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.
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:
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:
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.
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.
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:
Speaking colloquial English doesn't qualify as speaking English well.
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.
