ParaChat Server Software includes 5 language translation files that can be implemented to override the default language - USA English. The 5 available languages are Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian and French. ParaChat's high level of customizability allows for multiple ways to customize buttons, text, and message strings into other languages or words that are not included by default. The same methods may be implemented to simply override the default server language settings with custom options that more adequately represent you, your web site, or your users. ParaChat's flexibility can promote your own creativity.
ParaChat provides the ability to customize most every button, text string, and message string using multiple methods. Which method you implement largely depends on your application of ParaChat Server Software.
Per-room (client-side) Language Translation
1. Translate an individual ParaChat room with a single parameter using an existing language configuration file
2. Translate an individual ParaChat room with multiple parameters to customize only specific buttons, text, and message strings
Server-wide language translation
Translate all ParaChat rooms on a server-wide basis using a single chat.conf parameter.
The parameter that implements a specific language configuration file is "ctrl.Language". Each existing language translation file can be implemented server-wide through the addition of the following parameter to the chat.conf file: ctrl.Language=
For example, to implement ParaChat rooms translated to Spanish, simply add ctrl.Language=spanish.conf to the chat.conf file, and save your edit. When added to the chat.conf file, the "ctrl.Language=
Custom language translation
ParaChat Server Software permits the creation of your own configuration file to supplement the language configuration files that are already included with your ParaChat Server by default. This functionality enables the server administrator to add a custom language configuration file, which is a simple text file that is utilized by the chat client. When implemented, a language configuration file will override the chat server default client configuration.
Within the "conf" directory of your ParaChat Server (.../ParaChat/ParaChat570/httpd/pchat/classes/conf/),
* spanish.conf
* portuguese.conf
* german.conf
* italian.conf
* french.conf
For example, you may create your own language configuration file that utilizes the Danish language, since this translation is not included with ParaChat Server. Save a copy of an existing
A. chat.conf parameter: ctrl.Language=danish.conf
B. HTML parameter:
Please note that you may also edit and modify a value within any existing
If a server administrator decides to create a complete
source: www.parachat.com
Friday, September 26, 2008
Language Translation Methods
Labels: language method
Posted by agus at 6:46 AM 0 comments
The Translator's Blues
I work at a large international organization translating speeches from French, Spanish, and Russian. When a rumor began spreading in my office that our jobs were to be "supplemented" by computer translation software, we mostly laughed it off.
Anybody who's played around with translation software knows how bad the technology can be. Everyone in my office knows the hoary classic in which "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," translated into Russian and back, comes out "The vodka is good, but the steak is lousy." We all knew, or thought we knew, that computer translation—also known as machine translation, or MT—could never replace a human translator, with his vast cultural and linguistic experience, his ear for nuance, and his superior multilingual education. We all slept very well in the certainty of our indispensability.
Still, machine translation has been in development for almost 60 years, since it was conceived as an offshoot of the cryptographic technology developed during World War II. Grandiose prophecies of its perfectibility have been made ever since. Had MT evolved while I hadn't been paying attention? Had it really improved to the extent that it could be a viable alternative to the human touch? In my off hours, I did a little research.
source : www.slate.com/id/2133922/
Labels: Machine translation
Posted by agus at 6:20 AM 0 comments
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Was the Bible Written in 'Street Language'?
One often hears from proponents of "dynamic equivalence" that this method of representing the Biblical text is appropriate because the New Testament was written in the ordinary language of the common people of its day. Therefore it is a matter of faithfulness to the text to represent it in a correspondingly colloquial style. Some have gone so far as to call the language of the New Testament "street language." In a recent book Mark Strauss (1) states the argument thus:
This idea of rendering God's Word into the language of the people has its primary precedent in the Bible itself. It was once believed that the language of the New Testament was a unique kind of Hebraic Greek or even a "Holy Ghost language" created especially for biblical revelation. Study of the Egyptian papyri over the past one hundred years has demonstrated conclusively that New Testament Greek is actually an example of Koine (or "common") Greek, the everyday language of the people that spread throughout the Mediterranean region following the conquests of Alexander the Great (late fourth century B.C.). There is nothing archaic, solemn or mystical about the kind of language used by the inspired authors of the New Testament. It is the Greek of the street. This says a great deal about the nature of God's revelation. Just as God took on the form of common humanity when he revealed himself as the living Word, so his written Word was revealed in language that the person on the street could understand. This fact alone should convince us to translate Scripture into contemporary, idiomatic English—not an imitation English that artificially mimics patterns and structures of either Greek or Hebrew.
In a footnote here, Strauss refers the reader to the work of the German scholar Adolf Deissmann (1866-1937), who at the end of the nineteenth century set out to demonstrate the "popular" character of New Testament Greek by pointing to the apparently similar language found in recently discovered papyrus fragments of tax receipts, wills, personal letters, and other humble "non-literary" documents of the Hellenistic era. These documents were taken to be representative of the ordinary idiomatic language of Greek-speaking people of the first century. (2) Deissmann's analysis of these materials first appeared in his Bibelstudien, published in 1895. This was soon followed by Neue Bibelstudien (1897). These two works were combined and translated into English as Bible Studies (1901). Subsequent works of Deissmann which appeared in English were New Light on the New Testament (1907), The Philology of the Greek Bible (1908), and Light from the Ancient East (1910). In these works, Deissmann often seemed to deny that there was anything literary or especially Jewish about the language of the New Testament. His purpose, as he put it, was "to emphasize the popular and non-literary element in the language of the apostles and to protest against the dogmatic isolation of New Testament philology." (3) Nevertheless, as we shall see, Deissmann did not carry this emphasis so far as to maintain that the language of the New Testament was entirely of a popular nature.
Deissmann's views were embraced by many scholars at the time, and he is often regarded as the father of a 'revolution' in New Testament philology. He did in fact demonstrate that the Greek of the New Testament belonged for the most part to the Hellenistic or Koine Greek of the time, and he pointed to many instructive lexical parallels in the non-literary papyri. But it is important to note that, like Deissmann himself in his later and less polemical writings, scholars who accepted his conclusions acknowledged that the style of the New Testament was not altogether 'popular,' chiefly on account of its many Hebraisms. David Alan Black explains:
One of the influences which gives to the Greek of the New Testament a distinct complexion is ... the presence of Semitisms — characteristic features of a Semitic language occurring in another language. No one who knows Hebrew or another Semitic language can fail to be impressed by the Semitic tone and flavor of the New Testament and by its obvious adoption of Semitic modes of speech. This applies to such fundamental matters as sentence structure and the meaning of words. For example ... the expression "he opened his mouth" in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:2) cannot be interpreted solely as Greek, but must also be read in light of Semitic language patterns. When the Semitic background is understood, the phrase ... indicates the beginning of some profound or solemn pronouncement, as in NEB's "he began to address them." Another example is the common expression apokritheis eipen "answering he said." No Greek of any period, left to himself, would say or write apokritheis eipen any more than you or I would say, "He answered and said," unless we were seeking to imitate biblical language. These are but two indications that the New Testament cannot be interpreted solely in terms of Greek grammar, but must also be studied in terms of its Semitic background. (4)
This foreign element in the language was largely due to the fact that the authors were steeped in the language of the Hebrew Old Testament, either through direct acquaintance with the Hebrew or through their familiarity with the Septuagint, which for the most part reproduces Hebrew idioms quite literally. (5)
The influence of the Septuagint went far beyond mere idioms or stylistic features. It gave special meanings to a number of key words in the Greek New Testament. This fact is often mentioned in introductory textbooks of biblical hermeneutics, because it has some important consequences. In their Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1993) authors William Klein, Craig Blomberg, and Robert Hubbard write:
One aspect of word studies brings the two testaments together. Due to the demise of Hebrew as a spoken language, in the second century B.C. the Jewish community in Alexandria produced the Septuagint [LXX]. Thereafter, the Jews living in the Roman world used the LXX translation. In fact, it became the Bible of most of the early Christians during the writing of the New Testament. As a result of their experience of the Old Testament through this Greek translation, the New Testament writers used many Greek words with meanings not normally found in the everyday use of the same terms, much like Christians today might use terms like "fellowship" or "redemption" with meanings not normally understood by secular people. Religious and theological ideas developed in the Old Testament had become attached to the words, adding new nuances to their meanings. (p. 195, emphasis added.)
The authors go on to explain that in the New Testament the word kyrios "Lord" as applied to Jesus Christ carries "strong connotations of deity," because this word is used in the Septuagint so often as a way of representing the divine name "Yahweh" (p. 195). They also point out that when Paul uses the word prototokos in reference to Christ (Colossians 1:15, 18) he does not intend by it the ordinary meaning of this Greek word ("firstborn"), but the theologically enriched meaning it acquired in the Septuagint, as a Messianic title connoting superior status: "Clearly, the Septuagint usage of the word 'firstborn' has influenced Paul's choice of this messianic title to show Christ's primacy over both creation and those who will experience resurrection from the dead" (p. 196). Students who fail to recognize that Greek words acquired special religious meanings among Jews and Christians will not perceive the true sense of these words in the New Testament. (6)
Deissmann himself acknowledged the presence of many Hebraisms in the New Testament. In his article "Hellenistic Greek" in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia (1909) he said of the Synoptic Gospels, "Here is a Greek which is full of Semitisms." But what he wished to maintain was that this was mostly "translation-Greek," not a dialect ordinarily spoken by the writers, but "artificial and existent only on paper," and that its presence in the New Testament is to be explained by the hypothesis that many portions of it are translated from Aramaic. And yielding still more ground, he admitted that in addition to these instances of "translation-Greek," there were also "new words and new meanings for words" in the New Testament, and a number of Hebraisms which he could only explain as "a coloring of certain books, just as sermons and religious papers of the present are colored with Biblical terminology." Deissmann put it this way in his Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche article:
It must not be denied that beside the occasional Semitisms [i.e. the Semitisms which are due to literal translations of the Hebrew and Aramaic sources] there are also some Semitisms that became usual. Especially in places where the LXX was common, through hearing and reading, some of the originally occasional Hebraisms gradually became usual ones. Johannes Weiss therefore speaks correctly of a 'staining' of the religious language by certain LXX terms. But this concerns mostly lexical Semitisms, just as the 'language of Canaan' of our German sermons and Sunday papers is mainly composed of 'biblical' words which have vanished from colloquial language but have remained familiar to the reader of the Bible. (7)
What could Deissmann really claim to have proven, after these important concessions? Merely that the New Testament has somewhat fewer Hebraisms than was formerly thought, and that we will do well to pay attention to all available evidence, including the most ordinary kinds of documents from the first century, in our analysis of words and expressions of the New Testament. Deissmann himself did not maintain that the New Testament is written entirely in a vernacular idiom. On the contrary, he compares the language of the New Testament to the style of modern religious authors who use words and expressions "which have vanished from colloquial language but have remained familiar to the reader of the Bible." Here one can see clearly enough that Deissmann's more cautious statements about the language of the New Testament are not in line with the views expressed by Strauss and other popular authors.
Yet it is true that Deissman was not in the habit of using nuanced terms, and he seems to have had little appreciation for literary features or linguistic nuances in general. For the most part his writings deal with the question of style in a very simplistic and dichotomizing fashion. He seems to recognize only two categories or levels of language in the Hellenistic world — the Atticizing literature (represented by Polybius and other writers) and the vulgar non-literary writing (represented by the non-literary papyri). If anything does not strictly conform to the grammatical and stylistic standards of the Atticizing purists of the age he thinks he is justified in calling it "the language of the people." He was too reluctant to acknowledge that just as there was an Atticizing literary style among many Pagan authors, there was also among Jews and Christians a Hebraizing style of writing, and that is what we have in the New Testament.
We see the same dichotomizing tendency when Deissmann employs his famous distinction between "letters" (informal and private correspondence) and "epistles" (formal compositions intended for public reading). He does not acknowledge the importance of recognizing gradations, but portrays everything in black and white. After pointing to the personal touches in Paul's writings he declares that "St. Paul was not a writer of epistles but of letters," (8) and thus he lumps the whole Pauline corpus in with the inarticulate personal letters of the non-literary papyri. He does not even make an exception for the Epistle to the Romans. Deissmann's crude literary analysis (if we can call it that) was at first taken seriously by some scholars, but it could not stand up to scrutiny. Nowadays it is commonly recognized that Deissmann's analysis was reductionistic and forced. As David E. Aune says,
Deissmann's influential distinction between letters and epistles has obscured rather than clarified the spectrum of possibilities that separated the short personal letter from the literary letters of antiquity. There are, for example, no really private letters among Paul's authentic letters. Nor was Deissmann sensitive to stylistic differences between papyrus letters and Pauline letters. The letters of Paul and Seneca, for instance, exhibit a dialogical style quite different from anything found in papyrus letters. (9)
The same kind of unhelpful and obviously tendentious analysis may also be seen in Deissmann's general treatment of the apostle Paul and of the early church in his works. He liked to portray Paul as an unlettered "man of the people" and the early church as an exclusively "proletarian" religious movement, and to some extent his linguistic arguments depend upon this false picture of the social status of people in the early church. He took no account of the many indications in the New Testament that Paul and most of the early Christians were not from the lowest stratum of society, but were what we would call middle-class. Again, he sets up a false dichotomy (in this case that of "rich vs. poor") which only obscures the truth of the matter. (10)
What has been said concerning Deissmann above is also true of some of the scholars who followed him. There was a tendency to make extravagant claims for the new evidence and for Deissmann's analysis of it. In essays we find scholars emphatically declaring that the New Testament is written in "the language of colloquial speech," just as Strauss does in the essay quoted above, but when we read on in the same essays we find important concessions and qualifications. One reason for the lack of properly nuanced treatments of this subject is the lack of a conventional terminology for different levels or types of style. For instance, we read in Funk's English translation of Blass and Debrunner's Greek Grammar of the New Testament the following description of Paul's style: "Paul exhibits a good, sometimes even elegant, style of vulgar Greek" (Introduction § 3). Here the word "vulgar" is being used in contrast to the "Atticized" style of some literary works of the age, and we understand that the authors are using the word in a relative sense, but it causes us to wonder what sort of style can be called both elegant and vulgar. Obviously words such as "vulgar" and "popular" are being used in some careless ways by scholars who are trying to deal briefly with the subject of dialects and styles without an adequate terminology, and perhaps with no real awareness of the need for a taxonomy of styles. (11) One also gets the impression that some otherwise competent grammarians and linguists are ill-equipped to discuss the subject of style. A really helpful analysis of style requires more than the technical science of a linguist, it requires the tact of a literary critic.
James Hope Moulton was a British scholar who enthusiastically embraced Deissmann's view of the language of the New Testament, and like Deissmann he sometimes expressed himself on this subject in a rather polemical and one-sided way, but also like Deissmann he compared the style of some portions of the Greek New Testament to the archaic 'Biblical English' style of older English versions like the King James Version and the English Revised Version:
Tied down by their instructions not to forsake the diction of their predecessors (except where it involved complete obscurity), and precluded from indulging in paraphrase, the Revisers often used the deliberate archaism proper to literature as distinguished from ordinary educated speech. This is very much what Luke does when he employs the literary dialect, to the very moderate extent he allows himself. His imitations of the Septuagint Greek will answer to the over-literal translations which are sometimes found in the Revised Version, as in its predecessors. This element is of course much more considerably found in the writings of Mark and in the Apocalypse, where the author was at home in a Semitic speech ... (12)
A.T. Robertson was an enthusiastic promoter of Deissmann's views in America, but he was careful to state his misgivings about the tendency of some followers of Deissmann to unduly downplay the Hebraisms in the New Testament. In his article "Language of the New Testament," which appeared in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), Robertson begins with an enthusiastic account of Deissmann's conclusions, but half-way through the article he adds this note of caution:
Milligan (Greek Papyri, xxx) admits on the part of Moulton "an overtendency to minimize" the "presence of undoubted Hebraisms, both in language and grammar." That is true, and is due to his strong reaction against the old theory of so many Hebraisms. The Semiticisms (Hebraisms and Aramaisms) are very natural results of the fact that the vernacular koine was used by Jews who read the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint translation, and who also spoke Aramaic as their native tongue ... there is a certain dignity and elevation of style so characteristic of the Hebrew Old Testament that reappears in the New Testament ... Sweete (Apocalypse of St. John, cxx) laments the tendency to depreciate unduly the presence of Hebraisms in the New Testament. The pendulum may have swung too far away from the truth.
Robertson's observation that in connection with these Hebraisms there is "a certain dignity and elevation of style so characteristic of the Hebrew Old Testament that reappears in the New Testament" especially interests us here. The same opinion is expressed by the German scholar Lars Rydbeck in his carefully nuanced treatment of the subject. Rydbeck writes, "I do not see any really vulgar characteristics in the language of the New Testament (apart from very special things in the Apocalypse). To draw connections between the language of the really vulgar papyri and the grammatically correct Greek of the New Testament may be difficult." And in a note he adds,
This characteristic [i.e. the grammatical correctness of the NT] should by no means deny the Semitic coloring in the phraseology of the New Testament ... Linguistic phenomena of Semitic origin which are usually recorded in the syntax part of the NT grammars never touch the fundamental grammatical structure of Greek ... These phenomena, which originated by directly reflecting the Semitic, act as phrases, and that is how we actually conceive of them. Because of their regular abundance in certain parts of the New Testament they exercise a stylistic dominance and let the normal and grammatically correct Greek move into the background. This Old Testament colored phraseology gives the New Testament style its own pathos and solemnity. (13)
This is a properly nuanced view of the general linguistic level of the New Testament, and of the origin and stylistic effect of its Semitisms. A style which consciously imitated the Hebraistic Greek of the Septuagint would not be esteemed by the secular literary critics of the time, who sought to preserve the "classic" Greek of the fourth century B.C., but it is no less literary on that account. The more respectable Greek authors of the time cultivated a style which harked back to the old Classical or Attic usages of the golden age of Greek literature. Their Attic style deliberately resonates with the language of the great dramatists and philosophers of Athens. But the apostles do the same thing, only with the difference that their language resonates with the Prophets of Israel. The presence of these Hebraisms, then, is no reason to call the language of the New Testament "non-literary." On the contrary, this is one of the features which give to it a literary character. Further on in his article, and quite aside from the matter of Hebraisms, Robertson takes up the subject of literary style again:
Deissmann is disposed to deny any literary quality to the New Testament books save the Epistle to the Hebrews ... One feels that this is an extreme position and cannot be justified by the facts ... to deny literary quality to Luke and Paul is to give a narrow meaning to the word 'literary' and to be the victim of a theory ... Men of culture differ in their conversation from illiterate men and more nearly approximate literary style. It is just in Luke, Paul, and the author of Hebrews that we discover the literary flavor of men of ability and of culture, though free from artificiality and pedantry.
Even by the standards of the Attic purists, then, the New Testament is not without literary qualities. This estimate of the New Testament is shared by most New Testament scholars, though all are quick to point out the difference between the simple style of Mark and the elegance of Luke. (14) Regarding Paul, Stephen Neill has written: (15)
There is an immense difference between the vigor and general correctness of the New Testament writers, and the halting, broken jargon of so many writers of the papyri. This is literature. T.R. Glover, who had an exceptionally wide knowledge of the literature of the time, both Greek and Latin, once remarked to me that Paul is obviously the greatest writer of the first and second centuries after Christ, an opinion which was shared by the most notable classical scholar of this century, von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf ... There is another point at which a warning has to be uttered against placing more weight than they will bear on these new discoveries. What the writers of the New Testament wrote was in the main the Greek of their own time; but it was Greek with a difference. It had the background of a long Jewish tradition ...
Finally, it should be observed that Deissmann's opinions pertained only to the Greek Bible. The idea that the Hebrew Old Testament is written in "street language" cannot be maintained with any semblance of plausibility. All scholars recognize that the Hebrew of the Old Testament is largely poetic and can only be described as literary language. (16) Anything which may be said concerning the Greek of the New Testament has no application to the Hebrew of the Old Testament.
All of this should be enough to show how inadequate and misleading it is for Strauss to state that the New Testament is simply "the Greek of the street." Even less tenable is his inference from this, that our translations of the Bible (both in the Old and New Testaments) should on this account studiously avoid "solemn" (i.e. formal) diction or English that "mimics patterns and structures" of the original languages. The truth of the matter is, the language of the New Testament does deliberately "mimic" the language of the Hebrew Bible in many places, and this is only one of the features of this Greek that give to it the formal literary quality noticed by Robertson and many other Greek scholars. If we are to take this style for our precedent, we will go in the opposite direction from what Strauss recommends. It is evident that Strauss's sweeping characterization is a reflection of the same polemical and unbalanced view of the language of the New Testament that Deissmann's earlier writings encouraged, but which was never accepted by most scholars, including Deissmann himself.
It must be recognized that, whatever the significance and usefulness of the secular papyri material may be, the New Testament was clearly not written in the colloquial language of a Gentile market-place. It was written by men steeped in the language and imagery of the Hebrew Bible. It was written for an audience which had already been gathered into churches, instructed in the fundamentals of the Christian faith, capable of recognizing distinctly Christian usages, and able to perceive numerous subtle allusions to the contents of the Old Testament. A common street-corner audience is not even in view, and the language, style, and subject-matter are not at all adapted to such an audience. Moreover, the writings of the New Testament certainly do have literary characteristics. They deal with exalted themes in suitably formal style.
This is not to say that the New Testament is written in such refined literary language or in such a Jewish patois that ordinary Greek-speaking people would have found it very difficult to follow. It is not as if its original readers would struggle through it with such difficulty as a modern schoolboy might experience in the reading of Shakespeare's plays. The Greek of the New Testament is fundamentally the koine Greek of its time, not the Classical Greek of a bygone era. But it is not merely the common language of its era, and it does not represent the lowest and simplest form of the koine. It is the common language ennobled by an infusion of Jewish and Christian meanings for many words, and by many borrowings from the language of the Old Testament, chiefly from the Septuagint version. In short, it is 'Biblical' Greek. If we were to look for an example of an equivalent style in English, we would find it not on the street, but in religious writings, such as sermon collections, in which the style of the writer is much influenced by the language of traditional English Bibles, and in which words are often used in technical senses established by theological tradition.
The quotations below demonstrate how widespread among scholars is the recognition that the language of the New Testament is not merely the secular and popular Koine Greek of the Hellenistic era, but that it does indeed possess such a specialized character that it may appropriately be called Biblical Greek.
source:http://www.bible-researcher.com/language-koine.html
Labels: setrategies translation
Posted by agus at 7:01 AM 1 comments
Against the Theory of 'Dynamic Equivalence'
Among Bible scholars there is a school which is always inquiring into the genres or rhetorical forms of speech represented in any given passage of the Bible, and also the social settings which are supposed to be connected with these forms. This approach is called form criticism, and it was developed largely by German scholars in the early twentieth century. Among these scholars, whether they be German or English-speaking, one constantly hears German phrases. The social setting is called the Sitz im Leben. The "oracle of salvation" introduced by "Fear not" is the Heilszusage, and so on. When I was in the seminary learning about all this, I at first wondered why it should be necessary to use these German words; but then I learned that the German words are used because they are recognized as technical terms, and the English equivalents are not. Students were expected to learn the terminology of the field, just as in any other field of study.
Likewise, there were many Greek and Hebrew words to be learned. These were the "technical terms" of the Bible itself. The professors often warned us students about the important semantic differences between various Greek and Hebrew words and their closest English equivalents. The Hebrew word torah, for instance, was not really equivalent to the Greek nomos or the English law, and the Hebrew nephesh did not quite mean soul, etc. Anyone who has been to a theological school knows very well how often points like this are emphasized by scholars.
I mention this at the beginning of this essay on Bible translation because I want the reader who has not been exposed to this kind of study to know how much is made of words and their precise usage in theological schools. Ministers in training cannot go through three years of seminary without being impressed with the undeniable differences between Hebrew, Greek, and English, and with the delicate problems of translating many key words of the Bible into our language. It is not a simple and easy task. Indeed, it is not fully possible, and that is why ministers are taught the biblical languages in seminary. And in addition to this, in the more advanced studies, one must also learn a whole set of technical terms in German. The student in this case might well ask why these German terms are adopted rather than translated, but again, the scholarly culture of linguistic precision is such that the question would seem almost foolish. These are technical terms, and if they are adopted from another language, so much the better, because then they will not be confused with informal expressions used in our everyday language.
It is easy to get carried away with fine distinctions. Scholars are often accused of losing their common sense in a multitude of hair-splitting distinctions, and of using foreign words and difficult terminology merely to impress the unlearned. In some cases this undoubtedly happens. We also must be on guard against the elitist attitude taken by many in the Roman Catholic tradition, which in its extreme form caused the Roman Catholic Church to oppose the translation of the Bible into English in the first place. But I want to suggest here that those who are not used to careful study of the Bible may easily fall into an opposite error: the error of despising many distinctions which really do make an important difference in our understanding of the Bible, despising the role of trained teachers in the Church, and generally failing to recognize the bad effects that arise from vague and loose words on any important subject. The Bible is a very important book, and it deserves our utmost care. This is all the more true when we consider that the later portions of Scripture often dwell upon linguistic details in the earlier books. And if we believe that every word of the Bible is inspired by God, how can we be careless of these words?
I also mention form criticism, with its emphasis on the text's situation in life, for another reason: I believe that a translation of the Bible must take account of the "sociological setting" in which the Bible came to be, and in which it belongs: namely, the Church of Jesus Christ. The translator must remember that this book was given to the Church and it belongs to her. And this fact, this Sitz im Leben of the Bible as a whole, is not without some consequences for our methods of translation.
source : http://www.bible-researcher.com/dynamic-equivalence.html
Labels: translation theory
Posted by agus at 6:58 AM 0 comments
Saturday, August 30, 2008
The Silent Way
Procedures
This method begins by using a set of colored rods and verbal commands in order to achieve the following:
To avoid the use of the vernacular. To create simple linguistic situations that remain under the complete control of the teacher To pass on to the learners the responsibility for the utterances of the descriptions of the objects shown or the actions performed. To let the teacher concentrate on what the students say and how they are saying it, drawing their attention to the differences in pronunciation and the flow of words. To generate a serious game-like situation in which the rules are implicitly agreed upon by giving meaning to the gestures of the teacher and his mime. To permit almost from the start a switch from the lone voice of the teacher using the foreign language to a number of voices using it. This introduces components of pitch, timbre and intensity that will constantly reduce the impact of one voice and hence reduce imitation and encourage personal production of one's own brand of the sounds.
To provide the support of perception and action to the intellectual guess of what the noises mean, thus bring in the arsenal of the usual criteria of experience already developed and automatic in one's use of the mother tongue. To provide a duration of spontaneous speech upon which the teacher and the students can work to obtain a similarity of melody to the one heard, thus providing melodic integrative schemata from the start.
Materials
The complete set of materials utilized as the language learning progresses include:
A set of colored wooden rods A set of wall charts containing words of a "functional" vocabulary and some additional ones; a pointer for use with the charts in Visual Dictation A color coded phonic chart(s) Tapes or discs, as required; films Drawings and pictures, and a set of accompanying worksheets Transparencies, three texts, a Book of Stories, worksheets
source: http://coe.sdsu.edu/people/jmora/almmethods.htm#Direct
Labels: Translation Method
Posted by agus at 2:48 AM 0 comments
Community Language Learning
This methodology is not based on the usual methods by which languages are taught. Rather the approach is patterned upon counseling techniques and adapted to the peculiar anxiety and threat as well as the personal and language problems a person encounters in the learning of foreign languages. Consequently, the learner is not thought of as a student but as a client. The native instructors of the language are not considered teachers but, rather are trained in counseling skills adapted to their roles as language counselors.
The language-counseling relationship begins with the client's linguistic confusion and conflict. The aim of the language counselor's skill is first to communicate an empathy for the client's threatened inadequate state and to aid him linguistically. Then slowly the teacher-counselor strives to enable him to arrive at his own increasingly independent language adequacy. This process is furthered by the language counselor's ability to establish a warm, understanding, and accepting relationship, thus becoming an "other-language self" for the client. The process involves five stages of adaptation:
STAGE 1
The client is completely dependent on the language counselor.
1. First, he expresses only to the counselor and in English what he wishes to say to the group. Each group member overhears this English exchange but no other members of the group are involved in the interaction.
2. The counselor then reflects these ideas back to the client in the foreign language in a warm, accepting tone, in simple language in phrases of five or six words.
3. The client turns to the group and presents his ideas in the foreign language. He has the counselor's aid if he mispronounces or hesitates on a word or phrase. This is the client's maximum security stage.
STAGE 2
1. Same as above.
2. The client turns and begins to speak the foreign language directly to the group.
3. The counselor aids only as the client hesitates or turns for help. These small independent steps are signs of positive confidence and hope.
STAGE 3
1. The client speaks directly to the group in the foreign language. This presumes that the group has now acquired the ability to understand his simple phrases.
2. Same as 3 above. This presumes the client's greater confidence, independence, and proportionate insight into the relationship of phrases, grammar, and ideas. Translation is given only when a group member desires it.
STAGE 4
1. The client is now speaking freely and complexly in the foreign language. Presumes group's understanding.
2. The counselor directly intervenes in grammatical error, mispronunciation, or where aid in complex expression is needed. The client is sufficiently secure to take correction.
STAGE 5
1. Same as stage 4.
2. The counselor intervenes not only to offer correction but to add idioms and more elegant constructions.
3. At this stage the client can become counselor to the group in stages 1, 2, and 3.
sourcce: http://coe.sdsu.edu/people/jmora/almmethods.htm#Direct
Labels: Translation Method
Posted by agus at 2:46 AM 0 comments
The Audiolingual Method
his method is based on the principles of behavior psychology. It adapted many of the principles and procedures of the Direct Method, in part as a reaction to the lack of speaking skills of the Reading Approach.
New material is presented in the form of a dialogue. Based on the principle that language learning is habit formation, the method fosters dependence on mimicry, memorization of set phrases and over-learning. Structures are sequenced and taught one at a time. Structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills. Little or no grammatical explanations are provided; grammar is taught inductively. Skills are sequenced: Listening, speaking, reading and writing are developed in order. Vocabulary is strictly limited and learned in context. Teaching points are determined by contrastive analysis between L1 and L2. There is abundant use of language laboratories, tapes and visual aids. There is an extended pre-reading period at the beginning of the course. Great importance is given to precise native-like pronunciation. Use of the mother tongue by the teacher is permitted, but discouraged among and by the students. Successful responses are reinforced; great care is taken to prevent learner errors. There is a tendency to focus on manipulation of the target language and to disregard content and meaning.
Hints for Using Audio-lingual Drills in L2 Teaching
1. The teacher must be careful to insure that all of the utterances which students will make are actually within the practiced pattern. For example, the use of the AUX verb have should not suddenly switch to have as a main verb.
2. Drills should be conducted as rapidly as possibly so as to insure automaticity and to establish a system.
3. Ignore all but gross errors of pronunciation when drilling for grammar practice.
4. Use of shortcuts to keep the pace o drills at a maximum. Use hand motions, signal cards, notes, etc. to cue response. You are a choir director.
5. Use normal English stress, intonation, and juncture patterns conscientiously.
6. Drill material should always be meaningful. If the content words are not known, teach their meanings.
7. Intersperse short periods of drill (about 10 minutes) with very brief alternative activities to avoid fatigue and boredom.
8. Introduce the drill in this way:
a. Focus (by writing on the board, for example)
b. Exemplify (by speaking model sentences)
c. Explain (if a simple grammatical explanation is needed)
d. Drill
9. Don’t stand in one place; move about the room standing next to as many different students as possible to spot check their production. Thus you will know who to give more practice to during individual drilling.
10. Use the "backward buildup" technique for long and/or difficult patterns.
--tomorrow
--in the cafeteria tomorrow
--will be eating in the cafeteria tomorrow
--Those boys will be eating in the cafeteria tomorrow.
11. Arrange to present drills in the order of increasing complexity of student response. The question is: How much internal organization or decision making must the student do in order to make a response in this drill. Thus: imitation first, single-slot substitution next, then free response last.
source : http://coe.sdsu.edu/people/jmora/almmethods.htm#Direct
Labels: translation methode
Posted by agus at 2:43 AM 0 comments