LL-L "Language proficiency" 2010.06.28 (03) [EN]

Tue Jun 29 01:17:49 UTC 2010

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*L O W L A N D S - L - 28 June 2010 - Volume 03*

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From: Obiter Dictum <obiterdictum at mail.ru>

Subject: LL-L "Language Proficiency" 2010.06.29

Hello Lowlanders,

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.

A few comments at this point. As I said, my research in language proficiency
is related to translation and interpreting.

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.
(As concerns my paper. I *think* 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 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.

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.”

Now, *Mandefu:*

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).

2. Now, soldier, I totally disconcur with you that “*on the basis of my
experiences fluency in languages doesn't help much with simultaneous
translation between them.*”
First, Mark. Did you mean “simultaneous *interpreting*”? (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
*consecutive *interpreting*. Simultaneous* 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).

3. “*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*." –
There! You did manage anyway!

Exactly this is how *I think* a translator/interpreter works. “*What you
want” *and*"as though it is you" *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).

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 *everything* at the drop of a hat? Or something else?

4. “*But if someone asked me how you say this (...) in the other language
I'm flummoxed.*” Right. So would I. Because you didn’t have the big picture,
the macro-context. That “this (...)” is *dead *(outside the life context).
Whereas “what you want” is always *alive.*

I recall one joke.

“Pablo, what’s the Spanish for “nine”?
“In what context?”

Overstretched as it is, seriously, how do you translate “you” into Spanish?
Four ways, and all *may *be right, right? Why? Because there is no context.
No *macro-*context. How many people are you addressing? How respectful are
you to him/her/them?

5. You write: “*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*.” (and support your
case with a case of a patient with a brain lesion who lost the ability to
handle only katakana).

In the meantime, Sandy wrote:

“*It seems to me that a theory we could put forward as an explanation for
some of these experiences is that utterances are somehowstored in a
non-linguistic form in the brain.* “
(Note that his case is *as strong*: he is talking of spoken language and
BSL).

And Jacqueline seems to agree you: “*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.*”
But only individually (as is her *vision *on*her own* language arrangement,
whereas her vision of her daughter’s is “*She seems to have the two
languages in one drawer, but each morpheme is tagged as either Dutch or
English.*”

Any comments?

6. Exactly what does “"Toda *h*abibi” mean? (Or we'll never know why were
you kicked from behind).

7. Speaking of vuvuzelas ... :) You don’t seem to have received my last
mails last May.

Best regards and thanks to all.

Vlad Lee

Tokyo, Japan/Moscow, Russia

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language proficiency

Hi, Vlad and everyone!

I could tell you what *Todah, habibi* (תודה, חביבי) 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 (حبيبي).

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.

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.

Example 1:
German speakers tend to use and understand English “eventually” in the sense
of “possibly,” which is what German *eventuell* means. So he or she is
likely to understand the sentence “He’ll come eventually” as meaning *Er
kommt eventuell* (He may possible come) instead of correct *Er wird
irgendwann kommen* or *Er wird schon noch kommen*. I may have stumbled this
way a long time ago. Nowadays, “eventually” and *eventuell* are two entirely
different lexical items to me, and I would never mix them up in translating.

Example 2:
In the specific Polish dialect of Yiddish that the parents of my Israeli
host family spoke, the word *darfn* (דאַרפֿן) means ‘to be obligated to’
(e.g. *men darf batsoln *(באַצאָלן דאַרףֿ מען) ‘one must pay’). To German
speakers (and to speakers of some Yiddish dialects that use *muzn* (מוזן)
instead) this sounds like German *Man darf bezahlen *‘One may pay’, quite a
difference from *Man muss bezahlen* ‘one must pay’. (Yiddish
*darfn*actually retains the Middle German meaning.) Initially, I found
this
conflict between Yiddish *darfn* and German *dürfen* confusing, but with
sufficient exposure my problems disappeared.

Example 3:
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 *tegami* versus Mandarin *shǒuzhǐ*.

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.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

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