I would like to study primarily the literal translation . While I think the natural, idiomatic translation is vital and helpful to learn, I find it sometimes problematic to focus on it rather than the literal translation. I also think learning the literal translation would expedite my learning of grammar. So ideally, I would have the translation presented be the literal one. For idioms, the literal translation would appear in brackets and the the idiomatic translation would be provided next to it in parentheses. What can happen if one primarily learns the idiomatic translation is that one might mistakenly confuse the literal translation of a word. While this is fine for the particular idiomatic sentence being studied, the word applied in a different context may be mistranslated or misused and the comprehension of the sentence and the language therefore decreased.
I am learning Spanish (Spain), and here are some examples from that course:
Spanish: "ir de paseo"
Memriseās Current Engilsh Translation: "to go for a walk"
My Ideal translation: āto-go of walk (to go for a walk)ā
In the above, one might mistakenly believe that ādeā translates generally to āforā in English. Now when they try to translate the English sentence āto go for a runā they might come up with "ir de correrā, but that would be incorrect. It is actually āir a correrā.
Spanish: "maƱana no irƩ a la escuela"
Memriseās Current English Translation: "I wonāt go to school tomorrow"
My Ideal Translation*: ātomorrow no-I-will-go-to the schoolā
In the above example, it improves oneās memory and understanding of the grammar of Spanish to primarily learn the literal translation, wherein ātomorrowā is the first word of the sentence as opposed to the last, and it decreases the chance that the translator will make the error of putting āmaƱanaā at the end of the sentence. As well, there are other words in this sentence that could that could be learned as having a meaning that they do not have without the context of this particular sentence.
Spanish: "son las dos en punto"
Memriseās Current English Translation: "itās two oāclock"
My Ideal Translation: āthey-are the two in point (itās two oāclock)ā
In the above example all the literal translations could be learned incorrectly, as in the previous example. It is also very helpful to use the literal translation as it makes it easier to understand the different way time is described in Spanish. A similar example to this would be the translation of āpor la maƱanaā which the natural translation for is āin the morningā but which the literal translation for is āfor the morningā.
Spanish: "ĀæCuĆ”ntos aƱos tienes?"
Memriseās Current English Translation: "How old is he?"
My Ideal Translation: āHow-many years he-has? (How old is he?)ā
If one reads the literal translation of the above, one can likely still comprehend the meaning, and it makes more pellucid the grammar structure. Of course, like the other examples, one can easily learn an incorrect literal translation of any of the words in this Spanish Sentence.
Spanish: "que tenga un buen vuelo"
Memriseās Current English Translation: "have a good flight"
My Ideal Translation*: āthat you-have a good flightā
In the above example one could easily forget to include āqueā when translating the English sentence back to Spanish and possibly misremember which conjugation of ātenerā is needed as Memriseās Current English translation does not include āyouā.
I am not sure if my ideal translation would include in parentheses the natural translation following the literal translation. In example 1, although the words and grammar of the literal translation are slightly different than the natural translation, it is still intelligible (in a rather Yodaesque manner, by the way). Example 5, even with āthatā omitted, is also still intelligible. In these cases it might be redundant to learn the natural translation. One would simply be expected to learn and know that you canāt say the natural version of the English translation literally in Spanish, and if one wanted to find the natural translation, they could refer to an alphabetically ordered vocabulary list of all the words studied (of which there isnāt yet in Memrise).
Perhaps this does not have to be the default however. It is certainly possible this is just my own preference, and I could be in the minority. Yet I would really like, at least, an option in the settings settings to switch whether the primary focus is to learn the literal or the natural translation.
Well,
Cheers!
