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Translation of "shadowing" hard to find. | ||
Tags: Shadowing | Translation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| zorglub Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 7001 days ago 441 posts - 504 votes  1 sounds Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 5 24 December 2007 at 3:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello,
Dr Alexander Arguelles, I find it difficult to find a good translation for the act / concept of "shadowing" when learning the way we do with Assimil or other sources. I have to use periphrases to describe shadowing. I find it quite lengthy to explain, and nobody I asked could point to the correct French single word we could use. Do you see any ? Thank you Alceste Zorglub 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 2 of 5 30 December 2007 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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In English, I always take care to explain my use of the terms “shadowing” or “to shadow” in the language learning context. Unless I did this, I would never expect anyone to understand, “oh, he means to listen to a foreign language dialogue through earphones and instantly and immediately make the same sounds with my mouth that I perceive through my eardrums, all the while walking swiftly with good posture.” Thus, you will have to explain yourself in French, or in any other language for that matter. So, “ombrager” already exists as a parallel to “to shadow” whose meaning could be expanded in a similar fashion. If you do not like this, then you will have to begin to paraphrase, e.g., “faire écho les mots simultanément.”
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| zorglub Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 7001 days ago 441 posts - 504 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 3 of 5 04 January 2008 at 5:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Good morning,
This is quite reassuring to me since I had to indulge into a lot of paraphrasing to explain "shadowing". Someone else did actually suggest "écho simultané". It does require a bit of explaination, though, as you stress. Ombrager would not work in my opinion, since its meaning is generally restricted to the light/darkness situation or to a temper, a "personne au caractère ombrageux" defining a somewhat bad tempered person. Thank you. Alceste Zorglub.
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| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 4 of 5 06 January 2008 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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As commonly used in English, both “to shadow” and “shadowy” also have rather negative connotations. However, imitating voices as instantaneously and accurately as possible can best be described by the analogy of the way a shadow follows the object that casts it. Thus, I hit upon the term “shadowing.” Again, I always explain what I mean when I first use the term, but it has always met with positive acceptance, and perhaps in the future dictionaries will include it in this sense. Paraphrasing all the time is too awkward. Hence, if I were French, I think I would use “ombrager” as I could be wrong, but I do not feel that it is any more negative than “to shadow” and it should not be any more difficult to expand its meaning. In English, this has been done in at least one other context that I know of--interns in hospitals speak of "shadowing" older physicians as a part of their training.
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