Drawing connections between your first language and your target language (the one that you are trying to learn, in this case, English) can be so useful. These connections are drawn by translation.
You are still acquiring vocabulary in your own language but you have already learnt thousands of words and you have a huge mental database of concepts, memories, and life experiences that you have already codified into Spanish. Some of you have learnt Spanish as your second language and you are doing quite good. Think of what helped you learn Spanish.
So when you come across the English word love you don’t need to re-learn the concept With the help of translation, all you need to do is associate the native word—love—with the new word—say, amor—and that's it.
The translation method can also reveal the differences between two languages. The closer the two languages are, the more useful translation will be. Example: Italian-Spanish.
Vado in spiaggia con Mary , perché oggi fa molto caldo (I go to beach with Mary, because today does very hot)
Voy a la playa con Mary, porque hoy hace mucho calor (I go to the beach with Mary, because today does very hot)
This is a literal translation, incorrect of course, but we can use it to reveal both languages are pretty close and share a similar structure. Both are Latin languages.
But what happens when the two languages are very different in origin, like English and Spanish?
I'm going to the beach with Mary because today it is very hot.
(Estoy yendo a la playa con Mary porque hoy es muy caliente!!!!????)
It makes no sense. Translating reveals that they are structurally different, but contain some similarities in terms of vocabulary and word order.
We will have some difficulty in translating from one language into the other. However, we would still benefit from translation in the sense that seeing these differences repeatedly will help us internalize the patterns of the target language.
So what is the right way to translate? You need to fully understand what you want to translate. This takes some time. You don't translate isolated words, but ideas.
Let's translate this simple three-word sentence: "Se quiere ir"
Imagine you don't know the words and you look them up in a dictionary. You will find this:
se- himself, herself
se- know
quiere- want, wish, love, like
ir- go, work, run
So we may conclude that "KNOW WANT GO" is a good tranlation, BUT, is it????????
Nooo!! you need to ask yourself many questions like for example WHO? and fully comprehend what the person wants to say.
SHE WANTS TO GO would be the right translation.
Sooo, having said this, do the following exercises:
Please, don't forget to send it to me but decent pictures that I can read.
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