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Translating, writing, and reading aloud. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| FromSpain Diglot Newbie Spain Joined 3694 days ago 20 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 1 of 4 11 September 2014 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Is translation a good technique to learn a language? I mean, you read whether a text or
an article written in your mother tongue and then you translate it from your mother tongue into your target language while writing. Can you really master a language by using this technique? I'd like to ask one more question. If you don't have the chance of using your target language with a teacher or with a language partner, is it possible to improve your spoken language skills just by writing and reading aloud? I think so, as you are putting into practice all what you have learned when writing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4240 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes  Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 2 of 4 11 September 2014 at 4:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Translating into different languages is a good exercise. You need to have someone who is fluent in a
language to read over your text for mistakes in grammar & word usage. For example, when you translate English phrases beginning with "It is" into French, you can get different translations depending on the context. 1. It is noon. = Il est midi. 2. It is hot. (referring to the weather) = Il fait chaud. 3. It is a good restaurant. = C'est un bon restaurant. In English you can say "A pair of pants." and "A pair of shoes." In Chinese you'd say "一条 裤." and "一对 鞋." Note: in English you'd use A pair for both cases but in Chinese it is a different classifier: 一条 when referring to pants and 一对 when referring to shoes. When asking for people's age he/she would tell you "I'm 20 years old". In French you'd say "J'ai 20 ans". The verb you use in English: "am" = French verb "être" (to be). But in French you'd use "avoir" = English "to have" instead. In Chinese you can ask for a person's age by saying: 你几岁？= English "You how many years of age"? without using a verb. He/she would reply by saying 我今年二十岁 = English "I this year twenty years of age" again without using a verb which is acceptable in Chinese in this context. Translating back and forth isn't as simple as Google Translate. It is a tedious process but at the same time fun. Different languages have their rules for expressing the same things. Reading aloud is also effective in learning a new language. However, in the beginning you'd want to use "shadowing". Instead of reading a newspaper, magazine or book aloud, you'd listen to audios of people talking and repeat in real time as much as possible. Otherwise you get mispronunciations and ended up mixing the accent of your native language into the new language. For instance: "I went to the bank" in French would be "Je suis allé à la banque". In English we tend to pronounce each word separately. In French, a word that end with a consonant is usually linked to the next word that begins with a vowel so that "suis allé" would sound like "suisallé" as if they're 1 word. Edited by shk00design on 11 September 2014 at 4:39am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4855 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 3 of 4 11 September 2014 at 4:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It can be. Some people like to do this, others avoid it because it involves "thinking in" your mother tongue. I would recommend at least sometimes composing in your target language so as not to develop the bad habit of always relying on first forming a sentence in your mother tongue, which can hinder fluency.
No. At best, you could master the art of translating your mother tongue into that language. Realistically though you should use this as one of many techniques alongside things like conversation, extensive reading, intensive reading, spaced repetition, grammar drills, listening to podcasts, watching movies, etc.
Yes. It takes a little more effort to come up with stuff to say/write when you don't have someone there asking you questions, but with a little practice it's not that hard. I do this all the time. It should be no less effective than speaking with a partner who doesn't correct your mistakes. You can even correct your own mistakes by proofreading with the help of a spelling and grammar checker such as Languagetool or a parallel text repository like Linguee, or just by looking up words you're unsure about. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6393 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 4 of 4 11 September 2014 at 5:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thinking is important in addition to writing*/reading aloud. Techniques like shadowing and scriptorium can also be extremely useful.
*don't reread your own uncorrected writing, especially aloud! I also don't translate unless it's for the benefit of others. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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