At the end of my first semester at my new university, I was giving the final exam for a lecture class in American Culture. Every week for one year, the students had listened to my 90-minute lecture, entirely in English, on various topics in American music, film and art. They had read articles, taken notes and written homework every week entirely in English.
Because the class was large, for the final exam, another professor from another department came to help distribute answer sheets, check student IDs and make sure no one cheated. After we got everything handed out, I reminded students, in English, to write their names and student numbers on the answer sheet and encouraged them to think carefully about the questions and write a lot on their answers. All set, I thought! "Good luck!" I said.
But, when I finished all this, the other professor from another department who had come to help me spoke up in a loud voice, translating everything I had just said into Japanese. I was a little surprised and had to suppress a laugh. A couple of students looked at me wrinkling their faces in amusement at this translation, which they didn't need. If they could understand English lectures on postmodern art, free jazz and silent film comedy, they could surely understand a few basic instructions about exam procedures. That teacher was a firm practitioner of the translation method. It is a common attitude in Japan.
Many years ago, I had a private student in Tokyo that I met once a week. He was very well off, in his mid-30s, and wanted to speak English. He paid me very well, but he made almost no progress. Class was slow and painful. Every time I asked him a question, he took a long, long time to answer. Finally, I asked him if he was thinking in Japanese and then translating. He said, "Of course!" as if I was stupid to even ask. "Well, why do you do that? Why don't you just think in English?" I asked. He replied, after another long, slow, translating silence, "If I start to think in English, I'll stop being Japanese!"
I suppose he had a point, because to some degree thinking in another language does affect you and change your point of view. But, that should be considered a positive thing, an addition to our understanding, not a subtraction. He wanted to construct grammatically correct sentences by translating, but did not want English to infect his inner beliefs and real thoughts. I doubt he ever learned English. He wanted to know "about" English, but he did not really want to think "in" English.
For that student, translation was a kind of firewall that kept English from entering into his real inner Japanese core. Many students are a bit like that, running two separate language programs in their brains. These two programs often conflict. Some students try to write their entire essays in Japanese and then translate them. I'm always amazed at that, because they do double the work, and translating is very hard work. Translating may appear to be faster in the short run, but it doesn’t help improve anything in the long run, and makes more of a mess of the essay.
Whenever I notice students answering slowly, I can tell they are thinking in Japanese and then translating to English. When I ask them about this, they usually confess they do not know how to make their mind stay in English. Moving back and forth between two languages has become an ingrained habit from their earliest English classes. The back-and-forth approach makes it hard for students to think in English since they are never learning IN English, but are learning FROM Japanese. The meaning bounces back and forth from English to Japanese, Japanese to English. For many students, "I understand" really means, "I know what that means in Japanese."
Some learners expect one word in Japanese corresponds to one word in English, building up into larger and larger correspondences, like those vocabulary tests where you draw a line from the words in English in one column to the opposite column of Japanese words with the same meaning. These students, and the teachers who make those tests, believe they just need to draw a line from one column to the other. If only learning English were that easy, it would be nice!
A certain degree of translation is unavoidable at the beginning of learning a language. Dictionaries help. Vocabulary tests are good. However, throughout their studies, students know that in the back of their textbooks, or even at the bottom of the page, there will be a helpful translation to rescue them when they have trouble. Like children learning to ride bicycles, they never take off the training wheels of Japanese to balance and ride on their own in English.
Translation should be taught, and taught more and better, but mostly in specially designated classes for advanced learners. Translation is an amazing skill and I have nothing but respect for translators. The translator of this book is amazing. She is able to take my sentences and magically, it seems to me, turn them into Japanese. She often seems to understand my meaning better than I do myself! Being a translator takes a special kind of person with highly developed skills. They play linguistic ping-pong at a very advanced level. However, students need to be able to stay in one language to move ahead. Going back to Japanese when study or communication gets difficult is a very addictive indulgence.
The translator of the book and I sometimes had to talk for a long time about even one word. We worked together to go over tricky points and talked about certain phrases in detail. Often, a great sentence in English does not sound good in Japanese. Meanings are not as exact and precise as dictionaries or vocabulary tests make them appear to be. Translating is translating, an advanced and specialized undertaking.
Surely, most teachers, like the one who translated my test instructions, are simply trying to make sure students understand clearly and completely. That is a kind and gracious gesture. It saves embarrassment. It ensures every student understands together. However, students don't need to be babied quite so much. Students' English ability is killed by the 'kindness' of translating everything.
Students do not need to learn how to translate, but instead need to learn how to speak, write and think entirely in English. They must give up the Japanese translation support if they are ever going to become independent in English. English education in Japan has produced a nation of so-so word-by-word translators, but has yet to produce enough confident speakers of English.
At the end of that exam in my class that day, the teacher who translated the instructions at the beginning of class took a look at the students' final essay exams after they were turned in. He was very surprised to see that all the students had written two to four page essays, all in English. The following year when I gave the final, I told the Kyomuka office that I didn't need any help with my final exam proctoring. The students and I would do it all on our own. All in English.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|