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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" align="center">=====================================================<br>
<b>L O W L A N D S - L - 28 June 2010 - Volume 03</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" align="center"><a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com" target="_blank"><span style="" lang="FR">lowlands.list@gmail.com</span></a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/" target="_blank"><span style="" lang="FR">http://lowlands-l.net/</span></a><br>
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<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">From: <span class="gd"><span style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">Obiter Dictum</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:obiterdictum@mail.ru">obiterdictum@mail.ru</a>></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Subject: <span class="gi">LL-L
"Language Proficiency" 2010.06.29</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Hello Lowlanders, <br>
<br>
First of all, thank you all very much for your input. Yes, your stories are
most instructive and contribute a great deal to my research. No, I am not
saying "that’s enough," though. Indeed, if any one else -- or any of
those who have come up with their stories -- recall more such incidents, I will
only be grateful. <br>
<br>
A few comments at this point. As I said, my research in language proficiency is
related to translation and interpreting. <br>
<br>
Jacqueline, I most impressed with your vision. Thanks to you, I am formulating
my own, as concerns translation. I am holding it back this far, only because
its too raw and hazy, but will certainly put it out here before long. <br>
(As concerns my paper. I <i>think</i> it will develop into a paper. For the
time being, it is going to be a sort of a foreword or introduction to a manual
of translation and interpreting techniques that one of my associates (an
ex-translator in navy intelligence) is writing for his Russian students (he teaches
part time Dutch Roman Law, English and translation at Far-Eastern University in
Vladivostok, Russia). I came to the idea of my own theory after having read
Umberto Eco’s <span style="color: black;">Dire quasi la stessa cosa: Esperienze
di traduzione. (To Say Almost the Same Thing: Experience of Translation). It
appears that il maestro has invented something I knew about forty years ago. :)
Or what Martin Luther suggested to the translators of the Bible 500 years back.
<br>
<br>
And, at this point, I would like to narrow down on language proficiency as
related to (good) translation and interpreting. No, not as a prerequisite (it
goes without saying), but the ease of what Ron here termed as “switch”; I would
add, “effortless and quick switch.”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Now, <b>Mandefu:</b></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">1. That Bantoe name of yours
is downright obscene in Russian -- and I wonder ... Well, I wonder ;) (“Goeie
nag”, after all, sounds still more obscene, come to think of it).</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><br>
2. Now, soldier, I totally disconcur with you that “<i>on the basis of my
experiences fluency in languages doesn't help much with simultaneous
translation between them.</i>” <br>
First, Mark. Did you mean “simultaneous <b>interpreting</b>”? (The difference
is the same as between “vertal” en “tolk”. Btw, “tolk” is also the Russian
word, meaning (a) sense; gumption, and (b) usefulness). Also, you must mean <b>consecutive
</b>interpreting<b>. Simultaneous</b> is actually really simultaneous (as at
international gatherings, say, in the UN, where you listen to the version of
the speaker’s (usually hollow) speech in your language through the headphones from
the interpreter sitting in a cabin behind you), or dubbing (of movies).</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><br>
3. “<i>In the end I told the people, "Say what you want him to hear as
though you're talking to him, & I'll talk to him as though it is you saying
it</i>." – There! You did manage anyway!</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Exactly this is how <b>I
think</b> a translator/interpreter works. “<b>What you want” </b>and<b>"as
though it is you" </b>are the key words! You’ve come to it intuitively
(you are in good company, Mark: Dr. Martin Luther, myself, and Prof. Umberto
Eco); but no one seems to teach it consciously now. (About time, I think). <br>
<span style=""> </span><br>
But since you are skeptical, Mark, you must be talking about something else.
What did you mean by (in your words) “simultaneous translation?” This (what you
described, how you succeeded anyway) or the ability to translate/interpret <b>everything</b>
at the drop of a hat? Or something else?</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">4. “<i>But if someone asked
me how you say this (...) in the other language I'm flummoxed.</i>” Right. So
would I. Because you didn’t have the big picture, the macro-context. That “this
(...)” is <b>dead </b>(outside the life context). Whereas “what you want” is
always <b>alive.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">I recall one joke. <br>
<br>
“Pablo, what’s the Spanish for “nine”? <br>
“In what context?” <br>
<br>
Overstretched as it is, seriously, how do you translate “you” into Spanish?
Four ways, and all <b>may </b>be right, right? Why? Because there is no
context. No <b>macro-</b>context. How many people are you addressing? How
respectful are you to him/her/them?</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">5. You write: “<i>I believe
the mind compartmentalises any given language in its own locus in the brain,
each tongue in its own place, & cross-fluency is another skill entirely
& gets a place of its own too</i>.” (and support your case with a case of a
patient with a brain lesion who lost the ability to handle only katakana). <br>
<br>
In the meantime, Sandy
wrote:</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">“<i>It seems to me that a
theory we could put forward as an explanation for <br>
some of these experiences is that utterances are somehow<b>stored in a <br>
non-linguistic form in the brain</b>.</i> “ <br>
(Note that his case is <b>as strong</b>: he is talking of spoken language and
BSL).</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">And Jacqueline seems to
agree you: “<i><span style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">For me, these two languages each
have their own sphere, or if you want to express this in a more pedestrian way
they each live in their own drawer in the linguistic bookcase in my head.</span></i><span style="color: black;">” But only individually (as is her <b>vision </b>on<b>her
own</b> language arrangement, whereas her vision of her daughter’s is “</span><i><span style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">She seems to have the two languages in one drawer, but
each morpheme is tagged as either Dutch or English.</span></i><span style="color: black;">” <br>
<br>
Any comments?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">6. Exactly what does
“"Toda <u>h</u>abibi” mean? (Or we'll never know why were you kicked from
behind).</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">7. Speaking of vuvuzelas ...
:) You don’t seem to have received my last mails last May.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Best regards and thanks to
all. <br>
<br>
Vlad Lee</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Tokyo, Japan/Moscow, Russia</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">----------</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>><br>
Subject: Language proficiency</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Hi, Vlad and everyone!<br>
<br>
I could tell you what <i>Todah, <u>h</u>abibi</i> (תודה, חביבי<span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>) means, but I won’t, or else our Mark will
bite my ankles. All I allow myself to say is that it’s Modern Hebrew and that
the second word is an Arabic loan (<span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA">حبيبي</span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>).<br>
<br>
Someone—was it you, Vlad?—mentioned false friends in this thread, and I wonder
about them in the context of switching between relatively closely related
languages.<br>
<br>
I know that at the beginner’s stages of learning a language containing
apparently transparent cognates of words or phrases in one’s better know
language.<br>
<br>
Example 1:<br>
German speakers tend to use and understand English “eventually” in the sense of
“possibly,” which is what German <i>eventuell</i> means. So he or she is likely
to understand the sentence “He’ll come eventually” as meaning <i>Er kommt
eventuell</i> (He may possible come) instead of correct <i>Er wird irgendwann
kommen</i> or <i>Er wird schon noch kommen</i>. I may have stumbled this way a
long time ago. Nowadays, “eventually” and <i>eventuell</i> are two entirely
different lexical items to me, and I would never mix them up in translating.<br>
<br>
Example 2:<br>
In the specific Polish dialect of Yiddish that the parents of my Israeli host
family spoke, the word <i>darfn</i> (דאַרפֿן<span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>) means ‘to be obligated to’ (e.g. <i>men darf batsoln </i>(באַצאָלן<span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span> דאַרףֿ<span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span> מען<span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>) ‘one must
pay’). To German speakers (and to speakers of some Yiddish dialects that use <i>muzn</i>
(מוזן<span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>) instead) this sounds like German <i>Man
darf bezahlen </i>‘One may pay’, quite a difference from <i>Man muss bezahlen</i>
‘one must pay’. (Yiddish <i>darfn</i> actually retains the Middle German
meaning.) Initially, I found this conflict between Yiddish <i>darfn</i> and German
<i>dürfen</i> confusing, but with sufficient exposure my problems disappeared.<br>
<br>
Example 3:<br>
Even in cases of unrelated languages like Chinese and Japanese there are some
major false friends, because Japanese borrowed heavily from Classical Chinese
and uses Chinese characters to write them. An example is the compound noun 手紙,
literally translated “hand paper.” In Japanese it means ‘letter’, in Chinese
‘toilet paper’. Since my Chinese reading skills are better than my Japanese reading
skills, I still tend to read the sequence as “toilet paper” first and then remind
myself, “No! Japanese mode! ‘Letter’.” I have no such problem with it in speech,
because the two are pronounced vastly differently: Japanese <i>tegami</i> versus
Mandarin <i>shǒuzhǐ</i>.<br><br>There are of course tons and tons of such false friends among the Lowlands languages alone, not only words but also idiomatic phrases. This was one of the aspects I had in mind when I proposed that translating between closely related language varieties comes with its own set of problems.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Reinhard/Ron<br>
Seattle, USA</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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