Preference: Target languages and Bilingual Translation

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german2k01
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Preference: Target languages and Bilingual Translation

Postby german2k01 » Fri May 06, 2022 5:24 pm

Hello Guys,

I have a query. If you use a bilingual translation as a crutch, in order to make texts in your target languages comprehensible.
Which language do you prefer the most for the bilingual translation? Your native language or your second most proficient one?
And, what is the reasoning for your choice if there is any?

Thanks

Asad Khan
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Re: Preference: Target languages and Bilingual Translation

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Fri May 06, 2022 5:51 pm

My native language, which is English, if there is a translation available in it. Otherwise, another language, French or Spanish, but usually only if nothing is available in English. However, if the target language is Ancient Greek, sometimes I use a French translation if it is clearer than the English translation, as it sometimes is.
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Re: Preference: Target languages and Bilingual Translation

Postby Herodotean » Fri May 06, 2022 6:30 pm

I try to avoid bilingual translations as a rule, but I'll sometimes use a Latin translation to help with ancient Greek. Since Latin is much more structurally similar to Greek than English is, it's often easier to understand difficult Greek by looking at a Latin translation than an English one (or French, Italian, etc.). I also don't feel quite as much that I'm admitting defeat when I turn to Latin for help . . . For modern languages, if I use a translation at all, it's probably an English one.
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Re: Preference: Target languages and Bilingual Translation

Postby luke » Fri May 06, 2022 7:59 pm

I like my native language. If I use an unusual syntax, word selection or word order in my native language, I know what very well I'm doing that.

That is not to say that I won't use Spanish/French down the road if I read Cent Ans de solitude in French, but that will be because I'll be more familiar with Cien años de soledad than One Hundred Years of Solitude.
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Re: Preference: Target languages and Bilingual Translation

Postby Le Baron » Fri May 06, 2022 8:20 pm

I'm noting that you were careful to ask 'If you use a bilingual translation as a crutch', so I'd second Herodotean in saying that I rarely use bilingual texts, if at all. I have used them between Dutch/German and that was because I simply found it more helpful to translate between those two than German/English.
Not entirely the same, but I also use a Spanish/French bilingual dictionary and also have a little Harrap's 'guide de conversation - Français-Espagnol (avec une mini-dictionnaire de 5000 mots)', which I carry around with me and flip though at loose moments, waiting in the train station or whatever.
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german2k01
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Re: Preference: Target languages and Bilingual Translation

Postby german2k01 » Sat May 07, 2022 3:19 am

It is interesting to read different opinions on why they prefer to use a translation in a different language.

I have used them between Dutch/German and that was because I simply found it more helpful to translate between those two than German/English.


For 2 years of German learning, I have used DeepL translator exclusively. German/English. However, last evening I used Google Translate since it offers translation in my native language Urdu. To my great surprise, just reading a German text along with Urdu translation in parallel had taught me a lot more about German grammar and collocations than German/English translation.

Few observations.

1. I can relate German words and collocations with those of Urdu ones. I can even recall their physical experiences of them and how my teacher in a secondary school used this particular word or collocation in the class. In short, I learned through physical experiences.With the help of this corresponding relation or hooking up, I have just noticed that I retain German words and collocations easily by osmosis.
2. I was able to notice German tenses easily so that's how Germans express past tense in different ways.
3. To borrow your term, my "Eureka" moments have increased manifolds.

Maybe I should start using German/Urdu translation rather than German/English|?
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Re: Preference: Target languages and Bilingual Translation

Postby zenmonkey » Sat May 07, 2022 8:13 am

I have a bunch of bilingual books. Most of them are English-Target. But I also have many in French because I bought them in country. I primarily used them to work on German. I really liked the DTV collection. I even have a few German Italian ones (L4-L5).
I’m using these only to get a sense of a story when I miss general meaning during extensive reading. I don’t specifically work on grammar or collocations during this type of reading. I just read in the target language and glance over if I missed a sentence or two.
Right now I am reading 22 Short Stories (En/De - editor dtv zweisprachig). Recommended!

(My first language is Spanish but today it’s my third strongest language because I use English and French more - so in my case it doesn’t matter if it’s L1 or L2 to target I’m just looking for something with easy lookup.)
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Re: Preference: Target languages and Bilingual Translation

Postby Iversen » Sat May 07, 2022 8:18 pm

The main rule is that I have to be able to read the translation language, but if I also am close to being able to read the original in the target language then I tend to choose less well known translation languages just for fun. After all, the purpose of the translation is not to tell me what the original means in all its glorious entirety, but just to give me enough hints to allow me to read the original without being bogged down with endless dictionary look-ups.

Let me take a couple of examples. The Indonesian text collection I read as goodnight reading a couple of days ago had translations in Catalan and Romanian (plus one text about capsaicin with no translation at all), and I also brought along a Romanian collection with a Danish translation for one text and none for the other - just as I didn't have a translation for the text in unmitigated Scots which I also brought along (GT can't translate Scots). On my note stand I have an Ukrainian collection with translations into German, English, Dutch, Esperanto, a Slovak one with translations into Swedish, a Bulgarian with Swedish, Spanish and Danish plus a Serbian collection with German, Italian, Esperanto and another (partly Bosnian, partly Croatian) with translations into Portuguese, Catalan and Danish, and finally a Russian one with French, Dutch, Danish and Italian translations.

Chaos? Maybe, but I have fun with my languages. Sometimes I even experiment with translations in to English, and at least once I used a translation into Frisian which I haven't even studied.

Of course it would be risky to try to learn from a machine translated text (and all the translations I mentioned are made by Google), but I do think that just having them before my eyes helps me to keep those languages alive.
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Re: Preference: Target languages and Bilingual Translation

Postby luke » Sat May 07, 2022 10:11 pm

Iversen wrote:On my note stand I have an Ukrainian collection with translations into German, English, Dutch, Esperanto, a Slovak one with translations into Swedish, a Bulgarian with Swedish, Spanish and Danish plus a Serbian collection with German, Italian, Esperanto and another (partly Bosnian, partly Croatian) with translations into Portuguese, Catalan and Danish, and finally a Russian one with French, Dutch, Danish and Italian translations.

The translation I'm coming up with for "Iversen" is, "I am the Rosetta Stone". :)
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Re: Preference: Target languages and Bilingual Translation

Postby Le Baron » Sat May 07, 2022 10:20 pm

It seems to me now I've never actually deliberately read a novel by using any translation. The reason, when I think about it, is that translation re-writes the structure so that even though I recognise events and characters, I don't really recognise word or sentence translations. In that sense I'd probably do better to just read a detailed synopsis in English.

I've read Hermann Hesse's Knulp in three languages. Once normally and twice more just because I thought it would be a good opportunity to read a favourite book again. Each time it felt like a slightly different book.

I know others like this method, but I don't really believe in it. That it does anything aside from doubling the work. Maybe I'm not doing it correctly?
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