Jeremy Lixandre
6mo ago
Language teachers often dismiss translation from your native language into your target language.
I think they’re right, at least when it comes to isolated words.
Why?
Because translating word by word trains you to copy lexical and syntactic structures as if both languages worked the same way.
But of course they don’t.
However, the same exercise with whole phrases is a different story.
1/2
Jeremy Lixandre
6mo ago
Any idea can, in principle, be expressed in any language.
So when you practice translating phrases, you’re really practicing something deeper: how to express the same idea in another language.
And if the phrase is translated correctly, you’re not blindly importing the structure of one language into the other.
You’re learning how the idea naturally lives in both.
2/2