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Assimil Using Spanish - A Cautionary Note

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luke
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 7204 days ago
3133 posts - 4351 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Esperanto, French

 
 Message 33 of 59
29 September 2006 at 5:50am | IP Logged 
I have found the elusive source of Using Spanish's translatory excellence.
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luke
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 7204 days ago
3133 posts - 4351 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Esperanto, French

 
 Message 34 of 59
22 April 2007 at 4:32pm | IP Logged 
Here's a rough translation of what I wrote in my language learning log about Using Spanish:

Although I've learned a good bit from Assimil Using Spanish, it has a few bad points in my opinion.

  1. It's expensive, $95 with CDs at http://www.europeanbook.com/.
  2. The translations are really bad.
  3. There's too much about Spain, and not enough about Latin America.
  4. The index is incomplete.
  5. A lot of the grammar isn't explained. This wouldn't be such a big problem if the translations weren't so bad.
  6. There's no complete vocabulary list at the end of the book.


The course has other shortcomings, but my opinion over these is changing.

  1. The recordings have 4 voices. One of them speaks a million miles per hour.
  2. The pronunciation is European, although I'm beginning to actually prefer this accent.
  3. The sentences are long and complex. Once again, the bad translations make these difficult to understand at times.


Although most of the points above are bad, I think the course will be quite helpful in the end. It's only the implementation of the course that makes me queasy. I believe the method is excellent. It has taught me a lot of new words.

There are other excellent resources out there like CHASS. In some ways, the material at CHASS is better than Using Spanish.

I didn't say this in my journal, but the good points about Using Spanish include (and there is some overlap with the points above):


  1. The sentences are long and complex, which is helpful for the advancing student.
  2. It has about 3 hours of rapid fire audio.
  3. It covers a lot of vocabulary. One might could get a similar benefit with an audiobook, transcript, and translation.
  4. There's a lot of cultural information about Spain, its communities, history, etc, which can come in handy when you watch TVEI (International TV from Spain).
  5. A lesson can be completed in one day if you're reasonably advanced. This comes in handy for the 1, 2, 7, 30, 90 day review process of "the memory curve".


So the course has definitely grown on me, although I'm reluctant to recommend it due to the short comings listed above. Six months from now I may think it's a great course, but that won't diminish all the obstacles that one faces using it.

Edited by luke on 23 April 2007 at 10:43pm
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luke
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 7204 days ago
3133 posts - 4351 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Esperanto, French

 
 Message 35 of 59
26 April 2007 at 12:59pm | IP Logged 
To give one an idea of the translation challenge one can face with Using Spanish, I have given a translation of the lesson on "to give".

Edited by luke on 26 April 2007 at 1:01pm
1 person has voted this message useful



Rmss
Triglot
Senior Member
Spain
spanish-only.coRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6563 days ago
234 posts - 248 votes 
3 sounds
Speaks: Dutch*, English, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese

 
 Message 36 of 59
28 April 2008 at 4:59pm | IP Logged 
Although the translations are bad (according to this thread), I bought it (new, just €14). Tomorrow I'll make a beginning with it and see if it's really that bad.
1 person has voted this message useful



ikinaridango
Triglot
Groupie
United Kingdom
Joined 6124 days ago
61 posts - 80 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese, Italian
Studies: German, Polish

 
 Message 37 of 59
02 May 2008 at 3:16pm | IP Logged 
Although I've not yet started Using Spanish, I've had a look through it as I bought it some time ago in anticipation of finishing Spanish with Ease. I agree with many of the posts in this thread: the English is a nightmare. I would much rather have translations in fluent, idiomatic English that sometimes deviated from the literal meaning than the garbled mess that, as Luke has pointed out, seems to have been cobbled together by the same fellow who wrote the infamous English as she is spoke

Has anyone studied Using Spanish from a different language base? I notice that Dutch, French, German and Italian all have advanced levels of the Assimil Spanish programme. Has anyone on this board used any of those books and if so would you be so kind as to comment on the nature of the translations from Spanish?

Edited by ikinaridango on 02 May 2008 at 3:19pm
1 person has voted this message useful



zorglub
Pentaglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 6999 days ago
441 posts - 504 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin

 
 Message 38 of 59
02 May 2008 at 6:58pm | IP Logged 
I used the French version: very good in my opinion.

No problem using the translations;

I have not seen the English version.

ikinaridango wrote:
Although I've not yet started Using Spanish, I've had a look through it as I bought it some time ago in anticipation of finishing Spanish with Ease. I agree with many of the posts in this thread: the English is a nightmare. I would much rather have translations in fluent, idiomatic English that sometimes deviated from the literal meaning than the garbled mess that, as Luke has pointed out, seems to have been cobbled together by the same fellow who wrote the infamous English as she is spoke

Has anyone studied Using Spanish from a different language base? I notice that Dutch, French, German and Italian all have advanced levels of the Assimil Spanish programme. Has anyone on this board used any of those books and if so would you be so kind as to comment on the nature of the translations from Spanish?

1 person has voted this message useful



ikinaridango
Triglot
Groupie
United Kingdom
Joined 6124 days ago
61 posts - 80 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese, Italian
Studies: German, Polish

 
 Message 39 of 59
03 May 2008 at 12:59pm | IP Logged 
Thank you zorglub. The reason that I ask is that the translations in the English version are so bad that in order to avoid them I feel that it would be worth getting a version in a different language altogether. (and yes, I know that there's no point in working from a base language that you don't speak, etc and so forth...)
1 person has voted this message useful



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