I've posted a video about conference interpreting before, but here's another cool video that was just uploaded to youtube in the last week, this time looking at the kinds of interpreting that go on in closed-door meetings. It's a little disappointing that the title, "Interpreter Breaks Down How Real-Time Translation Works," misnames the process as translation. Looks like WIRED kind of got their wires crossed a bit there (pun absolutely intended). This video looks at both consecutive and simultaneous interpreting. Frankly, this vid makes them both look pretty intimidating, the simultaneous for pretty obvious reasons (listening and speaking at the same time, mental exhaustion), but the consecutive doesn't look much easier, honestly, with its indecipherable note-taking system.
Some of the terminology for simultaneous interpreting was fun to learn, though. When I originally heard the narrator say "...we can employ what we call chuchotage, which means whispering in French," for a second I thought he meant the word meant "whispering in French," rather than "whispering" in French. Wouldn't it be fun if French had a word that specifically meant whispering in their language as opposed to whispering in all other languages? But no, it just translates to "whispering". And then décalage translates to "gap." I wonder why the terminology comes from French. Did the French originally corner the market on interpretation technique? Though I mentioned my parent/teacher conference interpreting experience in the prior post on interpreting, based on this video, it looks like I did kind of a mix of consecutive and simultaneous. It wasn't as intense as full simultaneous (though we routinely went from one conference to another for 4-8 hours), but I quickly learned that things would go more smoothly if I started interpreting before each full thought was completed, sometimes while the person was still talking if they got going on a good clip. Not really whispering, though, so they usually just interpreted that (no pun intended that time) as a hint to take more frequent breaks, so then I'd end up consecutive interpreting short phrases rather than long sentences or heaven forbid, full paragraphs! But that seems like a YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) type of situation, where quasi-interrupting was taken in stride by parents and my teacher colleagues, but might not be so welcomed a practice in a meeting of diplomats...
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Duolingo is on a roll this month! They released their first podcast in French, had their 7-year anniversary, and now they're releasing their Arabic course.
Arabic must have been eagerly anticipated and in development for a while, at least that's the impression I've gotten from reading comments on their facebook posts. To accompany the launch announcement, they also posted a link to this blog, What makes Arabic hard (and why that shouldn't stop you from learning it), which talks a bit about some features of the Arabic grammar, sound, and writing systems (compared to English), and how those characteristics influenced the design of the course. They've written posts like this before, like back in 2017 to discuss the launch of their Chinese course. I really like these type of posts, because it makes the app more relatable to be able to peer behind the curtain a bit, so to speak. The Arabic post did a great job of talking about elements of linguistics and language learning in a reader-friendly way without simplifying to the point of mischaracterization. They also frame the difficulty of learning Arabic as a challenge, which gives it a nice positive spin. It's an effective enough take that, if I'm feeling brave in the near future, I might give the course a try. I've been aware for a while that Duolingo has had podcasts in Spanish, and though I've heard good things, I've never checked them out (as I'm neither needing to learn Spanish nor lesson planning for intermediate learners). But I was really excited to see that Duolingo is finally starting to release a podcast in a language other than Spanish--and I say that as a Spanish teacher! It's really lucky for Spanish to be the go-to language for new content, experimentation and innovation, but I also feel for my colleagues in other languages. I happen to have studied 3 semesters of French back in undergrad, but that was quite a while ago. I briefly maintained lofty notions of maintaining or even growing my French knowledge, but that pretty much slipped by the wayside. So when I saw the announcement of the French podcast, I immediately went to check it out, specifically the transcript, because I find I rarely have the attention span to dedicate to just listening to something, unless I'm doing something else at the same time (no commute for me at this point, so no listening to podcasts in the car). I was pleasantly surprised to find that, with a background of 3 semesters over 10 years ago, I was still able to understand 95%+ of the transcript. The TL pieces are contextualized with a little bit of English introduction (but not direct translation), and that (probably/certainly?) helped. Honestly, I think it would be great if they would publish the TL parts with and without the English. With, for the context and for those who want the extra support. But also without, for those who want to test themselves sans context or just don't want the English interruption as they reread/listen for increased acquisition. In addition to understanding the language (comprehensible: check), I thought they did a nice job of not oversimplifying or using fake learner language (complex: check), and the story itself was interesting and sweet (compelling: check). So it hit on all cylinders for me. I'm looking forward to more, and I hope they continue developing other languages as well. Another day, another discussion of foreign language instruction on Facebook. This time, an article was posted that described a research study of first language acquisition in small children. The discussion was on the potential relevance and application of the findings to L2 teaching, especially regarding output.
Basically, the study measured brain activation while children (ages 4-6) listened to stories, and they also measured the children's language use, including:
The question of relevance to L2 teaching centered on what that means about the role of output in language learning. Though this is not an L2 study (a point I'll get back to later), for the sake of argument, the above bullet points could be translated to ACTFL-speak as interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational, respectively. Or just input, output, and interaction. If one were to assume the results of the study could be extrapolated to the very different circumstances (e.g. environment, cognitive development) of foreign language classroom instruction, the surface interpretation would probably be that interaction is more effective at impacting language acquisition than straight input (i.e. listening without interaction) and especially output (i.e. speaking practice). I still had some questions after reading the MIT News blurb, so I looked up the original article. A couple thoughts:
After reading the journal article, I would boil the findings down to this: Children who experience more interactive conversation have more brain activation in the speech production center of the brain even when passively listening. Back to what this says for L2 acquisition. Hard to say. It's good to think about how/whether L1 studies can be extrapolated to bilingual or formal L2 situations, but it's also possible that if this effect translates to L2, it wouldn't even be relevant until the learner has enough proficiency in the L2 to be equivalent to a 4-6yo. A baby or toddler version of this study would in some ways be more applicable (but harder to measure). A bilingual version of this study would be fantastic, of course. It's possible that those kids who experience more interactive conversation in any language (e.g. L1) could have more brain activation in the speech production center of the brain when passively listening in any language (e.g. L2), meaning students coming to language classes could already differ in their brain activity in ways that impact their L2 processing. Or maybe the effects don't span across languages, in which case it wouldn't affect L2 processing, and interaction in L2 is what affects L2 processing. Or maybe not. Lots of avenues for research before we can confidently make judgments about L2 learning or instruction. If anything, I interpret this research to support the notion that rather than talking at students or asking them to talk for talking's sake, those interested in supporting language development (whether L1 or L2) should emphasize talking with students. |
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June 2019
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