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Translation tasks as practice | ||
Tags: Translation | Learning Technique/Method | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| hombre gordo Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5591 days ago 184 posts - 247 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Portuguese, Korean | Message 1 of 12 12 August 2009 at 4:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Is it a good idea to find texts is ones native language or any fluent second languages that we speak and use them as practice by translating them into the target language?
I have started finding articles, blogs and so on of an educated nature and translating them into Japanese. Even content from this forum would do. The purpose is to better my passive vocabulary and also as general writing practice as I always write by hand. I make sure that they are texts about challenging subjects in order to stretch the vocabulary I must use. If I really can't translate a word, I simply look it up and add it. Anyone else do the same type of task for active vocabulary? Is this a good way to practice? Or would I be better off just passively reading Japanese. I do this anyway. Maybe I should do both. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Walshy Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6950 days ago 335 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German | Message 2 of 12 12 August 2009 at 5:20am | IP Logged | ||
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I believe that is the primary learning technique employed by Luca, a polyglot of 8 languages, who posts videos on youtube under the alias poliglotta88, IIRC.
Check out his videos and see what I mean, his English is excellent and his German is very good too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hombre gordo Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5591 days ago 184 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Portuguese, Korean | Message 3 of 12 12 August 2009 at 5:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Really! At least I know I am on the right track!
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6711 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 4 of 12 12 August 2009 at 10:49am | IP Logged | ||
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The only people who can have anything against this method are those that learn each language as a totally isolated entity (insofar that is possible) or who for whatever reasons want to maintain a "clean" target language environment. But even then it would be a good idea once in a while to step out of the straightjacket and try to translate a base language text at the level you want to achieve in your target language. It is a brutal way of showing you how far you still are from your goal.
The problem is not so much to find words (at least not the the languages I know, -it may be a different story with more exotic languages like Japanese) but to find suitable translations for long expressions, including proverbs and quotes from films. Good dictionaries can give you adequate translations for short and standardized expressions, but normally not for the longer ones. If you only make these translations for your own sake the simple solution is to ignore the problem and instead make a collection of useful expressions in the target language, - we have a thread about "chunks" somewhere that adresses this problem. It is much easier to find a suitable translation in your own language of some alluring formulation in a target language text, than it is to try to guess what native speakers of your target language might conceivably say in a given situation. Edited by Iversen on 12 August 2009 at 10:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hombre gordo Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5591 days ago 184 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Portuguese, Korean | Message 5 of 12 12 August 2009 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||
I have been using this method today. When I come across something in English which doesn't sound nature in Japanese if translated literally, I do a literal translation and then in brackets make another translation with a suitable corresponding idiom specific to Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Toufik18 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Algeria Joined 5752 days ago 188 posts - 202 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (classical)*, French, English | Message 6 of 12 12 August 2009 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes ! that's true, asa translation student in the uni, I find that the unlearnt words stick in my memory when I translate a text, maybe because of the hight level of concentration ones get while translating .
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| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6150 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 7 of 12 12 August 2009 at 11:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I found that my Greek got a lot better when I was asked to help translate (although the texts were usually of just a short word or sentence, two sentences at the most) the courses into Greek for Livemocha. I think this is a valid strategy for learning that should be encouraged as soon as one has enough basic vocabulary and knowledge of grammar. I think it can really help.
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| hombre gordo Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5591 days ago 184 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Portuguese, Korean | Message 8 of 12 12 August 2009 at 11:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I know find it the same. Besides translation is quite fun. In Japan I was frequently asked to translate messages from Spanish to Japanese and the reverse for the Japanese friends who had met new Spanish speaking friends.
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