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alexpgpI finished the item due this morning with about 15 minutes to spare and was soon greeted by the arrival of a 3700-source-word French-to-English job.
Fortunately, the subject is aerospace, so things are looking up. I am not so sure of myself yet that I allow sentences to pass under my fingertips all that often without looking something up (a habit I fell into when starting out in Russian-to-English translation), but the number of sentences that cause me to sit for several minutes in an attempt to nail the meaning is dropping, methinks.
Anyway, I've translated 2,400 of those source words, and am leaving the rest for tomorrow.
* * *
I got hold of a book by Ramón Campayo with the rather doubtful title of Aprende un Idioma en 7 Dias (Learn a Language in 7 Days). As suggested by the title, the book was written in Spanish, which I am far from expert in, but between what I do know, a little skill in recognizing cognates, and the context of the book, my comprehension is not all that bad. Still, the going is slow.
As I understand the premise of the book, the key behind learning a foreign language is to address the issues of vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar, in that order. Naturally, a large and important part of the learning process relies on Campayo's own memorization system (Campayo is well-known as a memorization expert), the principles of which do not seem altogether so different from the fine general principles one can pick up from Harry Lorayne's writings.
Somewhere short of a third of the way through the book, the text presents a series of tables of essential vocabulary. Skipping ahead to about halfway through the book, I see the subject of grammar will be addressed.
I have my strong doubts as to whether one can actually learn a language in a week, but am reminded of something a colleague once said to me about a related subject: "What if he's wrong, and it takes twice as long?" Too, I suppose one can allow quite a bit of leeway for what is meant, exactly, by "learn." Although there's quite a bit of the book I haven't read yet, the part I have gone through looks interesting (though I haven't had the time to work through the text in detail).
Cheers...
Fortunately, the subject is aerospace, so things are looking up. I am not so sure of myself yet that I allow sentences to pass under my fingertips all that often without looking something up (a habit I fell into when starting out in Russian-to-English translation), but the number of sentences that cause me to sit for several minutes in an attempt to nail the meaning is dropping, methinks.
Anyway, I've translated 2,400 of those source words, and am leaving the rest for tomorrow.
I got hold of a book by Ramón Campayo with the rather doubtful title of Aprende un Idioma en 7 Dias (Learn a Language in 7 Days). As suggested by the title, the book was written in Spanish, which I am far from expert in, but between what I do know, a little skill in recognizing cognates, and the context of the book, my comprehension is not all that bad. Still, the going is slow.
As I understand the premise of the book, the key behind learning a foreign language is to address the issues of vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar, in that order. Naturally, a large and important part of the learning process relies on Campayo's own memorization system (Campayo is well-known as a memorization expert), the principles of which do not seem altogether so different from the fine general principles one can pick up from Harry Lorayne's writings.
Somewhere short of a third of the way through the book, the text presents a series of tables of essential vocabulary. Skipping ahead to about halfway through the book, I see the subject of grammar will be addressed.
I have my strong doubts as to whether one can actually learn a language in a week, but am reminded of something a colleague once said to me about a related subject: "What if he's wrong, and it takes twice as long?" Too, I suppose one can allow quite a bit of leeway for what is meant, exactly, by "learn." Although there's quite a bit of the book I haven't read yet, the part I have gone through looks interesting (though I haven't had the time to work through the text in detail).
Cheers...
