Polyglots and Linguists in T-Nation

Off Topic
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[quote]Nards wrote:
I’ve been in Taiwan 10 years and my Mandarin is a haphazard melange of high-level and low-level meaning I can say things like “My dog’s tooth enamel is too thin” but still can’t remember how to ask what time it is…maybe that’s because I always wear a watch.

I can have a 15 minute conversation IF all the right questions are asked, but I could equally be stymied if the wrong ones, meaning shit I don’t now, are asked.[/quote]

Wondered when you’d get in here, Nards. Do you have any idea why you have the high and low and not the middle?

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[quote]treco wrote:
Not directed at Nards but

How much time could any of us find to learn something if we spent less time here or other forums. I find myself reading an article on internet that takes 5-10 minutes and THEN spending 30 minutes reading the comments…
And then doing that for several hours in a day if not engaged in some ‘have to’

In the past few weeks, I have started weening myself off of doing that. Even here on T-Nation, I have thought
about just reading the articles and blowing off the rest.
[/quote]

Yeah I agree. For me T-Nation is my only contact with the outside. I live a pretty monastic life here in an Army barracks nestled in the farmland of a foreign country.

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Just found this thread. I too speak Japanese, about 80% fluent I would say. I lived in Japan for 10years but moved back to the states in 2005. It is great to see other people who live in or have lived in Japan and actually understand the language. My son still lives there but was here over the summer for a few weeks. Was so great to be with him and to speak Japanese again. I love to speak but I have weird problem speaking to other foriegners in Japan, probably because most of the ones I was around really sucked at it.

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[quote]Ambugaton wrote:

[quote]Nards wrote:
I’ve been in Taiwan 10 years and my Mandarin is a haphazard melange of high-level and low-level meaning I can say things like “My dog’s tooth enamel is too thin” but still can’t remember how to ask what time it is…maybe that’s because I always wear a watch.

I can have a 15 minute conversation IF all the right questions are asked, but I could equally be stymied if the wrong ones, meaning shit I don’t now, are asked.[/quote]

Wondered when you’d get in here, Nards. Do you have any idea why you have the high and low and not the middle?[/quote]

Yeah, I know why,…for the embarrassing reason that I’ve never taken even one class in Mandarin. Mine’s all picked up from just living here…so it ends up being a mix of the language.

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[quote]Ranzo wrote:
Just found this thread. I too speak Japanese, about 80% fluent I would say. I lived in Japan for 10years but moved back to the states in 2005. It is great to see other people who live in or have lived in Japan and actually understand the language. My son still lives there but was here over the summer for a few weeks. Was so great to be with him and to speak Japanese again. I love to speak but I have weird problem speaking to other foriegners in Japan, probably because most of the ones I was around really sucked at it.[/quote]

Good to have you hear, man. For what it’s worth, I can’t speak to other native English speakers in Japanese, either, for the most part, even when they’re capable. It just feels weird.

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I learned french in elementary school and I’ve retained enough of it to get by. Dutch is similar enough to English that I can occasionally understand what people are talking about.

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Oh and I plan on learning japanese so I can understand kinky porn.

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I know Spanish and French, and work as a translator of written texts into English. I originally learned Spanish out of a sense of shame when on an extended holiday: everyone else in Europe spoke at least their own language, English, and sometimes Spanish to comunicate with each other, while I only spoke English, and English Loud and Slow.

I signed up for a 5 month intensive language course at a reputable school (Don Quijote), and at the end of 5 months I went from beginner (level A1) to near fluent (level C1). In turn, this got me on to a languages degree at uni where I went on to learn French. I would definitely recommend an intensive course in country if you have the time/money. You can learn a lot even in a week or two.

After uni I moved to France, where I’ve been for three years. My French is very good now but it’s a constant learning experience. Sometimes I think that the better you get the more you realise how bad you are!

Languages are definitely a “use it or lose it” skill. My Spanish used to be a lot stronger than my French, but has fallen into disuse since third year at uni. I can still read and write well enough (and certainly well enough to work from professionally), but when I hear myself speak now I cringe. I’m sure though that if I spent a month or two in Spain it’d come back though.

[quote]pgtips wrote:
I want to learn a new language. This is going ot one of those questions that has no concrete answers and just opinions but what language would be the most pratical to learn? [/quote]

Chinese is definitely the language to learn, but requires a huge time commitment to get half-way proficient. A former boss worked in China for 5 years, and said it took him 3 years of hard study in-country just to be able to know what was going on around him/scan the newspaper.

If I remember rightly you’re a student. In this case, you should DEFINITELY get on the Erasmus programme through your uni. The UK gov gives you a grant of about £10k to go, and I don’t think you can have a better experience at while at uni. I’d imagine your uni will have links with all major European countries, as well as some more uncommon ones (a friend went to Prague for a year). Check it out.

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[quote]Diddy Ryder wrote:

I know Spanish and French, and work as a translator of written texts into English. I originally learned Spanish out of a sense of shame when on an extended holiday: everyone else in Europe spoke at least their own language, English, and sometimes Spanish to comunicate with each other, while I only spoke English, and English Loud and Slow.

[/quote]

Another great post in a great thread.

I admire you for being able to do translation. I’m definitely a communicator and not a translator. I don’t have any patience for or interest in technical translation and I am wholly lacking in the indifference required for literary translation (I end up writing what I think the author should be saying rather than what he probably actually wants to say).

I have an English school for young people here and just absolutely LOVE my job. Because of the nature of my business, I get the odd request for translation work and every. single. time. I immediately regret having agreed to do the job the minute I sit down and try and get to work on it.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

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Also: Why Yul Brynner?

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[quote]Cortes wrote:
Also: Why Yul Brynner?
[/quote]

That’s like asking why Chuck Norris or why Clint Eastwood or why Rowdy Roddy Piper. but maybe circa 1962.

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[quote]Cortes wrote:

Another great post in a great thread.

I admire you for being able to do translation. I’m definitely a communicator and not a translator. I don’t have any patience for or interest in technical translation and I am wholly lacking in the indifference required for literary translation (I end up writing what I think the author should be saying rather than what he probably actually wants to say).

I have an English school for young people here and just absolutely LOVE my job. Because of the nature of my business, I get the odd request for translation work and every. single. time. I immediately regret having agreed to do the job the minute I sit down and try and get to work on it.

Do you have any thoughts on this? [/quote]

I tried teaching after uni but didn’t like it. It’s strange, but I think I have a better grasp of French and Spanish grammar than I do English (which I use intuitively), so I would feel like a fraud when I couldn’t answer the students’ grammar questions.

I don’t really like technical translation either. To be really good at it you have to have pretty in-depth knowledge of the field in question, and a love of all things technical. This is pretty rare among languages grads, and a lot of the best technical translators become translators after spending years in a technical field. That said, if you have solid research skills you can get by. I just left an in-house job as a technical translator to go freelance as I felt very uncomfortable translating technical texts “in the dark”: if you ever buy a French car where you use the electric window switch to change gears then that may well be down to me.

As for literary translation, very few translators actually earn a living from this. It tends to pay less than normal translation, and a lot of the great works of literature are translated by academics who specialise in Russian literature, for example. You also touched on why there is no definitive translation, or one translation of a book can best another: it’s a very subjective task and a lot of it is open to interpretation. A skilled writer/translator can also improve on the original: apparently, the “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” novels are better in English than in Swedish!

I think it’s only when you look at a text as a translator that you realise how ambiguous language really is, and I’d bet this is why you regret accepting the translation job once you sit down to get on with it when what seemed like an hour’s work is a real headache 3 hours down the line. A skilled translator does more than just mechanically replace words (Google translate can do this), they will be able to convey the same meaning in idiomatic language. Another term for this is “transcreation”, and this is what is often used for ad campaigns, etc. but in my view all good translations are “transcreation”, and give the same effect to the English reader as they did to the French, or whatever.

I could actually write about this all day, so I’ll finish by saying that I really enjoy translating articles for magazines (recently did features on the Congo and Kazakhstan), and marketing stuff that requires a bit of creativity.

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[quote]Nards wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:
Also: Why Yul Brynner?
[/quote]

That’s like asking why Chuck Norris or why Clint Eastwood or why Rowdy Roddy Piper. but maybe circa 1962.[/quote]

I found the pic to use as an example of an inspirational bald man in a thread where a guy was complaining about losing his hair, and decided I liked it and would keep it as my avatar.

Also, we look a lot alike from the eyebrows up.

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[quote]therajraj wrote:
First rule of learning Chinese is not calling the language Chinese. It’s the equivalent of calling English ‘American’

It’s Cantonese and Mandarin.
[/quote]

Yes, and as spoken languages, they’re completely different from each other! Oddly, however, the written language is pretty much the same.

A guy I knew in grad school from Taiwan (Mandarin speaker) met a girl from Shanghai (Cantonese speaker). He told me they could not understand one another at all, so they resorted to speaking English.

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Growing up, my parents spoke Italian at home, so I used to be as comfortable speaking that as English – just without the formal schooling I have in English.

I studied French in school and then picked it up again once I relocated. I have a ways to go with it to get really good at it, however, and it doesn’t help that spoken French in Quebec is different from the European French I was taught.

I find I can also figure out written Spanish and understand most slowly-spoken Spanish because it’s close enough to Italian and French that I recognize about 70% of the words. You’d think that would mean I could figure out Portuguese too, but I find it’s much more difficult.

If I ever have the free time and/or live long enough, I’d like to learn Russian, Japanese, Arabic, and maybe Mandarin.