Translation services/strategies/costs...

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Thursday, December 23, 2021 at 10:23:16 PM UTC+11, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 2021-12-23 10:39, Martin Brown wrote:
[...]
Cholmondeley (Chumlee) catch out most
non-native English speakers in fact most non-locals. [...]

English is well known for its complete disconnect between
pronunciation and spelling, but this is ridiculous.

There\'s not a complete disconnect, but there are at least six different phoneme-to-grapheme schemes embedded in modern English, and picking which one has been used isn\'t easy.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

fredag den 24. december 2021 kl. 18.25.06 UTC+1 skrev Arie de Muijnck:

On 2021-12-24 16:24, Jan Panteltje wrote:
Here in the Netherlands they started teaching French in kindergarten.
Maybe that is why I have few problems with the language when in France.
They did not start with German and English until highschool.
Oh, these memories... French started when I was 11, English at 12,
German at 13. Had exams in all 4 languages.

Papa fume une pipe.
Maman coupe le pain.
Le soldat sur la mur.
etc...

But it still really helps on holydays in France :-}

https://youtu.be/Xle3I-5nfpI

 

[Martin Brown]

On 24/12/2021 21:56, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 2021-12-24 20:24, Jan Frank wrote:
Arie de Muijnck <noreply@ademu.com> wrote:

On 2021-12-24 16:24, Jan Panteltje wrote:
Here in the Netherlands they started teaching French in kindergarten.
Maybe that is why I have few problems with the language when in France.
They did not start with German and English until highschool.

Oh, these memories... French started when I was 11, English at 12,
German at 13. Had exams in all 4 languages.

      Papa fume une pipe.
      Maman coupe le pain.
      Le soldat sur la mur.
           etc...

But it still really helps on holydays in France  :-}

Arie

I am Canadian and married my wife while I was with NATO in Metz, France.
Our first child was a boy, and by the time he was 4, he could speak
fluent
French and English. He knew which was which, and never got them confused.

It never ceased to amaze me how quickly children pick up languages.[...]

A myth, incessantly repeated. Adults can pick up a new language in
much less time, provided they are motivated and completely immersed.
It took me, as an adult, less than a year to become fluent in French.

I\'m not so sure having learnt various languages to different levels and
at various stages from secondary school through to my late 30\'s.

It is almost certainly easier to learn to think directly in more than
one language when you are introduced to them as a young child. That was
my experience anyway. Learning Japanese was my first encounter with
having teachers who were younger than me and that was a struggle.

The sheer amount of rote learning to reach even a basic adult literacy
of 2000 kanji is a big problem - especially when you are supposed to be
working as well. Snag is that to look them up in a kanji dictionary you
need to know exactly how many brush strokes it takes to draw them!

Due to a cost saving measure we learned to speak Japanese with a rural
Ibaraki accent through being based in Tsukuba science city. They also
taught us more useful phrases than standard courses at the time. This
caused amusement in Tokyo especially with Japanese senior executives.

I was always impressed with how fluent my Netherlands Twente university
exchange students were at English. Even the thickest ones were fluent to
near native level and the smart ones could do three or even four!
(ie. Dutch, English and one or both of French and German)

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

søndag den 26. december 2021 kl. 12.53.36 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown:

On 24/12/2021 21:56, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
On 2021-12-24 20:24, Jan Frank wrote:
Arie de Muijnck <nor...@ademu.com> wrote:

On 2021-12-24 16:24, Jan Panteltje wrote:
Here in the Netherlands they started teaching French in kindergarten..
Maybe that is why I have few problems with the language when in France.
They did not start with German and English until highschool.

Oh, these memories... French started when I was 11, English at 12,
German at 13. Had exams in all 4 languages.

Papa fume une pipe.
Maman coupe le pain.
Le soldat sur la mur.
etc...

But it still really helps on holydays in France :-}

Arie

I am Canadian and married my wife while I was with NATO in Metz, France.
Our first child was a boy, and by the time he was 4, he could speak
fluent
French and English. He knew which was which, and never got them confused.

It never ceased to amaze me how quickly children pick up languages.[....]

A myth, incessantly repeated. Adults can pick up a new language in
much less time, provided they are motivated and completely immersed.
It took me, as an adult, less than a year to become fluent in French.
I\'m not so sure having learnt various languages to different levels and
at various stages from secondary school through to my late 30\'s.

It is almost certainly easier to learn to think directly in more than
one language when you are introduced to them as a young child. That was
my experience anyway. Learning Japanese was my first encounter with
having teachers who were younger than me and that was a struggle.

The sheer amount of rote learning to reach even a basic adult literacy
of 2000 kanji is a big problem - especially when you are supposed to be
working as well. Snag is that to look them up in a kanji dictionary you
need to know exactly how many brush strokes it takes to draw them!

Due to a cost saving measure we learned to speak Japanese with a rural
Ibaraki accent through being based in Tsukuba science city. They also
taught us more useful phrases than standard courses at the time. This
caused amusement in Tokyo especially with Japanese senior executives.

I was always impressed with how fluent my Netherlands Twente university
exchange students were at English. Even the thickest ones were fluent to
near native level and the smart ones could do three or even four!
(ie. Dutch, English and one or both of French and German)

not sure about Netherlands, but here TV and movies have closed captions instead of dubbed speech ,
I think that makes a big difference

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sun, 26 Dec 2021 06:41:11 -0800 (PST)) it happened Lasse
Langwadt Christensen <langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote in
<026c7129-9a74-4161-8d48-b646326fa258n@googlegroups.com>:

not sure about Netherlands, but here TV and movies have closed captions instead
of dubbed speech ,
I think that makes a big difference

Netherlands has mostly subtitles.

On satellite from here in the Netherlands on ASTRA 1 satellite I see all foreign movies in the German channels have German voice over.
It would take little for them to also send the original sound (English for example), but no.
Probably done to keep the Germans deliberately dumb?
It does get boring and kills some good movies to always hear the same few German voices for
famous English actors. I have no problem with German myself,
On the other Astra 2 satellite almost all is in English, even Russia has an English channel (rt).
Russian\'s German channel was recently started and then killed (license on Eutelsat revoked )by forces afraid of the truth being told I think.
OTOH satellite, having a satellite dish, is a a great way to see other countries / civilizations/ views.
I have close to 1000 channels free to air on my cheap Chinese DVB-S2 box from ebay, think it is full.
And I have a movable dish so it will point automatically to sats.
On the PC connected to the dish some more.
For that I wrote the dish controller and some...
http://www.panteltje.com/pub/xdipo_recording_transponder.gif
used for dish pointing to QO100 ham satellite too.
But for normal watching a cheap Chinese box is fine.
Sort of funny, can even see Cuba live, Spanish, just a number press away.
xdipo has voice control
show bbc2
worked, but using the remote is more quiet.
I hardly watch Dutch channels, only news and sometimes art.
Netherlands as well as Germany still has videotext / teletext / ceefax.
No idea why UK dropped it, a big loss.

All I can say is : Get a satellite dish, local cable is very limited / censored in many ways.
And having no cable saves money big time too.

 

[Jeroen Belleman]

On 2021-12-26 12:52, Martin Brown wrote:

On 24/12/2021 21:56, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
On 2021-12-24 20:24, Jan Frank wrote:
Arie de Muijnck <noreply@ademu.com> wrote:

On 2021-12-24 16:24, Jan Panteltje wrote:
Here in the Netherlands they started teaching French in
kindergarten. Maybe that is why I have few problems with the
language when in France. They did not start with German and
English until highschool.

Oh, these memories... French started when I was 11, English at
12, German at 13. Had exams in all 4 languages.

Papa fume une pipe. Maman coupe le pain. Le soldat sur la mur.
etc...

But it still really helps on holydays in France :-}

Arie

I am Canadian and married my wife while I was with NATO in Metz,
France. Our first child was a boy, and by the time he was 4, he
could speak fluent French and English. He knew which was which,
and never got them confused.

It never ceased to amaze me how quickly children pick up
languages.[...]

A myth, incessantly repeated. Adults can pick up a new language in
much less time, provided they are motivated and completely
immersed. It took me, as an adult, less than a year to become
fluent in French.

I\'m not so sure having learnt various languages to different levels
and at various stages from secondary school through to my late 30\'s.

It is almost certainly easier to learn to think directly in more than
one language when you are introduced to them as a young child. That
was my experience anyway. Learning Japanese was my first encounter
with having teachers who were younger than me and that was a
struggle.
[...]

You can\'t compare a classroom course of a few hours per week
with the total immersion undergone by a young child. Believe
me, when you are completely immersed in a foreign environment,
you\'ll pick it up in no time at all.

Jeroen Belleman

 

[Dimiter_Popoff]

On 12/27/2021 12:28, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 2021-12-26 12:52, Martin Brown wrote:
On 24/12/2021 21:56, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
On 2021-12-24 20:24, Jan Frank wrote:
Arie de Muijnck <noreply@ademu.com> wrote:

On 2021-12-24 16:24, Jan Panteltje wrote:
Here in the Netherlands they started teaching French in
kindergarten. Maybe that is why I have few problems with the
language when in France. They did not start with German and
English until highschool.

Oh, these memories... French started when I was 11, English at
12, German at 13. Had exams in all 4 languages.

Papa fume une pipe. Maman coupe le pain. Le soldat sur la mur.
etc...

But it still really helps on holydays in France  :-}

Arie

I am Canadian and married my wife while I was with NATO in Metz,
France. Our first child was a boy, and by the time he was 4, he
could speak fluent French and English. He knew which was which,
and never got them confused.

It never ceased to amaze me how quickly children pick up
languages.[...]

A myth, incessantly repeated. Adults can pick up a new language in
much less time, provided they are motivated and completely
immersed. It took me, as an adult, less than a year to become
fluent in French.

I\'m not so sure having learnt various languages to different levels
and at various stages from secondary school through to my late 30\'s.

It is almost certainly easier to learn to think directly in more than
one language when you are introduced to them as a young child. That
was my experience anyway. Learning Japanese was my first encounter
with having teachers who were younger than me and that was a
struggle.
[...]

You can\'t compare a classroom course of a few hours per week
with the total immersion undergone by a young child. Believe
me, when you are completely immersed in a foreign environment,
you\'ll pick it up in no time at all.

Jeroen Belleman

I had taken plenty of German lessons as a child but it took me
getting there (Cologne, 1988) where I was all day with Germans, then
once I got a TV things got even faster. Immersion is what it takes
indeed.
Back then my English was pretty decent - I could read and write
not much worse than I can today, but I my spoken English was much
worse, I had had virtually no immersion. (I never had a complete
one really, never lived in an English speaking country). I used
to speak English with a friend in Cologne whose mum was English,
this did a lot. Then came all the media etc., nowadays I only
have problems understanding say Alex Ferguson or Kenny Dalglish
on TV, not unlike many native English speakers... .

I wonder how it goes with you when you think in the target language.
Do you think numbers in it (I always resort to my native Bulgarian
when it comes to numbers and I talk to myself)? I tend to think
while working in a mixture of languages, if I were to talk like
that it would sound quite moronic I suppose. When I have an imaginary
conversation with people I do it in the language I would use
with them in an actual conversation, along with the occasional
stumbling at some word I might miss...

Dimiter

 

[Don Y]

On 12/27/2021 7:01 AM, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:

You can\'t compare a classroom course of a few hours per week
with the total immersion undergone by a young child. Believe
me, when you are completely immersed in a foreign environment,
you\'ll pick it up in no time at all.

I had taken plenty of German lessons as a child but it took me
getting there (Cologne, 1988) where I was all day with Germans, then
once I got a TV things got even faster. Immersion is what it takes
indeed.

It\'s not just the \"sink or swim\" aspect (i.e., if you can\'t say it,
you can\'t convey it).

You are constantly reminded of idioms, tenses, pronoun genders,
etc. when you are listening to others speak (assuming they are
proficient speakers).

I suspect it is akin to different types/degrees of deafness
affecting *you* speech as you lose feedback from hearing
those around you as well as hearing your own speech (and
being able to continually readjust it).

I\'ve not been able to sort out how folks can be *tone* deaf,
though. It seems like one should always be able to perceive
differences in their own utterances when heard alongside
other folks, concurrently (don\'t they hear the beat frequency?)

Back then my English was pretty decent - I could read and write
not much worse than I can today, but I my spoken English was much
worse, I had had virtually no immersion. (I never had a complete
one really, never lived in an English speaking country). I used
to speak English with a friend in Cologne whose mum was English,
this did a lot. Then came all the media etc., nowadays I only
have problems understanding say Alex Ferguson or Kenny Dalglish
on TV, not unlike many native English speakers... .

I wonder how it goes with you when you think in the target language.
Do you think numbers in it (I always resort to my native Bulgarian
when it comes to numbers and I talk to myself)? I tend to think
while working in a mixture of languages, if I were to talk like
that it would sound quite moronic I suppose. When I have an imaginary
conversation with people I do it in the language I would use
with them in an actual conversation, along with the occasional
stumbling at some word I might miss...

I know many foreign language speakers who obviously think in their
native tongue and actively translate to english. This evidenced
by their failure to adjust word order properly, etc.

(This is one of the efforts that causes me to pause when speaking
a foreign language as I have to \"see\" where the words belong, once
translated and consciously shift them into their proper places
before uttering)

What I find most amusing is how fluent speakers of a language will
so readily drop *out* of that language to speak something that
isn\'t easily expressed (or remembered) in it. When I find myself
in that situation, I noticeably *stop* as I search for the correct
term and only fumble after having spent a noticeable amount of time
trying to recall the word. By contrast, these folks seem to have
\"thought ahead\" to the words they\'ll not recall and just slipped
their (english) equivalents in without skipping a beat! *Listening*
to them speak is thus made more difficult as you\'re focused on
that (nonenglish) language and suddenly encounter a word that
*doesn\'t* need translation...

 

[Jeroen Belleman]

On 2021-12-27 15:01, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:

On 12/27/2021 12:28, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
On 2021-12-26 12:52, Martin Brown wrote:
On 24/12/2021 21:56, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
On 2021-12-24 20:24, Jan Frank wrote:
Arie de Muijnck <noreply@ademu.com> wrote:

On 2021-12-24 16:24, Jan Panteltje wrote:
Here in the Netherlands they started teaching French in
kindergarten. Maybe that is why I have few problems with the
language when in France. They did not start with German and
English until highschool.

Oh, these memories... French started when I was 11, English at
12, German at 13. Had exams in all 4 languages.

Papa fume une pipe. Maman coupe le pain. Le soldat sur la mur.
etc...

But it still really helps on holydays in France :-}

Arie

I am Canadian and married my wife while I was with NATO in Metz,
France. Our first child was a boy, and by the time he was 4, he
could speak fluent French and English. He knew which was which,
and never got them confused.

It never ceased to amaze me how quickly children pick up
languages.[...]

A myth, incessantly repeated. Adults can pick up a new language in
much less time, provided they are motivated and completely
immersed. It took me, as an adult, less than a year to become
fluent in French.

I\'m not so sure having learnt various languages to different levels
and at various stages from secondary school through to my late 30\'s.

It is almost certainly easier to learn to think directly in more than
one language when you are introduced to them as a young child. That
was my experience anyway. Learning Japanese was my first encounter
with having teachers who were younger than me and that was a
struggle.
[...]

You can\'t compare a classroom course of a few hours per week
with the total immersion undergone by a young child. Believe
me, when you are completely immersed in a foreign environment,
you\'ll pick it up in no time at all.

Jeroen Belleman

I had taken plenty of German lessons as a child but it took me
getting there (Cologne, 1988) where I was all day with Germans, then
once I got a TV things got even faster. Immersion is what it takes
indeed.

[...]

I wonder how it goes with you when you think in the target language.
Do you think numbers in it (I always resort to my native Bulgarian
when it comes to numbers and I talk to myself)? I tend to think
while working in a mixture of languages, if I were to talk like
that it would sound quite moronic I suppose. When I have an imaginary
conversation with people I do it in the language I would use
with them in an actual conversation, along with the occasional
stumbling at some word I might miss...

Dimiter

Yes, that matches roughly what I do. Simple numbers, measures and
quantities are in the target language, or in the language I\'ve
been using most recently, but _operations_ are mostly in my mother
tongue. Probably a left-over of how multiplication tables were
drilled into us in primary school, by chanting them aloud over
and over. I too tend to mutter and mix under my breath when busy.

Occasionally, I\'ll switch language in mid-conversation without
noticing, drawing blank stares from my listeners. It then takes a
second or two to realize what\'s wrong.

Jeroen Belleman