a monolingual native speaker. The English of a bilingual bought up in Australia will be indistinguishable from that of a monoglot native speaker. One aspect that must be born in mind is that in the case of bilingual Hispanics... in the US for example, if there is some sort of accent - this is not due to being bilingual, this is due to the English speaking environment that they are brought up in. i.e. even monolinguals in that environment will have the same accent. Lastly, could it be that you are referring to the study done in Canada after which immigrant parents in the US started panicking and started speaking to their children in English. Later on it was shown that the results of the study were flawed and that bilingual children weren't disadvantaged at all. Or have you been watching Hollywood films such as the Lou Gehrig Story, in which his parents say to each other 'No vi must spik to Lou in English so dat he can speak English vell ven he goes to school after all, now ve are living in America'.... It's a mystery to me how it could be better for a child to hear heavily accented and grammatically bad English as a child than perfect Hungarian??!! You need to cite the source of your article. You may think that a person bought up as a monoglot might be able to translate better into his native tongue - but what about the fact that his feel for the language that he's translating from will probably never be as good as the person bought up bilingually? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| parasitius Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5999 days ago 220 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Cantonese, Polish, Spanish, French | Message 19 of 24 26 September 2008 at 11:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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#Well, I think the statement that even the dominant language will not be native to an
extreme degree is just plain wrong!! You need to give proper evidence not just anecdotal evidence. I wonder if my sentence might have been ambiguous. I meant not that the person will have a severe lack of native ability, but rather that their native abilities will not approach the 'extreme' limits of other natives in dealing with really messy stuff. It won't show through if you have them write or speak freely, but only when they are forced into a position of transforming someone else's ideas into English. I'm not writing a book, so I don't keep track of the 1,000s of articles I read online every year, so it's a bit much to expect that I still have the source. Again, I brought the topic up with the hope that someone else has sources in addition to the one I clearly remember reading. The best I could find right now is this: "First, a born and bred bilingual often suffers from not truly knowing any language well enough to translate, with some even suffering from what is known as alingualism, state in which a person does lacks a full, fluent command of any language. Second, born and bred bilinguals often don’t know the culture of the target language well enough to provide top-quality translations, or cannot recognize what aspects of the source language and its culture need to be treated with particular care, as they are in a sense too close to the language." http://blog.languagetranslation.com/public/blog/137539 You are very correct about the risk that a monolingual will not have the skills to full understand the source text, but my understanding of the issue is that: Learning to UNDERSTAND input fully can always be done, at any age, thus the monolingual can always work very hard to improve his ability to understand the source language. But the ability to write in a non-native language (a problem, again, I have read many bilinguals face) with the extreme sophistication needed to properly render the translation of literature in the best possible way and to be 100% sure about the grammaticality of what one has written in the target language is something that can almost never be learned later in life. If I am wrong and it isn't a magnitude of 100 times harder to develop perfect output ability than perfect input (comprehension) ability in a non-native language, please tell me why professional translators only translate into their mother tongue. As for bilingual Hispanics in the US, accent is completely irrelevant since I'm talking about translation. I'm guessing in most cases such persons will have received their entire education in English and thus not be biliterate. Thus such persons couldn't possibly have the sophisticated upper-level vocabulary required to translate into Spanish. Even if they understood the words passively, that's completely different from being able to use them productively. Edited by parasitius on 26 September 2008 at 11:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Budz Octoglot Senior Member Australia languagepump.com Joined 6374 days ago 118 posts - 171 votes Speaks: German*, English, Russian, Esperanto, Ukrainian, Mandarin, Cantonese, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Persian, Hungarian, Kazakh, Swahili, Vietnamese, Polish | Message 20 of 24 27 September 2008 at 12:03am | IP Logged | ||
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"First, a born and bred bilingual often suffers from not truly knowing any language
well enough to translate" Of course it takes more than just being bilingual to become a translator. You still have to study the languages to a high degree just the same as a monolingual learner does. Most English speakers, even if they suddenly overnight developed an ability to understand another language, would be attrocious translators because their knowledge of English, while being perfect for normal conversation, wouldn't cope with the rigours of translation. Hence the remedial English classes at universities. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| brozman Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie Spain Joined 6057 days ago 87 posts - 106 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, English, Japanese Studies: Russian, Indonesian | Message 21 of 24 27 September 2008 at 6:15am | IP Logged | ||
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"First, a born and bred bilingual often suffers from not truly knowing any language
well enough to translate, with some even suffering from what is known as alingualism, state in which a person does lacks a full, fluent command of any language. Second, born and bred bilinguals often don’t know the culture of the target language well enough to provide top-quality translations, or cannot recognize what aspects of the source language and its culture need to be treated with particular care, as they are in a sense too close to the language." Well, this statement makes sense if the person is, for example, a US born Mexican who receives his entire education only in English. I don't think that'd be a problem for bilinguals in places such as Catalonia, where people study equally both Spanish and Catalan. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Budz Octoglot Senior Member Australia languagepump.com Joined 6374 days ago 118 posts - 171 votes Speaks: German*, English, Russian, Esperanto, Ukrainian, Mandarin, Cantonese, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Persian, Hungarian, Kazakh, Swahili, Vietnamese, Polish | Message 22 of 24 27 September 2008 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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No, this won't be a problem in the US either. Remember the original statement states that NONE of the languages will be to a native-speaker level. But in the US the Hispanic, having gone to school in English, will have the same level of English as everyone else.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6553 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes 1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 23 of 24 28 September 2008 at 4:02am | IP Logged | ||
Case in point: myself. I have a large (even huge) vocabulary, make a few mistakes from time to time but less than the 'average' American. My English (spoken or written) has never ever been questioned as not being American English (Northern California) native. I'm raising my daughters multi-lingually and they have a dominant language (French) in which they have complete mastery. These studies that say the opposite are, in my eyes, just agenda article to justify English-only teaching in the US. Edit: Translator? I made my living as a translator for 3 years (simultaneous-oral English-French-Spanish - Engineering/General and French/Spanish to English written / in General/Science(Biology)/Medicine/Engineering) Edited by zenmonkey on 28 September 2008 at 4:06am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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