JISCMail - PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER Archives

Hi David

My apologies for this tardy response.

A brief comment about South Africa and its multilinguality. We have 11 official languages, and Deaf Sign, as an acknowledged 12^th. The 11 include the indigenous tongues, such as Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Swati, Venda, Tsonga, San (there are many) … and then English and Afrikaans. Deaf Sign was added after the 11 had been proclaimed! In addition we recognize 16 ‘heritage languages’ such as Tamil, Hindi, Gujerati, Urdu, Arabic, Telegu, and and and … then Portuguese, French, Italian, and and and … And now since 1994 we have an increase in what can be called the intra-continental languages which include those from all over Africa, and extra-continental languages, such as those from Eastern Europe, the Far East, and South America… and the rest of the world. As multilingual as we are, there are many countries elsewhere in Africa with an even greater diversity of languages. For communication outside of specific communities, we are dependent on one or more lingua francas, which are themselves dialectically distinguishable. The contradictions are multifold!!! And fascinating ...

I am deeply concerned about what is happening to knowledge attendant upon the loss of languages. I read with interest Ian Dalby’s Language in Danger, which provides alarming evidence of the erosion of language on the planet. My concern further arises out of the awareness I developed when doing my PhD on the work of Marcel Jousse and his understanding of the impact of multi-linguality on ‘ways of knowing, ways of being and value systems’ in those societies of the world which still favour the oralate rather than the literate ‘ways of knowing, ways of being and value systems’. I have come to understand for myself that our humanness depends largely and collectively on all these worldviews, and the epistemologies, ontologies and axiologies that they carry in their conceptualization, recording mechanisms and expression, be it corporeal-manual, laryngo-buccal or written in some form or another and using some form of technology of another. And that the loss of any of these languages and their attendant cultures is yet another threat to the survival of the human species, which I believe we ignore at our peril.

Which is yet another reason why translators are so very important.

Thanks for listening.

Joan

From: Practitioner-Researcher [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Wilson
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 7:19 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Translations

I'm grateful, Joan, for taking the trouble to respond. Translators and interpreters are indeed among the most "taken for granted" people in the world. The stereotype is probably the solitary figure standing alongside a world leader, but more often than not their role is more banal but no less necessary. I have spent many hours of my life sitting in police stations trying to explain the workings of our judicial system to an often very frightened foreigner who has fallen foul of one of our laws. I've had to learn very quickly about narcotics idiom in French, something my BA in the language never prepared me for vocabulary-wise. General dictionaries often prove to be useless in such circumstances!

I've also attended court, decades ago, where I've read aloud what the defendant had to say, in French and translated into English, only for the defendant to tell the magistrate that he hadn't said any such thing. I had to read aloud again everything that I had uttered, pausing every few minutes for the magistrate to ask whether I had written and translated correctly, and this time he agreed my renderings were accurate. The magistrate then asked me to interpret for the defendant for the remainder of the trial, something I was surprised to be asked to do, considering how the defendant had initially questioned my translation skills. My own small travails pale into insignificance, however, when we see on TV how interpreters in the world's trouble spots may be threatened with death or injury by their own compatriots. Some interpreters are among the world's unsung heroes.

I expect multilingualism is at the very heart of South African society in general, and academe there in particular. On the subject of writing theses in languages other than our mother tongues, I once had to write an undergraduate dissertation in French while I taught in a school in France. Though the circumstances were very conducive to the use of French, I still found the writing much more arduous than it would have been in English.

David Wilson
http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: Joan Lucy Conolly <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Fri, Mar 5, 2010 3:55 pm
Subject: Re: Translations

Thank you, David, for these insightful comments about the demands and dangers of translation. I have often observed that we undervalue translators and translation as a critical aspect of the human network. Particularly if we are English speaking. I am one such, and I never cease to be amazed and humbled by my students and colleagues whose mother tongue is NOT English but who still write theses in English as possibly their ???nth option, and they get it right!!! I certainly would not manage this in even my second language!!!

From: Practitioner-Researcher [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Wilson
Sent: 03 March 2010 09:22 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Translations

My first degree is in French and German and I also have a Master's degree in the latter. I have retained a professional interest since the early 1980s in the use of computers in the context of foreign languages. My impression is that computer-aided translation has improved over the years, but that it is still far from perfect. One of the strategies that students of foreign languages have to learn is the proper use of bilingual dictionaries. If we are working with a foreign language text, it's relatively simple. To translate from French into English, the latter being our first language, we can usually get away with looking up words in the French-English section. We may find that the dictionary presents us with a multiplicity of English renderings, but our knowledge of our own language and our sensitivity to context will usually lead us to pick the right word. The same is not true when translating into the foreign language, especially if our knowledge of that foreign language is shaky. Take the word "wave". Beginners in French and German, unless guided by the teacher, will often assume that the same target-language word can be used for both a wave of the hand and a wave in the sea. Many such beginners will simply use the dictionary's first offering in the way of a rendering into the foreign language. I'm minded of a German essay I marked back in the 1970s when one school student wrote "Buch ihn Danno, Mord eins". I'm sure that would baffle a native German, but it was quite clear to me as a native speaker of English who enjoyed watching "Hawaii 5-0" on TV back then! Metaphorical language and complex idiom are particularly difficult to render into the foreign language.

One way of avoiding making "schoolboy howlers" by using the wrong French word to render an English word is to check the French-English section after making an initial translation choice. Going back to the concept of "wave", a thoughtful language learner without in-depth knowledge of the language could determine by checking in that half of the dictionary that the wrong meaning of "wave" had been selected. The same can be said for machine translation. I've found online translators such as Google's extremely useful within precise constraints. I maintain a bibliography of modern foreign languages and special educational needs on my website and many of the references have titles in languages other than English, French and German, the languages in which I am relatively fluent. Entering the titles of articles in Polish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Italian or Russian into Google's online translation tool tells me what the title roughly means, even if the online translator has translated it into less than elegant English. I can usually figure out what's going on because of my knowledge of English and because of my knowledge of how other languages tend to work relative to English.

So I wouldn't recommend using Google translator as a means of rendering text from the mother tongue into a foreign language I don't know. If I were forced to do that, I would at least take the trouble to get Google to render the resulting foreign language text back into English to establish whether there were any examples of gross distortion of meaning. Translation aids work best for the user when translating from the foreign language into one's mother tongue. Interesting enough, most professional human translators work that way too, so a native French speaker is the best person to translate from English into French, while a native English speaker is the best person to translate from French into English. Although completely bilingual English and French speakers may be the ideal solution, we must remember that they are relatively thin on the ground.

The answer might be to let people post messages, or whatever, in their mother tongue. Readers without knowledge of that language can then use an online translator to get the gist of what that message is about. Such readers may have to be reminded, though, that online translators can't always cope with the subtleties and nuances of human language, especially language with cultural baggage and multiple layers of meaning such as poetry.

David Wilson
http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: Karen Thompson <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tue, Mar 2, 2010 11:01 pm
Subject: Re: Translations

Dear Jack and Geisha and everyone

I think there are translation programmes that can be run on line to translate - I know my mother has used them to translate English to German. However she did point out some flaws as it translated the name of her friend, whose surname was 'Fryer', as 'Chip shop worker' .!!

So they may not cope well with academic language, but I am sure there are programmes available which would translate and then the text could be checked through by a bilingual person before it is 'posted' to save any mistakes?

Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Whitehead <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tue, 2 Mar 2010 9:25
Subject: Re: Education and Learning Virtual Networking Stream for ALARA's 8th World Congress

On 1 Mar 2010, at 12:03, geisha rebolledo wrote:

Hi Jack !!!
Yes I will send it to collegues and friends in Latin America and Spain. However , you know that one of our limitations is the language. Spanish speaking collegues feels their english is short when you have to talk in public . So please lets think in ways on how to help them to participate in this global effort.
Also I wanted to congratulate you for your new possition and status at Liverpool Hope. Sorry for the delay but my father passed away a month ago and I have been involved in family matters.
Many greetings and good luck , geisha

Hi Geisha - Sorry to hear of your loss.

Very good to hear from you again and many thanks for your congratulations.

In relation to the Education and Learning Stream of ALARA's 8th World Congress we might be able to bring the action learning/action research of Spanish speaking colleagues into this e-forum for ALARA.

I think Brendan has shown a way, through his use of the free web-site provider Spanglefish (the provider Marie uses). If you go to http://www.spanglefish.com/educationthoughts/ and click on Essays etc. on the left hand menu I think you might see what I'm meaning. Everyone can create such a web-space to place and share their accounts.

For languages other than English it could be that members of this Forum who are bi or tri lingual could help to mediate the communications so that we all develop a better understanding of each other's life and work in the different countries, languages and cultures we are living and working in.

Love Jack.

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