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Reading same texts in different language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| langtyro Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4855 days ago 14 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Korean*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 6 16 June 2011 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have both a Spanish and an English copy of a book that I would like to tackle. What is
the most effective way in going about learning Spanish? Should I read the Spanish texts first, then read the English to get a translation? I'm just not sure how to effectively use this method. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 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 2 of 6 17 June 2011 at 1:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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Read them in parallel, one sentence at a time. With two separate books this may be somewhat cumbersome, but the whole point of this exercise is to use the translation to give you fasttrack access to the foreign text. But the translation has to be fairly literal to be of any value. Edited by Iversen on 17 June 2011 at 1:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6884 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 3 of 6 17 June 2011 at 3:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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If it's a book you've never read in your native language before, reading it sentence by
sentence along with Spanish will probably hamper your enjoyment. I would recommend reading it entirely in English first so you can fully enjoy the story, and then read them both together as Iverson discussed. However, I would rather compare them paragraph-by-paragraph (or even every few paragraphs) rather than sentence-by-sentence, because it seems less tiring, because the greater context is what holds the meaning more than individual sentences, and because the translation might not be divided into the same sentences as the original but is likely to be divided into the same paragraphs for the most part. At least this has been my experience; your mileage may vary. EDIT: When you compare texts, I definitely recommend reading your native language before the target language so that you're getting comprehensible input in your target language. It won't do you much good to look at some incomprehensible gibberish and then read the English and think, "so that's what that should have meant! All right, on to the next!" ;) Edited by Lucky Charms on 17 June 2011 at 3:11am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5701 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 6 17 June 2011 at 8:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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The only way I can work with bilingual texts that are too difficult for me to read the target language and ignore the translation is that I read the target language sentence by sentence. When I think I've understood a sentence, I compare it with the translation. When I don't understand a sentence I look up words and grammar points and try to understand it on my own, and only after that I compare my result with the translation.
If I allow myself to read the translation first, I either read the translation or give up after a few pages max. By the way, I've forgotten most of my Latin, but I recently found some bilingual books in a used book store. Because I'm not that concerned with Latin I just read a bit in the tram, first Latin then German, with many "so that's what that should have meant!" moments - and on the second day I started understanding entire sentences on my own again. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 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 5 of 6 17 June 2011 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
I totally agree
I don't agree. If you read a book and its translation together at all then you are supposed to learn from it. Focussing only on the general meaning of the native-language version and then turning to the one in your target language means that you will have forgotten most of the details. But if you want more than learning to read a language passively you simply have to care about the details - even though this may detract from your pure reading pleasure. And sometimes even a sentence is too much. If you can deal with a whole paragraph then it is a sign that you are close to the stage where you don't need the translation any more. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| langtyro Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4855 days ago 14 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Korean*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 6 23 June 2011 at 4:00am | IP Logged | |||||
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@Iverson, if there are vocabularies that I'm not familiar with (but doesn't destroy my
understanding of the sentence because of the translated book), should I look them up? Or should I simply keep on reading and looking back and forth between the two books? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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