Lost in Translation

Je suis en tren d’apprendre le français. J’ai commencé apprendre le langue il y a un an.

I had to take 6 credits of a language in order to fulfill the requirement in order to graduate. I took Spanish in High School, and I liked it, but I wanted to try something else. I decided to take French instead. But I had no idea how much I’d grow to love this language and just the process of learning a language in general.

C’est difficile de temps en temps, mais j’ai travaillé très dur, et ça montre.

I hope to be fluent one day, and am doing everything that I can to make that a reality. I read as much as I can. Sometimes I’ll try my hand at very basic literature, despite it being really challenging most of the time. I’ll listen to music, watch TV, every little bit helps in the long run I suppose.

A few weeks ago I passed my first milestone in that I did some (not all, we aren’t nearly there yet) of a formal paper assignment completely in French. It ended up being one of the most humbling experiences of my life.

I’m an English major, and so I pride myself on having an above average command of language. I can write lengthy detailed sentences, imply meaning through metaphors and similes, use the language in unconscious ways. I don’t have to consciously think about the grammar in what I’m writing, at least not for the 99% of what I write. I just write, and with good preparation and revision, I’m proud of what I write.

In French on the other hand, I’m restricted to the verb tenses that I knew (at that time a whopping 4 compared to the dozens that we use unconsciously in English,) and the handful of vocabulary that I’ve learned. Imagine writing a paper, and every time that you come to a verb, you need to do the mental work required to make sure that it is in the proper tense. Then you start to wonder if you’re even using that verb properly. Just because something is used in that context in English, doesn’t mean that it will be used the same in another language.

This paper more than anything opened my eyes to how translation affects the way we learn and understand a language, and how sometimes it can actually be harmful. Once you reach a certain point, I feel as though it’s important to not think of a language that you are trying to learn as a translation of English (assuming you are a native speaker of English,) but as a living, breathing language all its own, with its own idiosyncrasies, grammar rules, figures of speech, etc. For example, the saying “to bite the bullet” could be literally translated to French probably, but then the metaphorical meaning it had in English is lost. Same as if you were to translate the saying “Ça marche!” to English. Literally it means “it walks,” but in French its more along the lines of “that’s fine.”

The experience also opened my eyes more to the struggles that ELL students or any individual that is attempting to learn a foreign language goes through, the frustration of being able to communicate so well and vividly in your native tongue, and the sudden inability to do that. I would in no way compare my experience to an ELL; the struggles that they face immersed in an English-speaking society are far more severe than me writing a paper in French in the safety of an English-speaking society. There is far less risk for me, and that’s important to acknowledge. I mainly write about this aspect because I hope to one day be an educator. Understanding just how difficult it is to learn a language is crucial in being able to emphathize and help individuals. You begin to realize what we take for granted in terms of

I’m still waiting to see what the grade for it will be, but regardless, I feel really accomplished just because I was able to do it. Grade aside, I know that this was something I worked really hard for, and its opened my eyes to thinking about both French, and English, in a different light. Which is what college is all about right? Learning new things and rethinking what we thought we already knew.

That and trying to survive midterms.