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Being precise vs being close enough? | ||
Tags: Dictionaries | Meaning of words | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5230 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 17 of 20 15 December 2014 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | ||
I have this problem, too, but I'm not sure how to get around it. When I try to think in Latin, I find myself first coming up with an English thought, and then translating it into Latin. My hope is that if I keep this up, eventually my brain will start bypassing the English and think directly in Latin. But it's tricky thus far. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6584 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 18 of 20 15 December 2014 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can imagine it being tough in Latin, since there's little in the way of audio input. My stock solution for this problem is lots of listening.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hobom Triglot Newbie Joined 4219 days ago 33 posts - 61 votes Speaks: German*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 19 of 20 23 December 2014 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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The points that have been raised so far in this thread are very relevant and helpful, but one question remains unanswered:
How do you actually find the idiomatic way to say something? This question has really been bothering me, and the usual suggestion to get more input is not really helping me. Sure, input is absolutely crucial if you want to get a feel on what works in a language and what does not. But it is a very long-term strategy, and it does not really help when I am writing a text. So which resources are available? Emk mentioned good advanced learners' dictionaries, can somebody recommend a particular one? How about translation databases like lingueehttp://www.linguee.de/? The way they work is that you enter an expression in your native language, and the engine finds instances of that phrase being translated into your target language, thus giving you the opportunity to see that phrase used in context and real text (not something that google translate created). In theory that would be a great tool, but the translations that website uses are often horrible, and as a learner you might not recognize that. If I enter star gazing, the German results usually use "sternenbeobachtung" which is a quite literal and decidedly unnatural translation, but somebody learning German might not know that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 20 of 20 23 December 2014 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Find several alternatives and google them. Rephrase it and look up again. Ask a native speaker. Sometimes you just have to give up and choose the more simple way.
(For Russian, multitran.ru is a good resource.) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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