How were languages first translated?

This is something thats been confusing me for a while, especially since I've gotten into the hobby of studying languages, and trying to learn Japanese.

When I hear people speaking Italian on vacation (I go there for vacation a lot) I sometimes try to guess the meaning of certain words and the grammar- but the thing is this-I often guessed those things wrong. My mom, who is bilingual, told me this. Im not fluent in Italian like other people are. The only reason I knew the real meaning and grammar of some aspects of the Italian language is because I read what language dictionaries say. But how did people who wrote language dictionaries become 100% sure that when and what they were translating (the different grammar of languages and meaning of words) was accurate? How did they know they didnt guess it wrong?Im sure if you asked me to write a language dictionary, even if I tried speaking the language, I would make some errors.

 

I suspect early cross-language dictionaries were inaccurate. They'd generally be written by people who had learned to speak and write both languages directly (maybe even starting at the "point at thing and say word" level) but there would also be shared common languages (Greek, Latin, English) that could act as a translation tools in many cases and for most "major" languages there would be a constant population of bilingual speakers.

Modern linguistic dictionaries will be complied, checked and tested by teams of people, including native speakers of both languages, so they can catch most errors. They're still never going to be 100% perfect but when we're talking about living languages, they vary and change some much over time and distance that 100% perfection is never going to be possible anyway.

They are generally good enough for their purpose, which is to allow someone to become proficient enough in a language to be understood by a native speaker. I think there will be a certain point where you'd need to experience the language in its "natural environment" to pick up specific details and quirks to become truly fluent.

 

cause they were bilingual and knew both languages

 

How could people have been fluent in both languages before languages were deciphered? My dad is somewhat fluent in both Italian and Spanish- but thats because he studied both languages in college-but that is only because some people in the past managed to decipher them.

 

(My bold)

Both Italian & Spanish are Romance languages - that is, based on Latin (along with French, Portuguese, Romanian, etc.) & so, If you know one of these languages well enough, you have a key into the other related languages. There are a regular set of rules to derive changes over time from the Latin original - & so you can work up to other languages, if you're willing to put in the time & effort.

 

languages are rooted in culture. If you don't learn the culture, you cannot properly speak and use the language.

Here's a rather simplified example. The word snow. This is from Wiktionary

From Middle English snow, snaw, from Old English snāw (“snow&#8221, from Proto-Germanic *snaiwaz (“snow&#8221, from Proto-Indo-European *snóygʷʰos (“snow&#8221. Cognate with Scots snaw (“snow&#8221, West Frisian snie (“snow&#8221, Dutch sneeuw (“snow&#8221, German Schnee (“snow&#8221, Danish sne (“snow&#8221, Norwegian snø (“snow&#8221, Swedish snö (“snow&#8221, Icelandic snjór (“snow&#8221, Latin nix (“snow&#8221, Russian снег (sneg), Armenian ձյուն (jyun), Ancient Greek νίφα (nípha), dialectal Albanian nehë (“place where the snow melts&#8221. Also, from the same Indo-European root *sneygʷʰ- (“to snow&#8221 comes English snew.

As you see, each has a different connotation based upon culture. At the same time, Indigenous people of Canada and Alaska - and probably the deep Arctic in general - have more than 100 words for snow. After all, it's where they live and it plays a vital role in their everyday life.

 

I could understand how people managed to translate and learn bilingual skills in closely related languages-for example-my mom isnt fluent in Spanish and didnt even study it but she can understand quite a bit of it-since she moved here from Italy and knows Italian. But how do you think Europeans managed to decipher oriental languages like Japanese or Chinese-or even different language families from Europe? For example, Welsh is a British Isles language (Celtic, just like Gaelic), and without looking up language dictionaries, I dont even think I could guess the words and grammar even if I heard people speaking it, because of how different the words and grammar are.

 

Well, most languages, like the one you are learning, are germanic. this means, due to closeness of the people speaking them, there is a little bit of word, term and grammar 'likeness.' if you were to take for example the french of money, it is something like le monie or something, so you can see a likeness there. then, there is other things, like verbs, nouns and so forth. most nouns sound the same, yes?

If you really want to learn languages quickly, you should get a free download of the samples for them through a site called "Before You Know It." here, you can download free phrases and stuff to learn for your travels. the way this program works is through image association, so, you learn the images of the things you want to learn, then you learn the descriptive words and the joining words.

Learning nouns is easy! these are like names, so they do not change, yet, things in the germanic languages are all loosely associated. it is a sure bet that any country has a germanic langauge, usually english or french or portuguese that you can learn to use. unluckliy for those other countries where gernamic languages are only limited to one, they need to cross reference between, the second language they know into a third language that they have only have a foggy clue about.

So, in your case Sam, you need to learn the images through byki, like words or terms, then phrases, and then learn to modify them. byki also has a oral instruction for you so that you can hear how it is spoken even with an accent!

 

(My bold)

You mean like Marco Polo? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo

He travelled with his father & uncle - who were traders. Apparently Marco already knew four languages - & travelling in trade through Asia, he mixed with people who also knew various languages. They must have had some in common - & Chinese & Japanese have written forms - which would make studying the languages easier (than having to have a speaker with you in order to study).

Failing a common language, the various Bible societies - for instance - worked out a methodology for learning languages cold. They would go in with notebooks & brute-force learn the target language. That's an interesting topic in itself. There are people with a facility for learning languages - just as there are born musicians, artists, mathematicians, etc.

 

Then how come there are no people today who could just pick up on a foreign language without extensive study?

 

(My bold)

I'm sure there are such people - US ship's captains - back in the clipper ship era - were famous for learning trade lingo - enough to get by - wherever they went. That was a while ago, of course.

People with an aptitude for learning languages can likely be found @ the UN translation department, international print outlets, & in various support agencies & suppliers to international movies, press bureaus, etc. The explosion in electronic media & PCs & related means that that particular skill set doesn't get as much attention as it used to - but they haven't gone away.

 

Sorry, but this makes me think so much of this:



Until fairly recently in history, most humans were illiterate. They did not write anything, it was all retained in memory. And also few traveled any distance from home. A 20 mile trip would be a once in a lifetime adventure.

The only exception was traders, and most learned multiple languages. Most specifically there were normally some form of Lingua franca, or common trade language that both speakers might know or be able to work with through an intermediary.

Let's take a mythical traveler from Italy that goes to China. Now he would have already been multi-lingual, probably knowing French, Italian, Latin, and Turkish. And knowing Turkish, he would also be able to at least communicate in Arabic or Pharsi since the languages are closely related (like French, Portuguese or Italian to a Spanish speaker). With this he would actually be able to communicate all the way to India, as Pharsi was one of the court languages and a common trading language in the region stretching all the way to modern Burma.

This means he would only need to find a native in the new region of China that knows Pharsi. And then it is simple learning by immersion. I am ____, you are ____, hold up an item and give the name (rock, thimble, knife) while avoiding the obvious pitfalls (holding up and item and identifying it as "Water", but the learner thinks it is the word for "Cup").

Plus an amazingly large number of languages do have amazingly similar words. "Mother" is remarkably similar in over half the languages used in the world, and has long been used to trace how one language develops from another.

 

I was fluent in two languages no deciphering required...to really, really understand a language you need to immersed in the culture to pick up on the subtle nuances that are untranslatable...

 

Well, there have always been people who lived on the border between two nations, children who grew up migrating from one area to another as their family were traders. There was a lot of travel, even in ancient times, and some families intentionally wanted their children to get an education so they could be in demand as scribes and translators.

Dictionaries and language instruction books have never been a real way to actually learn a language (though they can help).

 

Aren't just different words with the same connotation. Eskimo don't have 100 words for snow.

You can learn a language without native language instruction.

 

I was most fortunate in having learned German at the DOD Language Institute. As past of the schooling, we studied German history, customs, and culture. One lesson would be going shopping. Another on using public transportation. And so on. They even provided art and cooking classes.

My learning Spanish was even more so as I live it daily.

In any case, you truly know you are fluent in a language when you dream in it.

 

excellent...I noticed my entire thought process would shift from one language to another, at times I'd forget which I was using...

 

Look up the term polyglot.

Children born in Singapore often converse in Singlish, a pidgin made up of some six languages

Pearl Buck said she thought her unique and Nobel winning style came from the fact that she knew Chinese and English equally well. She would write her books in Chinese then translate them into English

 

yeah i can understand that...for those of us who speak more than one language we are aware there are words in one language that convey a thought in a way that can't be translated into another...I would assume that those people have a more developed thought/imaging process and if they're able to translate those thoughts would be a very effective communicator...

 

How else can you learn a language fluently without them? Some languages have sound structures so hard to understand even the sounds are difficult to discern because of their structure, like Hindi and Chinese. While a person communicating with Chinese or Indian people on a regular basis could learn enough to get by (like foods, basic nouns and pronouns, greetings, etc) how can they learn the inner intricacies without a dictionary?

For example, in English, the word "colossal" is a non colloquial ( IOW-fancy literary) word to describe something that is large-it means the same thing but has a different context usage from "big". When people were first deciphering exotic languages, how did they figure out if a word was a "fancy word" or not? I think the only way you could do that is if youre young and your brain is sensitive enough to discern the meaning of words.

 

This is all to common in my experience.

In LA you can't miss it. A great many times I have driven by a store or ad that touted "Cerveza - six pack!". Such "Spanglish" is very common in Southern California, so much so that we do not even think about it.

And in Japan in the 1980's one of the biggest slogans was "I Feel Coke".



I had a Japanese lady explain it to me one time. The concept was that Coke is something great, and they were trying to make it a replacement word for "great". So instead of saying "I Feel Great", it was "I Feel Coke".

Another classic case of "Japlish" is "Pocari Sweat". A made up word (like Exxon or Pentium) combined with "Sweat", because it is a sports drink and something you should drink after you have been sweating. But to English speakers, it tends to come off as if it was bottled sweat.



But in Japan you can't miss the English, they literally throw it everywhere in their advertising.

 

It happens every day. It helps to be less than three years old, since changes in brain structure make learning a new language more difficult as one grows older. Illiterate children begin to learn a "foreign" language at birth. Most are fairly proficient in that language long before they learn to read and write.

 

There are always language geniuses who can speak few languages without being schooled and they acted as translators initially when different ethnic groups made first contacts. Recently, a 6-year-old girl was employed as a translator in a refugee camp because she was fluent in three regional languages, which were incomprehensible for Western aid workers.

 

Which country did that happen in?

 

How so? By just listening to people talk it? If that's the case, then I could just watch hours of Korean movies for months and learn the grammar and be fluent. That may be possible for a very young kid, since their brains have an unusual puzzlepiece ability to guess and put together the meaning of words, but it doesnt explain how people in general first learned languages.