When is translation not translation?

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When is translation not translation?

Postby Cainntear » Tue Dec 20, 2016 11:39 am

No, not a poor language joke -- instead a philosophical-cum-psychological question.

I've always been happy using translation tasks to learn. People object, saying "translation only teaches you to translate", but I always felt that this was wrong.

I always felt that the role of L1 in translation isn't to give you "a sentence to translate" but "a thought to express". A badly planned translation prompt will end up being an exercise in technical, mechanical translation, but a well-planned one will be much more fluid and intuitive.

This was always just an assertion, though, until I wrote a simple program to teach myself Corsican through English-to-Corsican translation -- now I have anecdotal evidence!

The program was really straightforward. It uses a simple algorithm to track the difficulty of prompts and to introduce new elements to be learned. In a text window, it throws question after question at me, and I type in the answers and get immediate feedback. The more I used it, the quicker I got. Once I found myself running through it at high speed, I started making a particular type of error again and again: switching 1st and 2nd person.

Why do I think this proves me right?
Well, if I see the word "you" and think it refers to me, that means I'm processing the language, doesn't it? If I see "I" and think it's the person speaking to me (the computer in this case), that's language. And for me to respond entirely correctly except for the person (which is pretty transparent to anyone who already speaks Italian, and I did) proves that it's not a mistake in my language model, so its all about situation and processing.

This has fundamentally changed my attitude to translation tasks, and I'm still not sure quite how to deal with it.

Using any first or second person pronouns appears to force the learner to do things the wrong way, taking a conscious approach to their native language processing instead of a natural one, leaving us with an abstract, artificial task, which then can't be quite as useful as I previously thought. But is it still useful or not? (Those of you who've known me for a long time will recognise how much of an existential crisis this is for me! ;) )

What are the consequences for 3rd person translation questions? My own experience with the software shows me that 3rd person translation can be done using the "non-translation thinking" (because I got them right while I was flipping my 1st and 2nd person references), but then again, they certainly can be done with "translation thinking", as can be seen when you get a prompt that makes no intuitive sense but still gets translated successfully by students (far too common in many teaching materials).

So is there a danger that using translation in 1st and 2nd person trains the students to use the wrong approach, which might then transfer to third person sentences? Is it possible that translation-type exercises only become useful when we avoid all 1st and 2nd person references entirely, so that students are not discouraged from using "non-translation thought"?
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby Iversen » Tue Dec 20, 2016 3:05 pm

I don't see a problem in teaching people to translate sentences with the verb 1. or 2. persons - not more more than I see in translating sentences expressing blatant lies. You try to express the thoughts of the original writer, but you aren't that person, and therefore you will not have that person's perspective on the world - and therefore you also have to imagine yourself in another person's boots when the text only contains verbs in the 3. person. In short you are an imposter and and a hypocrite whatever you do in your role as translator. Besides, what use is a translator who can't deal with verbs in the 1. and 2. person??

For me the basic problem is another difference between the translator and the original writer or speaker, namely that you deliberately have chosen to use another language. And other languages have other semantic fields, other constructions, other cultural associations etc. etc. so you cannot avoid making compromises. Your goal will still be as far as possible to express the original thought, but the more you do so the more problems you get with the differences between the languages involved.

The purpose of most translations is to let people who don't know the original language access something written or spoken in it - and since such recipients generally are more interested in the general meaning than in learning about the the nooks and crannies of the original language most translators will aim for a translation type which is perfectly formulated in the target language, even if this means they have to make some deviations from the original. Or in Italian: traduttore, tradittore.

But language learners have other needs: for them it is vital to be able to compare the original version with the translation, and even though this also means that you need to be able to spot idiomatic 'extra' meanings, it generally calls for more literal translations. And personally I even prefer hyperliteral translations precisely because they don't aim to adhere strictly to the rules of the target language - their purpose is to show you something about the original language and let you use texts for study which otherwise would be far too difficult for you.
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby Cainntear » Tue Dec 20, 2016 4:34 pm

I see what you're getting at, Iversen, but you're talking about something that is completely different to what I was talking about.

I'm talking about translating sentences from L1 to L2 in order to learn/acquire the language (grammar, vocabulary and idiom). I'm not talking about reading translations to learn a language, and I'm not talking about the professional field of translation.

I'm talking about
1: My mother is wearing a hat. ______Ma mère porte un chapeau______________________
2: His father is wearing a coat. _____Son père porte un manteau_________________
etc.
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby sillygoose1 » Tue Dec 20, 2016 5:33 pm

Check out Umberto Eco's "Dire quasi la stessa cosa"

I haven't read it yet but it deals with this subject and could provide some useful insight.
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby Cainntear » Tue Dec 20, 2016 6:07 pm

sillygoose1 wrote:Check out Umberto Eco's "Dire quasi la stessa cosa"

I haven't read it yet but it deals with this subject and could provide some useful insight.

Again, that's about translation as a field of work, not the use of L1 as a prompt for L2 production. I'm sure it's a great book, but it's not what I'm talking about here.

In fact, the title shows it as being something different. Good literary translation accepts that you can only say almost the same thing, but translation exercises in a language book should be specifically chosen so that you can say exactly the same thing. The big advantage the teacher has over the translator is that the teacher can select material that minimises ambiguity and avoids untranslatable constructions, whereas the translator has no choice of source material and has to cope with ambiguity and untranslatable constructions the best they can.
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby Melis » Tue Dec 20, 2016 11:36 pm

I use translation as a language learning tool. I copy newspaper articles into my notebook, skipping lines, and then write the English translation underneath. This is really useful in learning sentence structure and vocabulary.
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby Random Review » Tue Dec 20, 2016 11:47 pm

Hmmmm it's posts like this that make you one of the most interesting posters on here.

I don't now what the difference is, but another way to see the difference is to think about translation tasks using the English word "you". For most European languages (most languages in general?) it is actually impossible to do these without further information: formal/informal, singular/plural?

A mechanical task (the absolute norm, sadly) will give you the appropriate pronoun as a prompt; a non-mechanical task will give you a context. Even an oversimplified context can work very well, possibly even better than a more realistic one (remember MT prompting the informal verb forms by giving first names?).

I guess the keys might be intelligent use of context and imagination. I remember once you explained something interesting about MT (my apologies if I remember this incorrectly) that by deliberately using undetermined prompts ("I need to do it, but I don't want to do it today" rather than "I need to finish this essay, but I don't want to do university work on such a beautiful day) he allows the learner to use their imagination to give the tense/aspect/mode system of the language's verbs a context that is meaningful for them. In this case (almost paradoxically) too much of the wrong kind of context would make it mechanical.

That's my two cents' worth anyway, mate.

Another thing I just wanted to point out in passing (sorry to go off topic) is that I know from personal experience teaching English that this is not a problem limited to translation and that many (far too many) all-L2 exercises suffer the same defect of becoming mechanical. I remember one way we used to practise "used to" by giving a prompt like "John no longer starts work at 8am" and the student would answer "John used to start work at 8am". We would have a 2-hour class consisting of 2 or 3-minute drills of this type (manipulating structures but not really processing meaningful language*) delivered at high pace and obviously with a lot of variety.

I think there is a place for this kind of thing as fluency practice for things students already know pretty well (and if I ever have freedom to design my own classes, I will use this kind of drill as a fluency exercise); but as a way to practise new structures you just learned or even consolidate structures you kind of know it is f***ing stupid. Sorry for my language, but I do feel that adverb is justified here.


* I remember that in my second year with that company, I stopped using the prompt sentences in the books we were given and started writing my own using surprising, humorous or slightly outrageous sentences based on what I knew of the students concerned, e.g..

I am no longer a Nazi -----> You used to be a Nazi
You no longer want to kill me -----> I used to want to kill you
You no longer have a crush on Mariano Rajoy ----> I used to have a crush on Mariano Rajoy (that one worked well with male students)

Having had 6 months to reflect on my experience, I think I can now see what I was intuitively trying to do here., albeit in quite a clumsy way.
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby Xenops » Wed Dec 21, 2016 2:14 am

A hundred years ago, didn't they learn Greek and Latin through translation work?
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby reineke » Tue Mar 28, 2017 3:16 pm

It's likely impossible for anyone, including young children, to completely avoid the influence of their mother tongue. This includes both receptive and productive skills. When people say "don't translate" they may refer to a couple of things. Most often, the counter advice is to "think" in the foreign language. I don't want to attempt to define what thinking in a language really means but the general idea is to just "let it rip". In order to do that, like in that song about a magical fruit, production is a natural byproduct of input, intake and subsequent rumination. Language learners are in constant search of means to accelerate this process. Some would argue that a way to accomplish this is to produce output early.

Old-fashioned translation is a skill. I would argue that using translation for the purpose of language learning is also a skill. It's a form of forced early output using language tools. I believe that novice learners should consider doing some sort of structured exercises. Novice learners considering this approach using random material or their own pre-formulated sentences should look up some translation tips and have their work checked by a professional.
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Re: When is translation not translation?

Postby rdearman » Tue Mar 28, 2017 3:32 pm

Cainntear wrote:The program was really straightforward. It uses a simple algorithm to track the difficulty of prompts and to introduce new elements to be learned. In a text window, it throws question after question at me, and I type in the answers and get immediate feedback. The more I used it, the quicker I got.


I would like to explore this in more detail. I assume you created a program with had the L1 prompt, and the L2 answer in some type of database, such that you could compare your response?
Using your example:

(L1 Data segment contained in DB) My mother is wearing a hat.
(User Response) Ma mère porte un chapeau
(L2 Data segment held in DB) Ma mère porte un chapeau

Or were you generating an English sentence with no reference check included?
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