| Stran v tématu: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40] > | What is your definition of “native speaker” and why does it matter to you to have a definition? Autor vlákna: Bernhard Sulzer
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Bernhard Sulzer 
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AUTOR TÉMATU | The definition | Oct 14, 2014 |
Maria S. Loose wrote:
As I have said before, I agree with Siegfried, that subject matter knowledge is more important than nativeness in the traditional sense of the word. In law it is not sufficient to speak or write legalese, you need to have studied comparative law, you need to know the difference between anglo-saxon legal concepts and civil law legal concepts. The legal language consists of legal constructions which are different from one legal system to the other. If you do not have this very detailed and profound knowledge, your written output can be fluent, native level like or what have you, it will still transport a completely incorrect message.
I propose again that this discussion is not about what the most important factors for selecting a translator are or if the "native speaker" criterion" is the most important criterion. It might be most important when weighing your options and considering all aspects of a particular project.
I proposed to discuss the "native speaker" concept and I suggested that it has to do with a particular way of acquiring the language, tied to one's childhood and one's surroundings during the time one grows up, hence the name, "native" speaker. What is your definition?
[Edited at 2014-10-14 17:09 GMT]
| | | | XXXphxxx (X)
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Siegfried Armbruster wrote:
I just don't understand why "native" is considered such an important concept. In my opinion it is not... Funny enough the concept of "specialized translator" never resulted in a discussion of > 200 contributions - why?
Because nobody, to my knowledge, has ever seriously claimed that specialist knowledge is not important.
| | | | LilianNekipelov
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| Prof. Chomsky dealt mostly with language acquisition, | Oct 14, 2014 |
[quote]Phil Hand wrote:
Thomas Frost wrote:
That is the popular perception, but is there any robust documentation for this claim?
and he has changed his theories at least a few times since 1967. He would most likely be outraged by any discrimination related to his language acquisition theory. It was not meant to be used for any evaluation of individuals, but rather to understand how we acquire language. He is a very liberal human being.
| | | | LilianNekipelov
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| I am sorry, Ty, but is is | Oct 14, 2014 |
Ty Kendall wrote: LilianNekipelov wrote:
it is pure racism I'm pretty sure it's not racism, pure or otherwise.
according to the American standards. French cooks may be the best--yet, you cannot advertise that you need a French cook, even for a French restaurant.
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LilianNekipelov
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Łukasz Gos-Furmankiewicz wrote: José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
Bottom line is that there is no limit to human foolishness in demanding irrelevant traits from job applicants. The relevance of being a "native translator" - whatever it means - has been so far proven here to be very thin, if compared to professional competence as a translator. The very phrase 'native translator' never ceases to irk me. It invokes all of my latent negative feelings towards the modern approach to translation exported worldwide out of the Anglosphere (no offence intended, I'm just way past the point of hiding my feelings). Translation involves two languages. To refer to translators as 'native' on account of the target language but not the source language is facetious to say the least. Intuitively, I believe, a 'native translator' should rather mean someone native to the original text (I don't like the adjective 'source' here, either, as we aren't historians or philologists writing a commentary).
Some agencies would even advertise--we want natives, natives only without specifying of which language: the source or the target, or perhaps both, plus Trados or another software for handwritten documents form 19th century.
| | | | LilianNekipelov
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| Father tongue? | Oct 14, 2014 |
Tom in London wrote:
If it's specifically English this argument is about, I'm still seeing lots of posts here written by people for whom English is clearly not their first language. That's really all that's needed. A person whose mother (father?) tongue is English will always spot whose isn't. The same goes for all other languages.
[Edited at 2014-10-14 14:09 GMT]
mother tongue is not the language your mother spoke. It is something completely different, although they may coincide. If you are interested in spotting anything you may consider a career in some type of investigations, rather than translation, or in addition to translation.
It is all about the principle--not about jobs. Categorizing people by some imaginary concept of a "native speaker', especially in the multicultural societies, is pure racism. Some people may even not know, those who do not have extensive knowledge in general linguistics, that a "native speaker' is a concept--it is not a real human being. You can read Prof. Chomsky's earlier works on language acquisition--it is nothing but a concept, invented for the purpose of the research on language acquisition. A theoretical thing.
[Edited at 2014-10-14 17:36 GMT]
| | | | Nathaniel2
Local time: 15:14
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| Interestingly | Oct 14, 2014 |
The Interagency Language Roundtable (link below), although not a US governmental agency, appears to have developed a language proficiency rating system that it claims is used by all US governmental agencies for assessing the language tests they administer to job applicants. The highest level on their proficiency scale is, dare I say it, native speaker (or writer, reader, etc.). They must have hordes of litigators on staff to battle the never-endi... See more The Interagency Language Roundtable (link below), although not a US governmental agency, appears to have developed a language proficiency rating system that it claims is used by all US governmental agencies for assessing the language tests they administer to job applicants. The highest level on their proficiency scale is, dare I say it, native speaker (or writer, reader, etc.). They must have hordes of litigators on staff to battle the never-ending claims of racism!
http://www.govtilr.org/skills/ILRscale5.htm ▲ Collapse
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Lincoln Hui
Hongkong
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Člen
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| Sure, use the ILR | Oct 14, 2014 |
Nathaniel2 wrote: The Interagency Language Roundtable (link below), although not a US governmental agency, appears to have developed a language proficiency rating system that it claims is used by all US governmental agencies for assessing the language tests they administer to job applicants. The highest level on their proficiency scale is, dare I say it, native speaker (or writer, reader, etc.). They must have hordes of litigators on staff to battle the never-ending claims of racism! http://www.govtilr.org/skills/ILRscale5.htm
Which makes it quite clear that US governmental agencies do not test for upbringing, merely for proficiency demonstrated through the test. It is also quite clear that some "translation professionals" do not recognize W-5's defining sentence of "Has writing proficiency equal to that of a well educated native" as meaningful.
If one is more rigid and bureaucratic than the US government, then one has a problem.
[Edited at 2014-10-14 18:24 GMT]
| | | | | Post removed: This post was hidden by a moderator or staff member for the following reason: Removed per poster's request. |
Tom in London wrote:
If it's specifically English this argument is about, I'm still seeing lots of posts here written by people for whom English is clearly not their first language.
Yeah, but few of them claim English as their native language, and I'm not sure identification really is so easy and certain in some of the cases without relying on their foreign-sounding names and background info.
That's really all that's needed. A person whose mother (father?) tongue is English will always spot whose isn't. The same goes for all other languages.
Nah, some non-native speakers (writers) do blend in perfectly, even in more difficult and unforgiving languages than English, such as Polish. I once knew a guy who was Bulgarian and only started learning Polish as a tourist guide somewhere along the Black Sea coast. His accent and diction were better than my own, and he was completely at ease. He sounded positively and affirmatively Polish, without being OTT about it. His writing, while not particularly amazing, didn't betray any signs of non-nativeness, either. I even have an American friend, recently certified C2 with flying colours by a Polish certification unit, who can pass the Turing test in written communication most of the time. Her speech is quite peculiar in sound, but you can't be sure she isn't another Pole who has worked abroad for too long or just showing off. There are two or three more such native speakes of English residing in Poland that I know of, and one or two of German and some other languages. I'm not even including the many Russians and Ukrainians who'd skew the average.
As far as English goes, I believe there's been some interesting research based on blind samples (I believe I've already mentioned Nike Pokorn, whose name I came across in a friend's master's thesis about the subject). Hide the names, and the number of false positives and false negatives will soar.
Thomas Frost wrote: Nathaniel2 wrote:
The highest level on their proficiency scale is, dare I say it, native speaker (or writer, reader, etc.). They must have hordes of litigators on staff to battle the never-ending claims of racism!
The highest level is: "Writing 5 (Functionally Native Proficiency) Has writing proficiency equal to that of a well educated native. Without non-native errors of structure, spelling, style or vocabulary can write and edit both formal and informal correspondence, official reports and documents, and professional/ educational articles including writing for special purposes which might include legal, technical, educational, literary and colloquial writing. In addition to being clear, explicit and informative, the writing and the ideas are also imaginative. The writer employs a very wide range of stylistic devices." Let's repeat: "Functionally Native Proficiency". That is the result of an individual evaluation, not a generalisation based on place of birth. Absolutely not the same. Why would anyone claim that is racism?
Not racism, but if I really wanted to nitpick, I could find a trace of bigotry there. 'Without non-native errors' is a bigoted criterion because errors typically perceived as non-native (and people can be so wrong about those) do not acquire any significant weight above and beyond ordinary errors of comparable type and degree. The message therefore clearly is that a hint of foreignness is repulsive.
I definitely prefer my American friend's occasional 'non-nativisms' (most of which are in fact quirky idiosyncracies) to errors typically made by Polish writers who are overall less proficient in the language than she is.
[Edited at 2014-10-14 18:31 GMT]
| | | | LilianNekipelov
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| Level--not a native speaker. | Oct 14, 2014 |
Nathaniel2 wrote: The Interagency Language Roundtable (link below), although not a US governmental agency, appears to have developed a language proficiency rating system that it claims is used by all US governmental agencies for assessing the language tests they administer to job applicants. The highest level on their proficiency scale is, dare I say it, native speaker (or writer, reader, etc.). They must have hordes of litigators on staff to battle the never-ending claims of racism! http://www.govtilr.org/skills/ILRscale5.htm
Native speaker's level--is a college or even high school level (three grades of high school--required), more or less-according to their standards, even with some mistakes, or accent. It is a college entrance level the most--that would qualify you to study in college. Plus, this was originally designed for the army and various investigators, not regular translators or people. Only then some other companies copied it. It is nothing like what some people here think it might be.
I think it might be all right to use the term for teaching purposes, although I do not really like it--for what it was designed, but not to discriminate against the people-"you are a Spanish- speaker because you speak Spanish at home, so you probably cannot be a good lawyer, or you have an accent, so you cannot work in customer service or sales, or teaching even."
Plus, these terns must be really remainders from the old times--when people did not know much about linguistics. You cannot see things like that anywhere in New York. Someone probably did not realize how biased it could be, if used for something else.
The system is basically for testing soldiers, and native level is something completely different than what some people described here. Plus, it is not about English (mostly about other languages)--you cannot attempt to check the percentage of 'nativeness" of anybody's English, in the United States. You may check if their grammar is all right, and whether they have a rich vocabulary, but not if they have some other ethnic traces in their English???? Most people have--ethnic influences, traces of slang, idiolectical elements, things that they have been copying from their role models, etc.
http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/42029
[Edited at 2014-10-14 18:48 GMT]
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?SubID=17583422
http://www.paikeday.net/speaker.pdf
[Edited at 2014-10-14 18:55 GMT]
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XXXphxxx (X)
Velká Británie
Local time: 14:14
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| Discrimination | Oct 14, 2014 |
| | | | LilianNekipelov
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| Yes--I think there is a lot of work for lawyers there, | Oct 14, 2014 |
but who would pay them?
The first one is a ficky mickey site.
The second one say "native German skills"--not a native speaker of German.
Yes, most of them seem like they do not know much about linguistics and NOTHING about US law. I am really surprised.
yes, the New York company--nothing serious--a serious company would never mention anything about nay "native speakers".
[Edited at 2014-10-14 19:05 GMT]
| | | | | Post removed: This post was hidden by a moderator or staff member for the following reason: Removed per poster's request. | | Stran v tématu: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40] > | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » What is your definition of “native speaker” and why does it matter to you to have a definition? | Anycount & Translation Office 3000 | Translation Office 3000
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