Language Trainers Blog

I didn’t realise that the comments feature on the blog has been out of order for a little while, so thanks to reader Paolo for bringing it to my attention.  I thought that it had been kind of quiet around here!  My apologies to anyone who has been desperate to throw in their two pence worth!  The web guys have been notified and it will hopefully be up and running again very soon.

In the meantime, you can get in touch with me about any of the posts (or anything you might think I’d be interested in reading) by emailing Language Trainers.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

I recently gave in and bought an iPod Touch, and it was, in all honesty, mostly so I could try out some of the hundreds of useful language-learning applications out there.  The incredible potential of having not only mp3s and podcasts, but dictionaries, flashcards, and other learning tools in your pocket is a little bit mind-blowing.

So, you will probably see a few reviews and recommendations for not just individual applications, but general good practices when using your iPhone (or Android).

This first one is a slightly alternative way to use a productivity tool.  I first downloaded the demo version of Use Your Handwriting (UYH) from Gee Whiz Stuff because it provided a seemingly novel way of jotting down notes and to do lists in your own handwriting (or fingerwriting).

After playing with it for a little bit, I realised that it would be an ideal way to practice my Chinese characters, as there’s a simple interface and a big writing/drawing area.  You can easily move to the next screen (it even does it for you if you want), and shake to erase if you’re unhappy with your writing.  If you turn the device vertically, you can write top-to-bottom and left-to-right like they used to do in the old days!  The paid version even has rainbow colours (although you can, of course, choose other ones), which are different for almost every stroke, so you can tell if you are doing them correctly.  It also lets you write long notes and has a very handy email function, so you can send your jottings to yourself, your teacher, or your friends.

If you’re a learner of a language with a non-roman script, I would highly recommend it for practicing your writing (get a stylus for even better results).  It’s also a good place to jot down characters or words that you see during the day but can’t look up immediately.  Or just general note-taking in bright colours!

Do you know any other good apps for this purpose, or language learning in general?

I don’t have children myself, but I’d like to think that if I did, I would expose them to as many learning opportunities as possible.  I was speaking to an expat teacher the other day and she said that at one British school in Shanghai (which her children are no longer attending), children only receive Chinese instruction for two hours a week.  Apparently most parents don’t anticipate their kids being in China for long enough for it to be of value.

Do you agree with this?  I can sort of see why parents would think something like that (especially if they were going to send their kids back to the UK to boarding school), but if the language education isn’t going to encroach too much on their core education, I can’t see how it is a bad thing.  Kids will learn more about the local language and culture, which has obvious social and educational value.

I am a big fan of actually living in the country you’re living in, rather than locking yourself and your family away in a mini version of your home country.  Of course, everyone needs certain home comforts, but I think children should be given more experiences and opportunities, not less.  If they are about to be sent home to experience western culture anyway, why not let them experience the place they’re living in in the meantime?

I went to a toy market this weekend and came home with a couple of boxes of Chinese character flashcards.  They’re great for helping me with character recognition and writing.  I am considering putting a few up on my bedroom wall to look at every day.

I also have a couple of children’s books and CDs, as well as some exercise books to practice my writing.  Some people might be a bit ashamed to be using such elementary materials, but I will happily admit that a five-year-old native speaker speaks better Chinese than I do.

If you are a beginner or elementary language learner and can manage to find some kids’ language learning resources (or just general learning material in your target language), I recommend at least having a look at them.  They can be very helpful for learning, as well as testing yourself.  Audio resources are often slow and easy to understand, and while songs and chants may be a little high pitched and childish, they will definitely help you to remember the lyrics.  Bright coloured pictures and association of pictures with words will also help visual learners a lot (more on that later).

Even if you are progressing well in your language learning, check out some materials meant for younger learners to revise, learn a couple of new words, or just make yourself feel good about how much of the content you already know!

What other resources can you recommend?

I’ve talked about free translation services recently, but there are a few other types of translations out there, from live interpretation to specialised technical translation.  Arguably the most difficult, though, is translation of artistic writing, such as poetry or fiction.

Often, translators aren’t given that much credit for the jobs that they do, and sometimes people think that it’s a simple task that anyone who speaks two languages could do.  Especially for artistic translators, I have to disagree.  Can anyone who speaks and writes a language become an author or a poet?  Not really.

Edith Grossman, a prominent translator (known for her translations of Love in the Time of Cholera and other works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as well as the classic Don Quixote) has recently released Why Translation Matters.  The book addresses the importance of translations that are not only accurate, but still carry the author’s original intended meaning and tone.  any bilingual person can get a translation technically correct, but it takes a special talent to be able to properly interpret and translate a great work.  In some ways I think it’s more difficult than the author’s job.

In any case, it sounds like an interesting read, so hopefully I can get my hands on it sometime soon!

Source: The Huffington Post.

A lot of phrases in English are understatements, as if we don’t want to commit too much to what we’re saying.  One of them that springs to mind is easy on the eyes, which is another way to say someone is good looking, sexy, beautiful.

In Chinese, there is the opposite.  The word they use for ‘ugly’ is 难看 (nánkàn), which is, literally, hard to look at. Ouch. The Japanese also have the word バックシャン (bakku-shan) for someone who appears hot from behind, but not from the front.

Do you know any other interesting phrases for someone who’s not so easy on the eyes?

*Note: looking up ‘ugly’ on Google Images isn’t really that good of an idea.

In my opinion, yes.  Google has an amazing ability to search and compare a whole lot more data than any other company in the business, and offers translations between a lot more languages.  Read on for some history and some interesting possible applications.

In a meeting at Google in 2004, the discussion turned to an e-mail message the company had received from a fan in South Korea. Sergey Brin, a Google founder, ran the message through an automatic translation service that the company had licensed.

The message said Google was a favorite search engine, but the result read: “The sliced raw fish shoes it wishes. Google green onion thing”

Brin said Google ought to be able to do better. Six years later, its free Google Translate service handles 52 languages, more than any similar system, and people use it hundreds of millions of times a week to translate Web pages and other text.

“What you see on Google Translate is state of the art” in computer translations that are not limited to a particular subject area, said Alon Lavie, an associate research professor in the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

The network of data centers that it built for Web searches may now be, when lashed together, the world’s largest computer. Google is using that machine to push the limits on translation technology. Last month, for example, it said it was working to combine its translation tool with image analysis, allowing a person to, say, take a cell phone photo of a menu in German and get an instant English translation.

The concept of getting instant translation of a picture you take with a mobile phone is phenomenal, and it doesn’t seem like it will be too far away.

In the meantime, the headline of the original article could have done with a rewrite: “Google’s computer might betters translation tool” has tripped up a few people I’ve shared the article with.  The use of the word might (here used as a noun) has turned it into a garden path sentence.  When you read the first half of the sentence, you think that Google’s computer might do something, but then you get to ‘betters’ and think…what?

Source: CNET News.

Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglourious Basterds taught us all the important lesson that the wrong hand signal could well get you killed (if you were pretending to be a Nazi in the wrong place and time).  In the film, someone gets gunned down because he uses the wrong hand signal for the number three.

A lot of people use the middle three fingers to denote the number three, though some use other combinations.  In the town in Germany mentioned in Inglourious Basterds, people use the thumb and first two fingers.  In China, many people use the last three fingers (similar to the A-OK hand signal).  I found myself using the latter yesterday when buying three bananas.  It used to feel wholly unnatural to me, but it suddenly doesn’t feel so weird any more.  Strange.

Which signal do you use for three?

*Out of interest, you can also use ‘finger’ as a measure of alcohol.  If you hold your finger horizontally against the bottom of the glass and fill it to the depth of the top of your finger, that’s ‘one finger’.  So, three fingers would be a pretty strong drink!

So I guess I don’t have my finger on the pulse, because March 4th was National Grammar Day, and I had no idea it was happening until it already had*.  The day, a chance to celebrate grammar and language in general, was started in 2008 by the founder of SPOGG (Society for the Protection of Good Grammar), and hosted by Mignon Fogarty (also known as Grammar Girl, who brings us the brilliant Quick and Dirty Tips).

Check out the National Grammar Day site for ways to celebrate and find out more about grammar and language, including links to some great cartoons, resources, e-cards and t-shirts. Let that grammar slacker in your life know it’s important to you (well, if it is, of course).

From the site, 10 grammar myths exposed:

1. A run-on sentence is a really long sentence.
2. You shouldn’t start a sentence with the word “however.”
3. “Irregardless” is not a word.
4. There is only one way to write the possessive form of a word that ends in “s.”
5. Passive voice is always wrong.
6. “I.e.” and “e.g.” mean the same thing.
7. You use “a” before words that start with consonants and “an” before words that start with vowels.
8. It’s incorrect to answer the question “How are you?” with the statement “I’m good.”
9. You shouldn’t split infinitives.
10. You shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition.

(Click here for more information about the list above.)

Did you celebrate the occasion? Do you think grammar deserves its own day?

*I think this is a failing of people who start ‘national’ days.  They should really go big and go international. Grammar is important everywhere!

Today was rainy, cold, and I was late for work. I jumped into a taxi to take me a relatively short distance in the hideous traffic, and it actually made my morning. I had a lovely little chat with the taxi driver, especially after he slowed it down a bit when he realised I wasn’t a native speaker.

If you are lucky enough to be living in Asia or any place where taxis are cheap and plentiful, you will have many opportunities to talk to locals in a situation where the alternative is just to look out the window. I have a friend who vastly improved his Thai simply because he had to be stuck in a taxi in a traffic jam in Bangkok for hours every week.

In short, take every opportunity to speak to the people you come across every day.  In my experience, they’re more than happy to converse with you, and you will probably pick up a lot of vocabulary that you definitely wouldn’t in a language class!