Podcast on YouTube: Link for YouTube
Podcast on Spotify: Link on Spotify
Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Bienvenidos, Croeso and Welcome.
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today I’m talking about…
Translating into Your Target Language
So, I’ve talked previously about foreign languages and translation and I’ve said that it’s always best to translate from a foreign language into your own to get the best translation and that this is the most useful exercise, because you’re trying to understand how people who speak that language actually phrase things. I still stick by this. But that doesn’t mean that translating into a foreign language is a complete waste of time. You just can’t expect to get the results you would doing it the other way and if you’re doing it on your own, there’s no one to tell you whether you’ve got it right or wrong.
But, maybe you have a valid reason to need to do it, like, I don’t know, you know someone who speaks your target language and they want to understand something in your language, which they don’t speak, and you translate it for them. Okay, that’s a bit convoluted. You can probably think of a better reason to need to do this.
Need. That’s a bit of a strong word for my circumstance. Wish would be better.
The thing is, I decided I wanted to try to translate some creative writing I’ve done in English into Italian, rather than always writing from scratch. It would be a completely different experience and stretch my writing muscles in Italian just that little bit harder. And it would add a bit of variety to what I was doing.
I’ve only just started on this journey and I’m trying to do one of these per month, which isn’t too much of a burden. They’re very short pieces and often in very clipped sentences in English, to give the piece atmosphere, or tension, or whatever. But can I get the same effect in Italian? I guess that remains to be seen, but it is an interesting process. Can I cut a sentence right back in Italian as much as I would do in English? Or does that just sound weird to an Italian? We already use fewer syllables than they do, in general, to say the same thing - no I’m not saying words, because sometimes those extra syllables don’t mean more words. Can I miss out a ‘the’ for example, where you wouldn’t usually? Can I flip a sentence around and still get the correct meaning from it? Will a reference I’ve made in English work in Italian? Maybe I’ll avoid those kinds of pieces. Will I have to change things to make it work?
Of course, in poetry, some of the above is not so much of an issue. You can see things cut right back in songs and those are similar to poetry. In prose, it might be.
In some ways, doing this goes against many of the supposed rules for doing something in a foreign language. Translating word for word is generally going to end badly, because things frequently cannot be translated exactly. So, I’m trying not to do that. Well, I am some of the time, obviously, otherwise it wouldn’t be the same piece in another language, but I’m trying not to slavishly follow the English with an exact equivalent in Italian. If I were to do that, it might make the piece sound very stilted and unnatural. It might still be that, but at least it won’t be so bad. Hopefully.
Anyway, this is definitely an experiment and I might decide to stop doing it at some point, but I like to challenge myself like this and as long as I’m having fun doing it, there’s no harm in that.
If you want to try this for yourself, I would definitely take something that’s more factual than fictional, because it’ll be a lot easier - unless, of course, you’re a fiction writer. And consider trying to get the sense of a piece, rather than one hundred per cent accuracy, because whichever language you’re aiming for, that will give you the best shot at sounding natural.
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, adiós, hwyl and bye for now.