EL CASCO AREA

It was one of those moments that you really wish you had a camera handy. This is what I saw once on a HUGE sign outside a construction site. Someone (let's call him Tommy) had not bothered to hire a real translator--a professional! So he and his cohort Joey (who had had elementary Spanish 1, maybe, and who still had the dictionary) opened up the dictionary to "hardhat".... el casco. Ok, Joey, what's the word for "area"? Ugh... "area." OK then, "HARDHAT AREA" must be.... EL CASCO AREA. Yeah, that ought to do it.
Not really.
Someone who had studied even intermediate Spanish might have said, "Hey, guys, you can't just open a dictionary, slam two words together and think that you've got a translation."
So I'm starting a new series on the blog of bad translations. I know you've all seen those pages of bad translations to English. The site engrish.com is one of my favorites--I've even contributed to it.
What I'm going to post are some bad translations into Spanish--and I invite you to send in bad translations from English into other languages. Please explain the errors, if they're not immediately apparent to those who don't speak your language.

Some language humor

Hey, did you hear this one, a hombre goes into a biergarten...
Sorry...
But funny things do happen when we're engaged in language learning. My older son learned Hmong, the language of his wife's family, in order to get to know the Old Auntie who was going to approve of their marriage. When the old auntie offered him something to eat, he thought he was saying, "No, thank you, I've already eaten".. which apparently sounds a lot like "No, thank you, I've already farted." I don't care who you are, that's funny.
And I've found a few cartoons on the Internet that I'd like to share with you.

Translator needed on Aisle 4!

Have you ever been in the Atlanta airport and heard a desperate call for a translator? Probably some poor tourist or immigrant is being herded through the documents screening, and he or she doesn't speak a language the security folk can understand.
So the cry goes up for... let's say... "Armenian translator needed at security line 4!"
Nah. They don't need a translator.
What they need is an interpreter.
What's the difference between an interpreter and a translator?
Very simply, a translator deals with written materials, an interpreter with live, spoken language.
If you are in the hospital in a foreign country and you need someone to help you describe your symptoms to the doctor and explain his or her instructions to you, that person will be interpreting your spoken language into the spoken language of the doctor.
If the language professional has to write out the doctor's written instructions to you in your language, she's translating.
Interpreting and translating are very different skills. Both involve a high degree of familiarity with both the language and cultures of the two respective languages (the language pair). But translation can generally be done in the quiet of one's office surrounded by dictionaries and other aids (and let's not forget Google!) whereas interpreting is done on site, sometimes under very difficult circumstances (such as an emergency room), and with few or no language aids.
Interpreters and translators usually charge, too, and there's another difference. Interpreters are likely to charge by the hour, including travel expenses. Translators charge by the word or by the page. You can expect to pay translators more if there is a lot of technical vocabulary involved or for a short turn-around. Both usually have a minimum fee.

Both interpreters and translators work for government, military, industry and non-profit organizations. In fact, many language professionals do both interpreting and translating, when called upon to do so.

In this picture, an American interpreter helps a US Army sergeant communicate with Iraqi women, in order to establish a women's sewing center in Muafiqiyah.  A translator is much more likely to work in a setting like this:

A dose of my own medicine!

How exciting! Next month I'll be traveling to China to represent the university!! Yay!
OK now I'm scared.
Well, not really, but I'm beginning to feel the pressure to learn some Chinese and not look like a fool.
So for the next two months, I'll be blogging about my China experience--and let's hope this Culture Train doesn't derail!
What have I done so far to get ready:

• Said YES! to the adventure;
• Sent my passport to a visa agency;
• Purchased travel insurance through the university;
• Found an online site to learn some Chinese phrases before I go;
• Researched the city where I'm going.

Whew! Turns out the city is a port on a river--so there will be things it has in common with Mobile and New Orleans. Including the heat and humidity. Hmmmm....
Here's the Chinese video site I found--good simple videos explaining some of the basic structural elements of Chinese language:
http://www.clearchinese.com/video-lessons/index.htm
I don't think it's the grammar that's going to be a challenge, but rather the pronunciation. Everything sounds like "sher sher sher sher gwo gwo sher." Sorry, Chinese friends! I'll sort it out in the next few weeks.
Here's Changsha City:

View Larger Map

Will I lose my language skills?

Certainly. If you don't use them.
Very few skills are learned forever--riding a bicycle is one of those. But most other skills deteriorate if they are not used or practiced. If you're like me, you don't remember much of the algebra you learned in high school--or perhaps you're not as great a diver or swimmer as you were back then.

What are some ways you can extend the shelf-life of your hard-earned language skills? Well, naturally, maintaining your contact with it. What are some concrete ways you can do this?

• Join a conversation club. Or start one. Get together a group of friends and a native speaker or two and meet regularly for conversation. Make sure each meeting has an agreed-upon topic, so that the conversation gets off to a good start and stays (more or less) on topic.
• Find websites in the language. Go on google and look for music, art, or your favorite hobby, in the language you're studying. If you're interested in photography, google "fotografía" and see what you find.
• Listen to music in your language. Find radio stations on the Internet and listen to discussions and music. If Spanish is your target language, Walmart and Target have large selections of Latino music in their music sections.
• Find magazines and graphic novels in your language.
• Watch television, cable or satellite stations in your language. Mexican soap operas are especially good for this because they over-act--the gestures and facial expressions help a lot to figure out from context what the characters are saying. Sports stations are also ideal--but the announcers are going to speak really fast.
• Look for children's books in your language and read them to the toddlers you know. They'll love it! Don't do this with kids over 6--they'll think you're nuts.

DVD Language programs

Almost once a week, I get a question from someone about whether s/he should invest in one of those pricey language-learning DVD programs, like Rosetta Stone. To me, those language learning disk things are a waste of time. I frequently tell people that learning a language is like learning ballroom dancing--you need another living, breathing human being to interact with.
But I still get questions from folks who plan to travel, say, to Italy or Mexico--how can they learn a few polite phrases before their trip?
Students sometimes ask if buying one of those language programs would help them in their classroom study of the language.
My basic answer to both of those questions is--if you enjoy using it and continue using it, it might do you some good.

Until very recently, most of the Armed Services used either Rosetta Stone or something related to it, in helping service members develop their language skills. The Air University Culture and Language Center at Maxwell AFB has recently stopped using them for ab initio (from the start) language learning. In other words, it's been their experience that trying to learn a language from scratch using Rosetta Stone is not very useful. Someone that already has some knowledge of the target language can use the software programs like Rosetta Stone to maintain their skills, or to review, but it's a poor choice for learning the basics.
This was borne out recently in my own trip to Japan in 2009. I went there to visit my son who was stationed there--and I thought it would be cool to learn some Japanese before I went. I was really excited! I downloaded one inexpensive video program from download.com--and I purchased another MP3 program online. I loaded both of them into my laptop, hoping to have time to listen and repeat--I guess, during all that free time I have. And since I tend to be an auditory learner anyway, it seemed a good fit for me.
Suffice it to say that I went to Japan knowing--exactly as much Japanese as I knew before I purchased those programs. Almost nothing. In fact, I learned loads of Japanese while I was there--but almost nothing from the software.
So if you've just got to spend money on software or you won't feel you've had your daily vitamins, I say--go for it. But don't have too high an expectation about how much you'll really learn.

Hey, why should I study a foreign language when I can barely speak English?

Professors like it when students ask questions. You frequently hear professors say, "Don't hesitate to ask me a question--there are no stupid questions in this class!"
I'm not so sure.
I've heard some doozies in my day--like the student who asked me how you say "taco" in Spanish.
OK, does this one "... barely speak English?" qualify as a stupid question?
From my point of view, it's pushing the envelope.
First of all, it's patently false for this questioner to assert that s/he barely speaks English. What I think is going on in this question are two suppositions:

1. Speaking colloquial English doesn't qualify as speaking English well.
2. There's a desire to be seen as genuine, unsophisticated, authentic and down to earth.

Secondly, I sometimes wonder if the person asking me this question just secretly wants to put me in my place--in his perspective, someone who speaks more than one language must be a pointy-headed intellectual with too much time on her hands and not enough learning in the School of Hard Knocks.
Alrighty then... my answer will be brief.
If someone plays one sport well, we think, "cool!" What if they played two sports well? What if they played... three!! What would our attitude about that person be? We'd be awed.
Languages are skills that we develop, sometimes in tandem with a natural talent, just like sports or music. But anyone can learn a second language. Maybe they'll never be "fluent" (see previous post), but even Down Syndrome children can learn more than one language.
Which makes me want to ask the interrogator, are you saying you're mentally challenged?
So anyone who speaks one language can learn another. And having done so, that person will almost always report that his way of thinking about his own language and culture have been enriched.

How long will it take??

When we're beginning any new project, one of the first questions we ask is, "How long is this going to take me?" How long to knock out this wall and move it six feet to make a bigger den... how long to mow the lawn... how long to get a degree in chemistry... And it's a good question to ask when learning a new language. How long will I have to study to speak XFL fluently? (By XFL I mean, x foreign language)
That question actually depends on two other questions. What do you mean by "fluently" and what language do you want to speak?
Let's start with what is meant by fluency in a language.
Imagine you grew up hearing your grandparents speak Spanish every Sunday, but you never studied the language, and you're a bit hesitant to speak it with them. But you and your siblings decide to go to Mexico to find your roots--to find the small town in Morelos where your grandparents grew up, met and married. Once you get there, the first person you meet says to you, "Va a haber una fiesta en la parroquia en media hora, entonces no se puede estacionar alrededor del zocalo."
Did you feel fluent? Probably not. Maybe the word "fiesta"...
So there are degrees of fluency, from none at all, to a workable knowledge that lets you order in a restaurant, to another level where you could probably do well in a job situation, to another level where you can read, write and converse almost like a native.
The American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and the US government's Interagency Roundtable on Languages have figured out ways to answer the question, "What do we mean by fluency in a language?" Both have devised scales that help us locate where a language learner's proficiency is.
To me, the most useful scale is the ILR. Here's what it says about Elementary (Level 1) proficiency, where most students end up after one full year of college language:

Speaking 1+ (Elementary Proficiency, Plus) Can initiate and maintain predictable face-to-face conversations and satisfy limited social demands. He/she may, however, have little understanding of the social conventions of conversation. The interlocutor is generally required to strain and employ real-world knowledge to understand even some simple speech. The speaker at this level may hesitate and may have to change subjects due to lack of language resources. Range and control of the language are limited. Speech largely consists of a series of short, discrete utterances.

Examples: The individual is able to satisfy most travel and accommodation needs and a limited range of social demands beyond exchange of skeletal biographic information. Speaking ability may extend beyond immediate survival needs. Accuracy in basic grammatical relations is evident, although not consistent. May exhibit the more common forms of verb tenses, for example, but may make frequent errors in formation and selection. While some structures are established, errors occur in more complex patterns. The individual typically cannot sustain coherent structures in longer utterances or unfamiliar situations. Ability to describe and give precise information is limited. Person, space and time references are often used incorrectly. Pronunciation is understandable to natives used to dealing with foreigners. Can combine most significant sounds with reasonable comprehensibility, but has difficulty in producing certain sounds in certain positions or in certain combinations. Speech will usually be labored. Frequently has to repeat utterances to be understood by the general public.

OK, so fluency is a matter of degree, so to speak--whether you're satisfied to achieve level 1 fluency is up to you.  Most of us had rather get beyond this level, though. Perhaps you need to speak the language for a job situation, or you want to be able to read magazines, newspapers or trade journals in the language. You're obviously going to have to "kick it up a notch."

So how long will it take to get to level 1, and how long will it take to get to levels 2 and 3?
Now it's time to answer question 2: Which language do you want to learn?
The International Center for Language Studies has designed a chart for English speakers, and it categorizes languages according to how many hours of instruction will be necessary for the typical, literate speaker of English (known as L1) to achieve different levels of proficiency in L2 (that's your target, or desired, language). For L1 English speakers, some languages are going to take longer (more instruction hours) than others.
The chart shows the hours of instruction for English L1s to achieve levels of proficiency. For most of the languages we teach on US college campuses (Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Italian), it's going to take you about 150 hours of classroom study to get to level 1. That means a minimum of two semesters.
What if you want to get to level 1 in Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Arabic? Sorry, Charly. That will be 350 hours.
That chart of "Classroom Hours to Achieve Proficiency Levels" is very informative.
Bottom line, you're going to have to do some work to attain a workable level of proficiency. Sorry about the redundancy, but that's the key word: work. If it's worth it to you to attain a working knowledge of a language, it's going to require some serious hours of instruction and independent study.
Which might suggest another question to you.... "Can I do this with a CD program? How about one of those programs they advertise where you learn Spanish while you drink mojitos on the beach?"
Those are good questions for another blog entry!

How cool is he?

I don't know anybody as cool as this guy. Gives me hope that we can all learn from each other!

It's so hard!

Yes. Language learning is hard. It requires us to sort of re-wire our brains. And most language learners will tell you, it seems the older we get the more difficult it can be.

Is this really true? Are we adults over the hill as far as language learning is concerned?

Maybe not. It was once thought that the older we get, the less able our brains are to adapt to new languages and use them effectively. As if our brains sort of petrified in time. In fact, it was believe that after puberty, the brain effectively divides itself in two parts, making it more difficult for "global" learning (that is, learning that takes place on both hemispheres of the brain) to take place.

New research shows that those assumptions are false. It turns out it is largely a case of our perceptions of how our own (first) language works. Here's a quote from Dr. Paul Iverson of the University College London Centre for Human Communication:

Adult learning does not appear to become difficult because of a change in neural plasticity. Rather, we now think that learning becomes hard because experience with our first language 'warps' perception. We see things through the lens of our native language and that 'warps' the way we see foreign languages.

According to Dr. Iverson, it's more a matter of un-learning some habits. So what can you do to improve your ability to learn a new language (in teacher-speak this is known as L2)?

In this blog, we're going to address some specific strategies for adult learners of other languages--and by "adult" learners, I mean anybody over 13 or 14 years of age. For starters, I'll share with you a short list of traits of the Good Language Learner, developed by three professors waayyyyy back in the 70s: 

The Good Language Learner (GLL) Strategies 

(Naiman, Frohlich, & Stern)

1.	find a learning style that suits you
2.	involve yourself in the language learning process
3.	develop an awareness of language both as system and as communication
4.	pay constant attention to expanding your language
5.	develop the L2 as a separate system
6.	take into account the demands that L2 learning imposes

We're going to come back to these strategies later. In the meantime, hasta luego, bis später, à bientôt.

All aboard!!

We're off on an exciting voyage to learn new languages and cultures!
This blog is dedicated to the students at Auburn University Montgomery who are engaged in language learning, either through language courses or through study abroad. Here you'll find reflection on travel, photos that professors and students take during their trips abroad, and hints on how to make learning languages (and other cultures) more fun.