#lanbglr

[allthesepurplelights]

26 September - Happy European Day of Languages! ✨🎉

[bngrc]

Thoughts on Translation Practice

I find it more educational translating from English into my target language than translating from my target language into English.

Or I should say I *make* it more educational.

When I'm translating into Chinese from English, I look up all the various Chinese translations for each English word in the dictionary, then I do a web search for each alternative translation, reading lots of example sentences for each word with my pop-up dictionary browser add on, until I feel like I know how to use each possible translation correctly in a sentence and feel like I can make an informed decision about which translation is the most appropriate for the sentence I'm trying to translate.

I try googling different phrasings to see which ones get more results, as a way of figuring out how common one phrasing is compared to another. Any phrase that's 5 characters or less and has under 10,000 google results is probably grammatically incorrect and/or very unnatural sounding to a native speaker.

On the other hand,

When I'm translating from Chinese into English, I just look up the English definitions of the words in the sentence, and if the meaning of the sentence isn't clear after that, I try translating the sentence, or pieces of the sentence in google translate. And that's the extent of my effort.

.

Which is to say, I'm far more likely to accidentally fall down a research rabbit hole and not emerge for 2 hours when I'm translating from English into Chinese than when I am translating from Chinese into English.

[concerningduolingo]

[ID: Duolingo character Lily saying “But who put the dog in the freezer?” in French, with the correct translation underneath. /end ID]

[pastelsandhazelnutcoffee]

❄️1st of December ❄️

Ein Gleiches - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Über allen Gipfeln

Ist Ruh,

In allen Wipfeln

Spürest du

Kaum einen Hauch;

Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde,

Warte nur, balde

Ruhest du auch.

English translation:

An Equal - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Above all summits

There is calm

In all treetops

You feel

Barely a breeze;

The birds in the forest hush

Just wait and soon

You will rest too

If you take part at this challenge, tag it with #phcadventchallenge or #studyblradventchallenge!

[lierdumoa]

The winningest week of the year! In additional to the collective victory we’re celebrating I’m pleased to share this personal victory. 

[fortheloveoflanguistics]

is langblr alive

@thelanguagestruggle and I need to know

[languageek]

Sometime last week I posted about a little graphic I made for myself so I could remember how to write 勉強 (べんきょう | “to study”). I continued to make little graphics because I thought it was fun and gave me experience looking at the kanji while trying to think up fun ways to remember it.  I wrote about my (still-continuing) journey learning kanji as a heritage language learner, INCLUDINGGGG 11 graphics similar to the pink (kanji compounds) and 10 graphics similar to the green (breaking down parts of kanji). 

So if you’re interested in seeing more, check it out here: https://speakroots.com/learning-kanji-as-a-heritage-language-learner/

Additionally, I’m thinking about creating more and posting them as practice “lists” if anyone is interested. I might continue to make them for myself, but if anyone wants them posted, I will definitely do so.  

This method could also help learners of Chinese, but I’m personally doing it in the context of Japanese (as I know some characters are different or have different meanings). 

[einenkaffee-bitte]

my german B1 exam is in a week! time to revise the basics🍵