{"id":17800,"date":"2018-01-26T12:28:34","date_gmt":"2018-01-26T17:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/voxymarketing.ablru2ma-liquidwebsites.com\/?p=17800"},"modified":"2021-04-30T13:10:10","modified_gmt":"2021-04-30T17:10:10","slug":"translation-doesnt-teach-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voxy.com\/pt-br\/blog\/translation-doesnt-teach-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Translation doesn\u2019t teach language"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, I wrote about what makes learning a language hard<\/a> and pointed out that using data on word difficulty from the language learning application Duolingo is not particularly credible. Duolingo relies on gamification and translation to \u201cteach\u201d learners decontextualized words and sometimes useless phrases such as, and I am not making this up, \u201cthe butterfly drinks the milk.\u201d Outside of some Alice-in-Wonderland-esque scenario, I\u2019m hard-pressed to think of a circumstance under which one would ever be asked to translate the English phrase \u201cthe butterfly drinks the milk\u201d into Portuguese.<\/p>\n

Setting aside the silly instructional content, though, many people have asked me why translation is such an ineffective approach. Often, when people think about language learning, they think of translation, assuming that the best way to start learning a new language is to work from your first language and then figure out how to say basic words and phrases in the language you are learning. That might sound intuitive, but in practice, it\u2019s a terrible way to learn. Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n

First, it simply takes too much time. When you translate, you are spending your time in both languages, trying to go from one to the other and not immersing yourself in the language you are learning. If you spend your time trying to figure out how to go from English to Spanish, then you are losing half of your language practice time to your mother tongue. Learning a language is learning a skill, and learning a skill requires practice–way more practice than most people realize, actually–so cutting that time in half by constantly thinking in your first language is inefficient.<\/p>\n

Second, and perhaps more important, languages don\u2019t work that way. Think about the first Spanish class you took, when you learned to introduce yourself by saying \u2018Yo me llamo Katie.\u201d Translated literally into English, that statement is actually \u201cI myself I call Katie,\u201d NOT \u201cMy name is Katie.\u201d The first lesson you learn in Spanish 101 is that you cannot actually translate sentences word-for-word.<\/p>\n

Finally, translation is, itself, an art. People go to school for years to be professional translators. In order to be successful, they need to not only be bilingual, but also bicultural. Without thinking, native speakers use metaphor, word order, tone, and slang to convey meaning. Someone translating, for example, a movie scene must not only understand that when a new boss says \u201clet\u2019s hit this baby out of the park\u201d at the beginning of a brainstorming session, she\u2019s not talking about physically smacking a human baby out of a playground (or baseball stadium!) but instead motivating her team to hit a metaphorical homerun. And then the translator must also, after understanding what the new boss is saying, find a way to express the same sentiment in another language, which is almost certainly going to involve a different metaphor.<\/p>\n

When you think about it, it seems almost miraculous that we can take conversations, poetry, and speeches in one language and express them in another without more things getting lost in, well, translation. Translation is an impressive skill for well-trained, fluent speakers, but not an effective approach for learning a language.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Dr. Katharine B. Nielson, PhD, is Voxy’s Chief Education Officer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, I wrote about what makes learning a language hard and pointed out that using data on word difficulty from the language learning application Duolingo is not particularly credible. Duolingo relies on gamification and translation to \u201cteach\u201d learners decontextualized words and sometimes useless phrases such as, and I am not making this up, \u201cthe […]\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17813,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[697],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-treinamento-e-desenvolvimento"],"yoast_head":"\nTranslation doesn\u2019t teach language - Voxy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/voxy.com\/pt-br\/blog\/translation-doesnt-teach-language\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"pt_BR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Translation doesn\u2019t teach language - Voxy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last week, I wrote about what makes learning a language hard and pointed out that using data on word difficulty from the language learning application Duolingo is not particularly credible. 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