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Reading books in multiple languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6700 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 7 14 August 2010 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Question:
Suppose you wanted to read a book series in several languages (for fun, for practice, to learn grammar/vocabulary, etc.). Let's use the Harry Potter series for example. Suppose you had five copies of each of the first five books in five different languages. 1) Would it be better to read book one in language A, book two in language B, etc., or 2) would it be better to read book one in language A, book one again in language B, book one again in language C, etc. or 3) would it be better to read chapter one of book one in language A, then language B, then language C? I think method 3) would allow you to compare languages better and learn vocabulary (ex: you may not know the word in language C, but you remember its meaning from reading in language B), but constantly switching languages may not allow you to get into the flow of reading and thinking in another language (the way options 1) or 2) would). On the other hand, perhaps reading the same book five times could be boring and option 1) would be best. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5586 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 7 14 August 2010 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would read each chapter in different languages. You would rotate through the languages
faster to maintain exposure. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6220 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 7 15 August 2010 at 2:00am | IP Logged | ||
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I'd do whichever I found most enjoyable, which in turn would depend on my level in the languages. I'd lean towards 3) for high-intermediate languages, and 2) for ones where I already read comfortably.
1) is significantly worse, in my opinion, though better than only reading in one language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6484 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 7 16 August 2010 at 9:53am | IP Logged | ||
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I would just read one version of each book - reading the same stuff over and over is too boring. In a few cases I actually have bought a certain book in several languages - for instances you can buy certain Greek guidebooks in half a dozen languages or more - but when I tried to read them one after another or concurrently I always dropped it after a few pages.
On the other hand I constantly use short bilingual texts for intensive study, but then I want the texts side by side or (even better) interlaced or 'interspersed', and the translations must be as literal as possible. Edited by Iversen on 16 August 2010 at 9:53am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| eumiro Bilingual Octoglot Groupie Germany Joined 5055 days ago 74 posts - 102 votes Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, French, English, German, Polish, Spanish, Russian Studies: Italian, Hungarian | Message 5 of 7 16 August 2010 at 11:33am | IP Logged | ||
As long as the translator did not translate the names of persons/places... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5792 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 7 16 August 2010 at 1:00pm | IP Logged | ||
You would be missing out on two of the main benefits of the novel as a learner's tool then -- writer style and repetition of vocabulary. I can't remember who it was that first suggested it to me, but when I talked about reading short stories in foreign languages I was told not to. Not only is the short story a very dense medium (almost everything in a short story is important -- not a word should be wasted), but you also can't avoid spending the whole time with your head in a dictionary. As a general rule, the majority of the vocabulary in a book occurs within the first 100-150 pages. So if you read an entire book in one language, you'll do most of the work in the first 150 pages, and you'll just be revising for the rest. The same goes for the writer's style. By page 150 you should be comfortable with how the writer (or translator) presents ideas, and the book will get much easier to read. If you don't read the entire book in any given language, you will be missing out on this, and you might find yourself in the last chapter wondering whether the bad guy is standing on the edge of a cliff, river bank, quay, or even just the edge of a Persian rug. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5586 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 7 16 August 2010 at 2:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Cainntear, Thank you for the explaining the purpose of reading through the whole novel.
I am working on bilingual texts at the moment. I want to get up to the children's version of Harry Potter in French by the end of the year. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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