Trouble with Translating

[Texan]

Howdy,

I'm having trouble with the active wave of Assimil (German Without Toil) and I think it might underscore a particularity I'm having with language learning in general.

If I hear the German lesson, I can understand it fully. I can "translate" German into thoughts. I also understand German word order pretty well.

The problem for me is translating Assimil's English translation. It's hard for me to take their English translation and turn it into German UNLESS I turn their English into a near-literal translation of German, a "middle language."

If you've ever read Barry Farber's work on the "middle language," that's what I'm talking about.

It's almost as if English and German are operating on two separate tracks in my mind. If I'm given a sentence in English, it's hard for me to translate that to German even though I know how to express that thought independently in German. It's as if my brain wants to reject English to German and keep the languages independent.

Has anyone ever encountered this? It has given me new found respect for professional translators.

Thanks!

[Finolia]

Hey My English teacher was telling me about that as well. She said she feels as if only one language can really be active at once so translating wouldn't be for her ^^ but I really like it and I use it a lot. Probably because I'm struggling to think of anything else to write which wouldn't include much vocabulary I don't know yet - at least in my beginner language(s). Oh, and I really am studying translation

But maybe it would help to try and translate it more freely and not into the exact sentences Assimil wants you to produce? If the outcome is correct languagewise you are still learning to produce correct sentences, you just have to have them corrected.

If it really doesn't work though then I would probably stop translating just try to produce your own texts, write a diary or idk. If you struggle a lot and you don't feel that it's helping you then why not switch to a different method

I have to practice commas by the way xD sorry if it makes my post hard to read

[Ingaræð]

Assimil doesn't mean for you to do a literal translation, because that simply wouldn't work. You have to think about what is the equivalent phrase in German for the same concept. If someone asks you how you are, the responses 'I'm fine' or 'es geht mir gut' are not literal translations of one another, but they mean the same thing.

The goal of the active wave is to get you to produce German by means of recalling that which you have already learnt to understand (and recalling is the best way to remember something that you want to learn). Compare the instructions for active wave in German without toil with those of the Dutch course, or any other Assimil course (they all seem to differ slightly).

My own method is to 'test' how much I can remember by using only the English text as a prompt, checking my 'answer' against the German text, and then go through the passive wave routine for anything that I had forgotten. I'm not using the course as a beginner, though. You could also use just the audio, rather than the German text, to step things up a notch.

[mcthulhu]

Translation is always a good exercise; when you find yourself groping for words, that makes it very clear to you where your gaps are. It's particularly difficult translating into an L2; even professional translators are more likely to be translating into their L1 (retired professional translator here), unless their L2 is pretty much at native level. Ingaræð described the objective very well, though. Ideally, you want to express the concept or meaning as a German would in that context, rather than just replacing one set of words with another set of words. There may be more than one right answer.

[reineke]

Assimil active wave

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =19&t=3720

Assimil does not include detailed instructions with most of their products. This contributes to the Assimil "magic" aura that's good for the sales.

Cover the L2 text and try to recall the key words and sentences. If you wish, you may write down what you are able to come up with while "translating" into German but this part is optional. The French language online instructions don't mention any dictionary work. It is ridiculous to expect that you will be able to come up with several correct German sentences based on the English translation.

[Iversen]

I would say that there are reasons to do both L1 -> L2 and L2 -> L1 translations, and we should keep the different reasons separate..

Of cause you may want to make materials accessible for others who can't understand the language they are formulated in, and then both directions are theoretically possible - but in most cases you would do L2 -> L1 (especially if you are a professional translator who expect to get paid for you efforts).

Things are very different if you are a language learner. Then you would do L1 to L2 translations to discover your holes and weaknesses, and here the goal is to find ways of expressing the meaning of the original in a way that is idiomatic in L2, and then simple word-by-word translations are mostly non good enough. You want to learn the constructions and expression which you would have used if YOU was a native speaker of the target language.

That's like most people who use L1 to L2 translations would defend them.

On the other hand, as a language learner you should only do L2 -> L1 translations to get a feeling for the way things are expressed in L2, These translations should first and foremost be as literal as possible because you want to learn how things are said in your target language, and it doesn't matter how they ought to be said in your own language because that's not the one you are trying to learn. And you can stop doing them when you have become accostumed to the foreign L2 ways of thinking and can understand most things without translating them.

One special case of L2 -> translation is it use in retranslation (L2 -> L1 -> L2). Luca L recommends a fairly large time interval between the phases. I think the interval should be as short as possible because I see the exercise as a way to mimick the fluency in expressing yourself which you will get much later and also to help you to memorize things in the original by forcing you to remember how they were expressed.