You Never Know Where Your Languages Will Take You

It’s been a while since I have posted anything here since running a business tends to consume all of my time, sometimes to a nearly unhealthy degree. The gap since my last post has made me consider where my languages have taken me compared to where I thought I was going when I started out. To give you some background, I have had a near obsession with languages since I was fairly young, studying any language I could get materials for. This unguided, haphazard approach to learning languages became much more structured when I went to college and limited myself to my “major” languages: Russian, Spanish and French. I chose these three intentionally thinking I might end up working for the United Nations whose working languages include English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian and Mandarin Chinese.

Yet it was Russian that really held my attention. The mystique of the language and country during the cold war was very intriguing to me. I even spent six months in the Soviet Union studying and perfecting my Russian. I remember how excited I was the day I realized I could speak Russian easily without even thinking of the grammar. I left the country feeling very proud of my ability to speak confidently, fluently and intelligently on most topics, assuming I’d be back in Moscow very soon after I graduated. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 job opportunities were not the same and I ended up in graduate school studying Russian and Spanish.

After graduating, my professional life quickly led me to a job at an insurance company translating from Spanish and Portuguese, languages which I had secretly looked down on as “back-up” languages that were not as prestigious or fascinating as Russian. Now I found myself suddenly needing to use them both at a professional level. I began devouring Spanish content, memorizing obscure Spanish grammar rules and making long vocabulary lists to be sure that I could do the job well. Since I only had three semesters of college Portuguese under my belt, whenever I had “extra” time, I’d spend it working on Portuguese grammar and vocabulary, principally relying on words and grammar that were different from Spanish. Within a reasonable period of time, I felt comfortable using and speaking in both languages at work.

Yet after four years in the insurance industry, I was ready for a change. I started a language services company with my partner in 1997. It quickly became very clear just how useful and indispensible Spanish actually is in the United States. Soon after a very large client required me to put my atrophying French skills to the test. I went through the same process to ramp up my French. It’s been 20 years since that time and I still use French and Spanish on a daily basis, and Portuguese a few times a week. Yet Russian has never played a large part of my professional life in all of that time. Over the years, I can sense my Russian skills deteriorating, despite occasional bursts of interest in reading and listening to the language on the web. When I do have opportunities to speak Russian, the words are no longer on the tip of my tongue and I can feel myself having to think about verb forms and noun declensions that once came out naturally. To a large degree, we make our own opportunities in life so I am not ruling out ever using Russian on a professional level. However, for now I am enjoying using languages that I feel completely comfortable in and studying other languages for fun when I can. It can be hard to know where your language will take you right out of college so stay open to all possibilities and do your best to keep your skills up in languages that you aren’t actively using.

The Benefits of Dictionary Flipping

I have been so busy with work lately that I haven’t written anything. That is about to change as I have several drafts of posts for the second half of the summer. In the meanwhile, here is a post from a guest blogger, Hannah Varadi.

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A previous post on our language blog discussed the potential drawbacks of learning a language “naturally” without grammar.  But what about the concept of vocabulary memorization?

Like grammar, drilling vocabulary is one of the most tedious parts of language learning.  It’s the opposite of language immersion, in which one absorbs vocabulary through hearing or reading the words and infers their meaning through context.   But although making vocabulary stick in your head can be tricky at first, it is also essential—and there are ways to make it somewhat more enjoyable.  One way to do this is through a quick-and-dirty version of vocabulary absorption: a tactic I refer to as “dictionary-flipping.”

In this case I will use “dictionary” to include both print and online language dictionaries, as well as online forums: that is, resources which will give you the basic idea of a foreign language’s definition, but not to the depth with which a native speaker would know the word.  I am also only addressing written language and not spoken language, which is a topic for another day.

It was while reading the French writer Joseph Kessel’s novel Le lion for a class assignment last spring that I last applied this method in earnest.  The novel was just above the level at which I could comfortably read in French, mainly because it takes place on a reserve in Kenya and includes plenty of description of the picturesque scenery and wandering animals. On average, every page contained about two to five words that I had never encountered—most of them crucial to understanding the sentences in which they appeared.

To handle this, I would read a paragraph or a page of description, absorb the rough gist, note all the unfamiliar words, flip through the dictionary to find only the unfamiliar words that seemed important to the context, then rereading the passage.  Even in cases where I guessed the meaning of a word based on context on the first read-through, looking up the unfamiliar words and then rereading the passage allowed me to see the image the author intend to convey much more vividly.  I gained a more concrete image of, for instance, the sun rising over Kilimanjaro as a herd of elephants splash around in a watering hole.  It was also easier to pick up the nuances of character interaction and dialogue when I understood individual adjectives.

And most importantly: this process got somewhat easier over the course of the novel.  In the first place, maintaining the habit of looking for vocabulary became increasingly comfortable.  I was able to identify recurring words after the first couple of occurrences (fauve—“big cat”, se pencher—“to lean”, se dresser—“to stand upright,” etc.), and thereafter to recognize their meaning immediately each time they appeared.  In this way I absorbed and remembered about 50-60% of the vocabulary I encountered in total, and my heightened understanding of the novel’s content allowed me to more highly appreciate and enjoy the narrative.

Admittedly, different forms of vocabulary learning are more effective for some people than for others, and I admit that in certain respects the method I used for Le lion was inefficient.  After all, I retained far fewer memories of vocabulary through dictionary-flipping than if I had taken the time to at least write down the words and their definitions.

I must also stress that this method of learning vocabulary requires a text just slightly above the level at which you can read comfortably.  In this case I began with a fairly solid understanding of French grammar, verb conjugation, and vocabulary: had my grasp of French been lesser when I read the book, I would have spent so much time looking up vocabulary that I would have lost the sense of the text.

What’s more, Le lion is a relatively modern book from the 1950’s, and contains virtually no jargon, proverbs, or informal expressions in French.  It can be difficult or impossible to find these three things in the average language dictionary: you have to either search through online forums or consult a native speaker of the language, both of which are certainly worthwhile but also time-consuming.

But for this particular book, and for my particular purposes—reading to gain a deep meaning of the novel’s themes—the method worked well enough.  Of course acquisition of vocabulary is crucial in language learning, and it’s a process we continually undergo even in our native tongue!  But which method to use for learning depends on your goal, and on the quantity of knowledge on the language you already possess.  There’s a time for drilling, a time for gist-reading, and a time for flipping through the dictionary every paragraph or so.

 

Hannah is a junior in Comparative Literature (Creative Writing and Spanish minors) at Oberlin College, who is studying abroad with CIEE’s Communications and Journalism (CNMJ) program in Seville. You can follow her blog here.

What Makes a Language Hard?

Students shy away from certain languages because they are perceived to be too difficult. But are there really easy or hard languages? Well, yes. However, the degree of difficulty that any language poses is relative to many factors. What might be a difficult language for one person may be very easy for another. If English is your first and only language, then how hard a given language is will depend on how different it is from English. And if you speak another language well, then learning additional ones will become easier and easier. Whether or not aptitude plays any substantial role is debatable. The people I know who speak several languages have a real passion for them and their language abilities are the result of a lot of hard work and effort. That said, obviously all people have an innate ability to learn a language as a child, but I am going to look at this question from the prospective of the adult learner.

FSI Language Difficulty Chart

A language’s level of difficulty can be measured in many ways, but in practical terms it can be measured by how long it takes an average learner to reach a certain degree of fluency compared to another language. The Foreign Service Institute has created a list of languages ranked by the number of hours needed to reach what it deems as “General Professional Proficiency” thereby equating a language’s difficulty with how much time is required to reach this proficiency level. Therefore, “easy” languages take less time and effort to learn than “harder”.

To get a better perceptive of why it takes more time to learn certain languages, we need to understand that all languages are grouped into “families”. The Indo-European family contains many of the most common languages that English speakers learn. Each family is broken down into smaller subgroups. The farther down you go in these subgroups the more similar the languages become to one another. Let’s look at five languages from what’s called the Italic subgroup: Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian. These are all commonly known as Romance languages. Romance here means that these languages all descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. I chose this group because four of the five are very commonly studied in the U.S. and provide a basis for comparing the difficulty of other lesser studied languages. Even though these five languages are all in the same language subgroup, they are not equally easy for English speakers. Spanish is widely regarded as the easiest of the group for various reasons, such as its highly phonetic structure, regular stress patterns, relatively uncomplicated grammar and abundance of cognates. French, on the other hand, has a much more complicated pronunciation system and grammar than Spanish, but has even more easily recognizable cognates. Portuguese, which is a close cousin of Spanish, is slightly more difficult due to its pronunciation, contractions and less recognizable cognates. What this means to English speakers is that if you learn Spanish well first, then you will be able to learn Portuguese later on much more easily than any other language. Italian is highly phonetic and has many recognizable cognates, but it is just slightly more difficult than Spanish given that stress on words is often unpredictable, the rules for making plurals is different and there are many contractions. And lastly, Romanian is the most different of the five since not only has it been influenced by Slavic words, but it still retains grammatical cases left over from Latin. All five of these languages are therefore theoretically easier for English speakers to learn than languages in other subgroups or language families.

You have undoubtedly heard people say that English is such a hard language for foreigners to learn, but this is not necessarily true. I remember staying with a host family in the Netherlands when I was in high school who told me that English was very easy for them. They said French and German, the other two languages they were required to study, were more difficult for them than English. This is easy to understand as the Dutch language is very closely related to English so the grammatical elements of English that might be difficult to master for a Chinese or Czech speaker do not exist for a Dutch speaker whose own language has the same grammar features. Russian is considered to be a particularly difficult language for English speakers to learn due to its very different grammar, but it is quite easy for a Ukrainian or Polish speaker whose own languages contain many of the grammatical features and vocabulary as Russian. Chinese, on the other hand, has a very simple grammar, yet part of its complexity lies in its tones, complete lack of cognates and difficult writing system. Japanese is just the opposite. It has simple pronunciation, but a complicated grammar structure.

All languages contain elements that are either easier or more complicated than English so judging how hard a language is with any precision is a rather tricky and subjective matter. Yet whatever the real or perceived difficulty of a language, you should not let that be an obstacle to you trying to learn it. The right materials, teachers or environment can make all the difference in whether a language seems difficult or fun. With enough time, dedication and most importantly motivation, no language is beyond anyone’s grasp.

Learning a Language without Grammar

Disclaimer: Before I get into my own viewpoint on this, I need to make an important point. The objective of this blog is not to assert that there is necessarily only one right way to learn a language. Different people learn in different ways and suggesting that a one-size-fits-all approach would work for everyone would be arrogant and intellectually dishonest. I also must admit that as a translator I absolutely love grammar!

Recently there has been a lot of talk about learning a language without all the supposedly “unnecessary” complications of grammar or boring memorization. The idea is that you will learn naturally, just like a child, and that your brain will slowly piece together the grammar without any active effort on your part by continued exposure to simple sentence patterns. In fact, many new products are being extensively marketed right now based on this very idea (Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, Michel Thomas). The concept is nothing new. It’s been touted for many years. I was even required to use it when I taught English as a Second Language classes a long time ago so I do have first-hand experience with the method and its results.

In the beginning stages of language learning, it makes sense to deemphasize (though not eliminate) grammar and focus more on pronunciation and vocabulary acquisition. This frees the learner to concentrate on memorizing essential vocabulary and commonly used phrases and learned responses. This honeymoon period can help the learner to get a feel for the language and gain a bit of confidence before tiptoeing into the finer points of grammar. The problem is that our brain does not work the same as adults as it did when we were young children. Certain changes, which are not yet completely understood, occur in the brain at puberty. Therefore, adults can only get so far with the approach. Though short-term gains can be impressive when used in combination with teachers or native speakers, ultimately without at least some grammar rules to fall back on, the student will become frustrated and unable to produce more complicated thoughts.

Even with languages with relatively easy grammar for English speakers, like Spanish, the learner will quickly be confronted with concepts that don’t exist in English, such as the gender of nouns. It will take a while to grasp just by reading and hearing the different forms in context that Spanish has four ways to say “the” (el, la, los, las) if the learner is not simply given this basic information in the beginning. This is a needlessly inefficient and frustrating approach to learning a language. In other languages, like Russian, where grammar can be extraordinarily complex for English speakers, I simply don’t see any realistic way that anyone can make any genuine progress in the language without grammar. Floundering to figure out grammatical features that don’t exist in your native language like noun declensions, verb aspects, etc. serves only to undermine the learner’s motivation and confidence.

Though it sounds trite, grammar is truly the foundation of any language and you can’t build upon it if you don’t understand it. Anyone who truly wants to have a deep knowledge of a language and the confidence to know that he or she is speaking correctly cannot avoid grammar. People who make grammatical mistakes in English do so because they don’t understand their own grammar, so why would someone be able to speak a foreign language any better who didn’t understand its grammar? While skipping grammar may sound like an efficient shortcut, it is best reserved for the casual language learner — someone who just wants a smattering of the language for vacation or social purposes. I admit that grammar can be a drudgery to some, but when you remove it altogether from the learning process you don’t simplify learning, you complicate it.

What Makes a Good Translation?

A Spanish “translation” that appeared on gas pumps throughout Indiana in 2001

I am often approached by people who speak another language who are looking for work. I will ask if they translate or interpret, or both. This inevitably leads to the question, what’s the difference? As I have discussed in a previous post, there is a difference. However, the fact that they do not even know that tells me a lot so I try to steer them toward resources on getting started as a translator. Many people assume that any bilingual person can do a good translation. Therefore, often a very complicated, well-written document ends up in the hands of someone with absolutely no translation experience. So what all goes into the process of translating, and how you do judge a good translation from a bad one?

It is often said that translation is an art, and I agree. Think about it for a second. If I were asked to draw a picture of someone, I could certainly produce an image resembling a human being that anyone would recognize as such, but could that compare to the naturalness and fine detail of what a true artist could do? Could I call myself an artist? Translation can be viewed in the same way. It is an intricate and often subjective process that goes far beyond a simplistic word-for-word exchange. A good translation needs to carry the meaning and the tone of the original text, while still remaining culturally sensitive and appropriate to the target audience. Poor translations abound and it is such translations that people tend to remember. There is nothing funny about a bad translation if it negatively affects your company image or product. No one wants to be the butt of a bad joke because a translation has failed to hit its mark. The image above is just such an example. It is a translation that appeared about ten years ago here in Indiana for the “Don’t Pump and Run” campaign. I thought they had all been removed long gone until I recently saw one while filling my tank. This gem of a translation blooper wasn’t done by a computer, but by someone who honestly felt that he/she had the skills to do the translation. For those of you who speak Spanish, you will get a real kick out of it. For those of you who do not, it’s funny to native speakers because it’s a literal and nonsensical of the English version. It is also contains invented words, accent marks written as apostrophes and misspellings, including when a misspelling of the English word petroleum. How this was ever approved and posted at thousands of gas stations statewide is a mystery to me.

So what are the qualities that go into making a “good” translation? It must meet several criteria in order to be considered “good.” The first criterion is rather obvious—it has to be accurate. Examples of where this often fails are mistranslations, missing sentences and bad grammar. This point accentuates the need to use translators with a thorough knowledge of both languages, not merely two years of a high school language. Mistranslations and missing words or sentences can have devastating consequences. Additionally, if a translation is fraught with bad grammar or spelling errors, the reader tends to lose confidence in not only the document, but also the company that produced it.

Clarity is another important factor. A translation has to be easily comprehensible and well written, regardless of how poor the original document may be. Good translations commonly read much better than do the originals. Many writers tend to write in rather long and complicated sentences; this is especially true in legal documents. However, a translation should strive to present all the information and nuance of the source text in a clear and uncluttered fashion whenever possible

Naturalness of the translation is the key factor in helping to prevent a translation from sounding like one. Typically, or at least at my company, after a translation has been proofread for accuracy and completeness, an editor will go through the document and make sure that it reads smoothly and sounds as if it were originally written in the target language.

An easily overlooked component of a good translation is mirroring the mood of the author. In general texts, there may not be a definitive tone, but in editorial and literary documents there always is a clear attitude of the author. For a translation to convey the same feeling to the reader, it must use words and expressions which can transmit a similar spirit. Failure to express this accurately can easily mislead the reader as to the writer’s true feelings and attitudes.

Next, a translation needs to be culturally appropriate for the target audience. References to religious figures, sports or country–specific items may confuse or offend the reader. Such references either need to be excluded in the source document before translation begins, or be culturally readapted into the target language.

Lastly, the audience needs to be taken into consideration. Sometimes this is a broad group of people, but more often, it is a narrow, targeted audience. A text written for a group of scientists needs to be translated at a much higher reading level than would consent forms for newly arrived immigrants. Moreover, if a document is destined for a certain country, it is usually best that the translation be performed by a native translator of that country to ensure that only terms and expressions of that country are used. Metric conversions and spelling changes may need to be made to ensure that the translation is acceptable in the given country. This is just a very brief look at the basics of what goes into a good translation. If you have questions, please let me know.

The Importance of Culture in Language Learning

I recently heard someone who studies multiple languages say that he didn’t care about learning the culture behind those languages. This is really surprising to me on many levels since not only is culture a major and inseparable component of “knowing” a language, it is also one of the most enjoyable aspects of acquiring a new language and keeping yourself motivated. If you argue that a language can learned devoid of culture for mere functional or academic purposes, then what you will end up with is the mere ability to function in the language as an outsider at the minimal level and have no real appreciation for the people who use the language. Choosing not to learn about the country or countries where a particular language is spoken nor its government, history or people not only robs you of the richness that knowing another language normally brings with it, but also makes it very difficult to appreciate the news or place current events in any meaningful context.

However, trying to avoid the culture of a language is actually rather hard to do if you study a language to a thorough level and interact with its speakers. For example, you simply cannot learn to speak and function in Arabic if you are not familiar with its underlying culture or Islamic influence. Speaking Japanese without understanding its rather complicated honorific speech system would be socially disastrous and detrimental to any business negotiation. Each language carries with it all of the history and culture of the area that it arises from. The political, social and economic conditions of the country influence its vocabulary and the shades of meaning of its words. The cultural landscape of some languages is quite vast since they are spoken across many different countries, each flavoring the language in its own unique way. Spanish, as an example, is the official language of 20 countries and widely spoken in the U.S. with variations that reflect each region’s reality. In Mexico, many words for food that Americans are familiar with have different meanings than elsewhere in the Latin world. A tortilla, for example, is a thin layer of corn or flour unleavened bread in Mexico, whereas in other Spanish-speaking countries it is an omelet. Every American knows what a taco is, but the word has a myriad of meanings outside of Mexico that have nothing to do with food. In cases like this where a language is spoken in different counties, it’s more practical to learn the most about the culture and people of the country that you will actually interact with.

Proverbs are cultural treasure troves in any language. They reflect the accumulated wisdom of past generations, but they are also great for your language skills. I still remember very clearly one that I learned while I was a student in the former Soviet Union, “В Тулу со своим самоваром не ездят!,” which literally means you don’t bring a samovar to Tula. This expression certainly means very little to most people who don’t know anything about Russian culture. What is a samovar? Where in the world is Tula? Well, a samovar (pictured above) is a traditional Russian urn used for boiling water to make tea, both of which are items inextricably linked to Russian culture. Tula is a city in Russia famous for being a major manufacturer of samovars; hence, there would be no need to take one with you if you go there for a visit. If you invest the time in learning many such proverbs, you will be well rewarded by what you gain not only from cultural insight, but in how your language is appreciated by native speakers.

Learning a language without the cultural framework in which it exists is like cooking ethnic food without the spices of the region. You simply will remove all of the flavor from the language. If you are lucky enough to be able to travel or live in the country for awhile, great! If not, try to learn as much as you can by reading books and magazines from the country and watching its television programs so that you can get a feel for how the people think, act and speak. Don’t just be bilingual, be bicultural!

Inside the Mind of a Polyglot

A polyglot is defined as someone who is able to speak several languages. The exact number of languages can be and often is disputed, but technically “poly” from Greek means many so each is free to define it as he or she wishes. People tend to be fascinated and highly impressed when you tell them that you speak several languages. Everyone tends to ask you the same types of questions. How many languages do you speak? Where did you learn them? Do you travel a lot? Don’t you confuse them? While it is fairly easy to impress most monolingual people with your answers, it can sometimes come across as boastful, even when not intended to. In my own case, I have found that the best answer to give is to say how many languages I work in professionally. These are the languages I can use in any situation and actually make a living off of by translating and interpreting. I have studied many languages for pleasure, but if I mention those most people automatically assume that I must speak them all equally as well. However, studying and knowing can often be very different things. I have studied astronomy and chemistry in my life, but I am neither an astronomer nor a chemist. In fact, I remember very little beyond the basics in both of them. However, there are many people who quite readily claim to know fifty languages or more.

So what does it mean to know a language and how many can a person really learn? In search for an answer to that question, a new book has come out titled Babel No More by Michael Erard. The book delves into past and living polyglots and attempts to discover what they all have in common. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book for several reasons. First of all, since I have an insatiable passion for languages, I was curious to know what I may or may not have in common with these language overachievers. Secondly, I participated in the on-line survey for the book several years ago and had been anxiously waiting for the book’s release to get a glimpse into the world of modern polyglots. Lastly, I received an iPad as a gift this past Christmas and this was my very first venture into the world of electronic books.

Mr. Erard actually focuses on hyperpolyglots, a newly coined term for people who speak six or more languages. However, he states that he found eleven languages to be a more accurate number for defining a hyperpolyglot. The author admittedly takes a somewhat skeptical approach to claims of those who speak many dozens of languages, pondering whether it is even possible for someone to speak so many languages to any meaningful degree. He researches renowned polyglots from the past and interviews several living ones to observe their methodology for learning and retaining so many languages. The author attempts to determine whether there is any secret or innate talent that they have for learning languages. Each of the people he interviews gives different approaches to tackling a new language, each suited to his or her individual learning style. When he confronts the question of how many languages a person can actually know, he comes to the greater question of what it means to “know” a language and whether you count a language if you merely know a few basic phrases in it. He learns that all of the people he studies have latent languages that they don’t actively use for long periods of time. They reactivate them as needed by studying them from a few hours to several weeks. He tries to figure out how many active languages a person can have, concluding that there seems to be a limit on how many a person can maintain at a high level, though he doesn’t give a precise number in the book. In the end he seems rather disappointed to realize that more than anything else what these hyperpolyglots share is a love for doing what most people find boring: studying vocabulary lists, verb conjugations and grammar. He states that polyglots “haven’t escaped the banality of methods at all; they make the banality more productive. Their minds enjoy the banality.”

My own take on Babel No More is that it is a rare gem – a language book with a mass appeal. It is written in such a way as to be both insightful and compelling. I found myself staying up well past midnight for nearly a week as I couldn’t easily put it down, if one can say that about an e-book. The polyglots that he profiled were fascinating, though sometimes a bit sad. I kept trying to find threads of my own learning style and personality in the quirkiness of the polyglots he covers. I found the living polyglots even more interesting as they are able to speak for themselves. In particular, I enjoyed the section on Alexander Arguelles, who is a living polyglot with an unquenchable drive for studying languages, and whose YouTube videos I have been following for years. His profile reveals just how much effort is required to actually maintain such a large number of languages. Though the book does not cover many other well-known living polyglots, or more famous past ones such as Mario Pei, it is well worth your time and money. I would encourage anyone with the interest in languages in general, or polyglots in particular, to give this book a read.

The Price of Misunderstanding

Anyone who has ever studied a foreign language has a favorite story about what happened when he or she misunderstood something that was said. These stories can range from humorous to disastrous. Here’s my story.

Back in the mid 90’s I was tutoring a Venezuelan student in English at her home. We had been meeting for many months so we were quite comfortable with each other and frequently spoke in Spanish during study breaks or when I needed to explain English grammar to her. One day I came by for our regular appointment and she greeted me in Spanish stating that her children were home sick today from school and in their bedrooms. She told me that they both had come down with lechina. My look of understanding and lack of concern betrayed what was really going on in my head. My brain quickly tried to make sense of that word, running through lists of diseases, but I actually thought I heard la china and could not think of any illness that corresponded to it. I discarded it as something minor and didn’t give it any more thought until two days later when I began to start scratching at my chest. As the day wore on I began noticing red splotches on my chest and suddenly my mind went racing back to lechina. I began to have a sinking feeling that lechina was actually varicela… chickenpox. I never had chickenpox as a kid so I got panicky and called my student and explained my symptoms to her. She apologized and said that I apparently had contracted lechina from being in her home. She assumed that I must have had it as a kid since I didn’t seem worried about it during our last class. Being an adult with chickenpox was quite awful so this is one lesson that I will never forget—in Venezuela lechina is chickenpox.  When it comes to important things like health, be sure you totally understand what is being said so you don’t end up in a similar situation.

This underscores the regional variations in language, especially Spanish. With over twenty Spanish-speaking countries, not to mention the Spanglish of the United States, such examples abound. Since that incident, I have worked closely with Venezuelans, Columbians, Mexicans, Salvadorians, Puerto Ricans and Cubans I have observed and noted hundreds of other such differences. I’ll write more about this in a different post.

The main point is that when we speak in another language, we are often reluctant to admit that we don’t understand everything that we hear during a conversation, either out of embarrassment or pride. No one wants to keep asking for sentences to be repeated and modified so that we can understand them. In many cases our brains filter out or guess parts of conversation that were not initially understood allowing us to continue the conversation. Language learners quickly learn to pick on clues to know when to make appropriate nods and “uh huhs” during conversations even if they haven’t gotten the entire gist. However when it comes to more serious things, asking for clarification could have saved me from three weeks of chickenpox but then I wouldn’t have the funny story to tell now.

What is the difference between a language and a dialect?

Image via Wikipedia

As a linguistics major in college I remember being taught that the question of what is a language versus a dialect is a political question rather than a linguistic one. This is indeed the case. Languages are held in high esteem by their speakers. Dialects are deemed to be less prestigious than the main language. Confusion between the terms arises from the fact that there is no clear distinction into what makes a language a language, or a dialect a dialect. For many American English speakers, regional accents are often considered to be dialects of English. For example, Southern speech is frequently referred to as “dialect” in just the same way as one would refer to British English. From a broader and politically-neutral perspective, a dialect can be considered to be any form of a language that is mutually intelligible to speakers of the same or related language. Therefore, American, British and Australian English would all be dialects of each other since the speakers of these three variations of English can essentially understand each other, apart from localized slang and expressions that often stump the listener.

However, the picture becomes a bit murkier as you consider closely-related languages such as Danish, Norwegian or Swedish. To varying degrees these three Scandinavian languages are mutually intelligible to speakers of the other languages. Political boundaries have defined them as separate languages and different orthographic rules have further modified their written forms.  Often in such cases speakers of one of the languages have much less difficulty understanding the other language. In fact, I used to teach English as a Second Language and would regularly hear Spanish and Portuguese speakers conversely with each other in their own language after class. The Brazilian Portuguese speakers told me that they had no problem whatsoever understanding the Spanish speakers, but the Spanish speakers often struggled to understand the Brazilians.

For political reasons, sometimes languages that are mutually unintelligible are considered to be the same language, as is the case with Chinese. China considers Cantonese and Mandarin to be the same language. In fact, these two languages do share the same writing system and use the same characters, but the spoken form of the languages is so different that the speakers are unable to understand each other without writing back and forth. In other cases, the exact same language is considered to be a separate language. Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian are essentially the same language, called Serbo-Croatian during communist rule. Now for political reasons they are considered distinct languages. Serbian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, Croatian in the Latin alphabet and Bosnian in both. As languages and countries continue to evolve, what we now consider to be dialects may become languages or vice versa.

What does an interpreter do?

Image via Wikipedia

If you read my post What Does a Translator Do?, you’ll remember that translators handle written texts while interpreters deal with spoken language. When people picture an interpreter, they typically conjure up a headphone-wearing, glass-enclosed United Nations type interpreter, like Nicole Kidman in the movie “The Interpreter.” While this is a fairly accurate portrait of what some interpreters do, it is just one facet of the language interpretation profession. I’d like to present a brief outline of the different types of interpreters and what they do.

First of all, interpretation comes in two forms: consecutive and simultaneous. In consecutive interpretation, a speaker talks in short segments, typically 15-60 seconds, then the interpreter presents the message to the audience. This usually requires the interpreter to take notes to be sure nothing is missed. The interpreter usually is visible and speaks into a microphone for the whole audience to hear. This sort of interpreting is common for short speeches or events where the schedule allows for the additional time needed for the interpretation. Consecutive interpretation is by far the most common form with interpreters working in all fields. Though some government entities, courts, and hospitals employee their own interpreters to handle their daily needs in specific languages, the majority work as independent contractors. Consecutive interpreting can also be provided telephonically. You might have noticed that some stores now have special language telephones set up next to the customer service desk to allow non-English speaking shoppers access to an interpreter within a few minutes. Telephone interpretation has become more prevalent in recent years with many hospitals and government agencies relying on it as a quicker and cheaper alternative to having a physical interpreter come out to their location. When an interpreter needs to be mobile during a presentation, such as a company plant visit or city tour, the interpreter is referred to as an escort interpreter. This is an unfortunate name given some of the requests I have gotten over the years with specific physical descriptions of the “interpreter” the client desired. Consecutive interpreting tends to be used more in shorter events since it doubles the time necessary to convey the message.

In simultaneous interpretation the interpreter begins to interpret the message nearly at the same time as the speaker. In fact there is a brief 2-10 second lag before the interpretation begins to enable the interpreter to gather the whole meaning of the sentence. With languages where the verb comes at the end, like German, the interpreter must wait until the end of the thought before starting to interpret. This type is usually for large conferences, corporate meetings and in some courtrooms. Simultaneous interpreters are often referred to as conference interpreters since these are the types of venues for which they most often interpret. This sort of interpretation is frequently judged to be more difficult since it requires the interpreter to both listen and speak at the same time. Consequently, there are fewer simultaneous interpreters in the interpretation field and they can be quite expensive to book. Like consecutive interpreters, most work as freelancers. However, unlike consecutive interpreters they are much more likely to travel aross the world from one venue to the next. The interpreters are equipped with a headset and microphone to hear the speaker and then relay the interpreted message into the microphone. The interpretation is transmitted either by radio or infrared waves to the audience that has wireless receivers. In the case of a multiple-language event, the audience may be able to choose from several languages on different channels. Simultaneous interpreters always work in pairs, trading off every 20-30 minutes. They are often unseen and work in either an enclosed interpretation booth or glass-walled room in order not to distract from the event.   

Depending on the circumstances, both types can be used. I have personally been in depositions where I have whispered the interpretation simultaneously into the person’s ear while the lawyer was asking the questions, then consecutively interpreted the answers back to the lawyer. This is just a very brief glimpse into the fascinating and high-demand field of interpreting.