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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 24 of 24. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Lamdage22 on December 21, 2018, at 10:45:56
Hey guys,
i have thought about becoming a translator alot lately. The only thing is i hate oral exams. I dont know if i could make it through those.
I will try to do a written test instead with a paper from my psychiatrist stating i cant do oral exams. I hope they will allow.
I hope you are having a nice couple of days. I can imagine its not easy for many people. I get the impression that people are never more rude than before Christmas! Traffic, Grocery store. Everywhere.
People are on edge.
Posted by baseball55 on December 21, 2018, at 17:51:41
In reply to I may start studying online to become a translator, posted by Lamdage22 on December 21, 2018, at 10:45:56
I would think you have to do an oral exam to be a translator, but I don't know.
I'm going to NYC for Christmas and NYC is great at Christmas. So many Asians and Muslims and Jews that tons of places are open (not stores much, but restaurants and cafes) so there's lots to do.
Posted by Lamdage22 on December 22, 2018, at 8:59:34
In reply to Re: I may start studying online to become a translator, posted by baseball55 on December 21, 2018, at 17:51:41
Cool. Well "Übersetzer" is someone who translates written language. "Dolmetscher" is someone who translates spoken language. I am doing the former so i may get around the oral test!
Posted by baseball55 on December 22, 2018, at 17:13:43
In reply to Re: I may start studying online to become a translator, posted by Lamdage22 on December 22, 2018, at 8:59:34
> Cool. Well "Übersetzer" is someone who translates written language. "Dolmetscher" is someone who translates spoken language. I am doing the former so i may get around the oral test!
>
>
I see. Good luck. I have great admiration for people who are fully bilingual.I plan to take a german class starting in January. Ice habe deutsch im universitat vor dreizig jahren studiert and habe die meistens vergassen. (Is that right?) I'm going to start at the beginning again, I've forgotten so much.
Was in Berlin and Dresden last summer and found my German was just good enough to get me into trouble. I could ask a question, but not understand the answer!
Posted by Lamdage22 on December 23, 2018, at 4:21:11
In reply to Re: I may start studying online to become a translator » Lamdage22, posted by baseball55 on December 22, 2018, at 17:13:43
> I plan to take a german class starting in January. Ice habe deutsch im universitat vor dreizig jahren studiert and habe die meistens vergassen. (Is that right?) I'm going to start at the beginning again, I've forgotten so much.
Its mostly right. :)
Posted by Lamdage22 on December 31, 2018, at 3:34:02
In reply to Re: I may start studying online to become a translator, posted by Lamdage22 on December 23, 2018, at 4:21:11
So that was an awesome perspective, unfortunately i think the profession of translators is dying. By the time i finished probably everyone will rely on Google to translate, not translators!
Posted by Lamdage22 on January 3, 2019, at 12:17:00
In reply to Machines translate... so there is no point, posted by Lamdage22 on December 31, 2018, at 3:34:02
Its hard to say. I think i will study this anyway. I just dont know if i should translate economic or technical texts. I have to decide.
Posted by sigismund on January 8, 2019, at 16:54:15
In reply to Machines dont translate like people, posted by Lamdage22 on January 3, 2019, at 12:17:00
They don't.
You have a head start.
Posted by alexandra_k on January 13, 2019, at 12:31:50
In reply to Machines dont translate like people, posted by Lamdage22 on January 3, 2019, at 12:17:00
It's hard to get machines to translate because lots of words have different meanings depending on the context of the sentence. I've had a few laughs over the years where students have written essays in foreign languages and run it through translation software. You get to a really odd word that doesn't fit at all, and then you think of a synonym for that word that has another meaning as well, where that other meaning fits, It's funny as.
I guess, in theory, you could train up computer software to get better at it. To incorporate aspects of the entire sentance in the translation. I think there is still some way to go, though.
Maybe not at highest levels...
I was fairly interested in what was happening in NZ with respect to politicians over the few years before the last election. We basically had one guy who was in power for a couple elections and the country was being run into the ground. There wasn't a viable alternative, however. The opposition just couldn't get a plausible seeming candidate to win the country's heart.
It started to look like we were being fed avatars... Computer generated or computer enhanced ideology... There is a Dick Francis (I think that's his last name) about Clancy... I think it was.. This leader Clancy... Who would eat certain things and play certain games and it was a computer generated composite kind of a ideology for a nation... To be used for good... But also for profits. Selling sports equipment and the like. Anyway, that started to seem all to real...
I knew someone who worked a bit in linguistics... We like to sell ESL courses, here, to teach English to refugee students or students who like to be kicked down, abused, and oppressed, like we like to treat most of our own people, too. Anyway... The ESL students are often fairly obsessed with sounding like native speakers of English. I guess because peoples attitudes (in these parts anyway) is more likely to track accent than appearance. I mean, in these parts we aren't so very racist (I don't think) -- but we perhaps are really rather more so when it comes to how people speak and their accent.
You need the leaders of the country to not speak with an appreciable accent, you see. Even when they are releatively recent imports / exports from someplace else.
My stepmother learned English as an adult and she still has an accent and makes gramatical errors that show that she didn't grow up hearing / speaking English.
I don't think most people will have access to competent software for translation anytime soon.
You are genuinely bilingual - yeah? I mean fluent in both languages since you were really young?
I was interested in psychology...
Usually (when people only grow up hearing / speaking one language) they can find a fairly distinct localised area that is particularly active for language processing.
When people grow up with more than one then language doesn't seem to get localised in the brain in the same way, though.
When I was at Duke the psych people were saying it was about people being brain damaged growing up bi-lingual. That this was why they were trying to prevent people speaking Spanish in America when they were growing up, and stuff. Because it wrecks their language systems.
:-O
I was shocked.
MOst of the world is bi-lingual (at least), I thought. In which case... Why not think that localisation is the brain damaged case and distributed processing is the 'norm'. There is evidence distributed processing is more robust from stroke and stuff, too.
Anyway...
Sounds like something worthwhile to be doing.
I was looking into the UN and stuff, recently, and was a bit disappointed to learn that you need to be bi-lingual for quite a lot of it... Sweden and Switzerland and all that... I never learned French or German... Regretting it, now. Bye bye civilisation... Cries quietly to self...
Posted by alexandra_k on January 13, 2019, at 12:36:08
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by alexandra_k on January 13, 2019, at 12:31:50
I mean to say I was impressed by quite a lot of their reports and website information and stuff. It doesn't look like it has been translated -- because it has been translated so well. By people who are genuinely bi-lingual / fluent in both languages.
It's incredibly rare (I think) to find that level of translation.
Though I don't actually know, I suppose, because I can't assess accuracy, only fluency.
Posted by alexandra_k on January 13, 2019, at 12:37:26
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by alexandra_k on January 13, 2019, at 12:36:08
I find it hard enough communiating in English to other supposed native speakers of English, honestly.
I mean, 'repeat back to me what I just said' or 'you said this 5 minutes ago, but now you are swearing black and blue the opposite' and so on...
Posted by Lamdage22 on January 13, 2019, at 15:37:28
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by alexandra_k on January 13, 2019, at 12:31:50
> You are genuinely bilingual - yeah? I mean fluent in both languages since you were really young?
No i started learning english at age 10. Like everyone else. I spent a year in the us with no contact to any Germans. I visited english classes during that year.
Posted by Lamdage22 on January 13, 2019, at 15:49:29
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by Lamdage22 on January 13, 2019, at 15:37:28
Ok i was with germans for 6 months and 6 months on my own.
My english level is C2. I could pass a cambridge proficienc test if i had stamina of 4 hours. But there is still some way to go. I want to ace it one day, not just pass it.
Posted by alexandra_k on January 24, 2019, at 19:31:20
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by Lamdage22 on January 13, 2019, at 15:49:29
I see. Huh.
The 'standard story' is prior to 7 for 'native' fluency.
But you seem pretty fluent to me.
And 10 is pretty close to 7.
I would never have thought you weren't a native english speaker from anything you have said on this site.
And I know a few Germans who are very proficient in English and academics. There are sentance construction... Idiosyncracies...
That I haven't noticed from you.
Posted by Lamdage22 on January 25, 2019, at 3:19:45
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by alexandra_k on January 24, 2019, at 19:31:20
Thanks for the compliment :)
Posted by Lamdage22 on January 25, 2019, at 10:59:13
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by alexandra_k on January 24, 2019, at 19:31:20
i guess i have a good feeling for languages. I just hope they will be put to use. And i suck at grammar. I know what tense to use most of the time, but i am not sure why :)
Posted by baseball55 on January 25, 2019, at 16:34:45
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by Lamdage22 on January 25, 2019, at 10:59:13
> i guess i have a good feeling for languages. I just hope they will be put to use. And i suck at grammar. I know what tense to use most of the time, but i am not sure why :)
I don't think you need to ba able to name the tenses or diagram a sentence in order speak a language well.
Posted by Lamdage22 on January 26, 2019, at 8:55:12
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by baseball55 on January 25, 2019, at 16:34:45
No but you need it to teach right?
Posted by baseball55 on January 26, 2019, at 16:32:09
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by Lamdage22 on January 26, 2019, at 8:55:12
> No but you need it to teach right?
I don't know. But when I've taken language classes, they are usually immersion classes in conversation and we don't talk much about grammar, just learn the proper way to say something. I know in German, we did talk some about grammar. Subject first, verb in second position then any phrases or adverbs. (Ich gehe nimmer, not Ich nimmer gehe, as in English). But that's about it.
The Goethe Institut has non-specialists teaching all over the world. You might want to contact them and see what they expect of their teachers.
Posted by Lamdage22 on January 27, 2019, at 21:26:09
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by baseball55 on January 26, 2019, at 16:32:09
Well the university i want to attend demands that you learn grammar. I guess it cant hurt.
Posted by baseball55 on January 28, 2019, at 16:58:45
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by Lamdage22 on January 27, 2019, at 21:26:09
> Well the university i want to attend demands that you learn grammar. I guess it cant hurt.
Oh. Okay. Well, I doubt it's very hard. Just putting words to what you intuitively already know, I guess.
Posted by Lamdage22 on January 29, 2019, at 5:24:23
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by baseball55 on January 28, 2019, at 16:58:45
Probably. I will start it as soon as my living situation improves. I got a lousy and lazy roommate. He thinks he is too depressed to clean.
Posted by Lamdage22 on January 29, 2019, at 5:25:09
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by Lamdage22 on January 29, 2019, at 5:24:23
Mind you he is going to highschool and still has time for playing the guitar. I doubt that it is true. He is just being an *ssh*l*.
Posted by sigismund on February 9, 2019, at 23:30:20
In reply to Re: Machines dont translate like people, posted by alexandra_k on January 13, 2019, at 12:31:50
In the ancient world dock workers could take orders and converse in maybe a dozen languages. That was in Greece.
This is the end of the thread.
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