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About translating every word in a book | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| MarcusOdim Groupie Brazil Joined 4847 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes  | Message 1 of 13 03 September 2011 at 4:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been trying to learn German and have thought about buying a book and translating every single word I don't know (one chapter at a time), then I read it for a while, erase my translations and try reading it again, do you guys think it would work out?
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| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5262 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 13 03 September 2011 at 5:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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I read two books by Mia Couto in Portuguese on my Kindle before I really started learning Portuguese in earnest. I know Spanish well enough and have the Priberam Portuguese dictionary installed. I started out by looking up every word I didn't know (easy with the kindle- just put the cursor in front of the word), those words for the most part didn't stick as well as the words and phrases I learned through context, working them out myself first and only checking the dictionary when I had enough doubt. Usually my guess was either right or very close. As you know, Portuguese and Spanish are much more similar to each other than German and English, or Portuguese and German are. I had a better base to start with.
So if you translate each and every word individually, how do you deal with the words that may have five different possible meanings depending on context, or word phrases that may mean something entirely different than the sum of their individual parts without good fundamentals in the TL? Perhaps a simple book with simple language or a technical book with no colloquialisms could be suitable for this translation method. The idioms, phrases and constructions peculiar to German and words with multiple meanings dependent on context, which are common to most novels, will impede your learning to a large extent. I'm not saying don't do it, but do this after you have a good base in the language. I think then that you would get more out of this method. This harks back to the "vocabulary vs grammar" discussion that was going on here a few weeks ago. It is my opinion that grammar helps you learn more vocabulary. That's what I mean by "having a good base" to start. That's my two cents worth, others may disagree. Edited by iguanamon on 03 September 2011 at 5:13am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Vārds Bilingual Diglot Newbie Latvia Joined 4910 days ago 24 posts - 41 votes Speaks: Russian*, Latvian* Studies: German | Message 3 of 13 03 September 2011 at 11:48am | IP Logged | |||||
I remember myself when I tried to learn German by reading book and translating every unknown word, but as iguanamon mentioned, you can't translate idioms and fixed expressions with word-by-word translations (Er kauft ein - He buys one ("one" what?)). So I dropped this idea and started with Pimsleur and Assimil. Now after 3 months I'm trying to read some German book again and now, when I have basic knowledge of German language structure, I can notice which combination of words is most likely fixed expression (dict.cc is very good tool for translating such expressions), can notice separable verbs e.t.c. So if you are complete beginner, learning by translating the book is imo waste of time. If you have some target language knowledge, then books is great tool for vocabulary building (I'm reading right now Dan Brown translated in German - simple language, a lot of dialogues with many colloquial expressions). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| KCor Groupie United States Joined 5008 days ago 50 posts - 72 votes | Message 4 of 13 03 September 2011 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm sure what he was buying would have been mentioned in the previous sentence. Perhaps you mean something more along the lines of, "Das hängt davon ab, ..." Edited by KCor on 03 September 2011 at 1:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6379 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 13 03 September 2011 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I thought about doing this for a book that I may read and listen to over and over such as Harry Potter.
Otherwise, I don't think it's time effective. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Vārds Bilingual Diglot Newbie Latvia Joined 4910 days ago 24 posts - 41 votes Speaks: Russian*, Latvian* Studies: German | Message 6 of 13 03 September 2011 at 1:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
That was just first separable verb (einkaufen) that came in to my mind to illustrate, that translating word-by-word without knowing basics of German language (in this case separable verbs) is waste of time :) But I agree, that your example is better. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fazla Hexaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6262 days ago 166 posts - 255 votes Speaks: Italian, Serbo-Croatian*, English, Russian, Portuguese, French Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 7 of 13 03 September 2011 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have been doing what you wrote with the book "Pirates of the Caribbean 4" in Turkish, were it's clearly written on the back "8+ yaş" which is, for kids older than 8+. Now I am 22 so for the first time in my life I felt much more ignorant than million of kids, for a reason.
Anyways to answer your question, whether it works or not... I think it works if you find something interesting enough that you'd read more times. I write the translation of every word (and believe me, especially in the first pages, there will be a lot of them [at least for difficult languages, which I consider the ones from different language families than your own to be]) near the word I don't know and after re-reading the passages some times I see they stuck in my head. Beware, they might not stuck in there as good as if you learned a word by context, but still it is an improvement. You learn from books words that usually you'd rarely use in everyday life so even if some may suggest it to be timewasting, I don't think so, mainly because they are one of the final steps in the process of language studies. I can't enumerate the amount of words I learned from this book for 8+ years old kids. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4909 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 8 of 13 03 September 2011 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
You've just made his point, actually. He doesn't "buy one" of anything. The verb is einkaufen, and it means "to shop" or "to buy", but not "buy one". Translating German word for word is trickier than most languages, because it has seperable prefixes like this, in addition to the problem of idiomatic phrases. Of course, with a bit of grammar training, you should be able to spot them easily. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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