| صفحات الموضوع: < [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? ناشر الموضوع: Bernhard Sulzer
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| Now, going back, to such languages as Chinese | Oct 19, 2014 |
how many people who have been born in the English-speaking countries, and continue living there, know Chinese well enough to translate from it--perhaps about ten? Twenty the most? Some oriental studies professors from Oxford and Cambridge.
| | | | DLyons 
أيرلندا
Local time: 19:17
إسباني إلى أنجليزي
+ ...
| Time to call it a night. | Oct 19, 2014 |
IMHO this thread has now reached the limits of its usefulness. It might be worth extracting the different views into some sort of a summary.
I haven't been following very carefully but maybe there are a small number of things on which there is general agreement?
So, as Marx (the other ones) said, "It's a night".
P.S. "are a small number" is a common native speaker's error (or not, depending!)
[Edited at 2014-10-19 12:03 GMT]
| | | | | Yes, I absolutely agree with you, Thomas, | Oct 19, 2014 |
Thomas Frost wrote:
I believe someone mentioned a way to set proficiency by language in Proz profiles, but I can't find it. The only way to distinguish proficiency that I can find in the profile updater is "native" or not. Maybe I have overlooked something, but if it's so difficult to find in the profile updater, maybe it should be made easier.
I would like to set high proficiency for two languages and some proficiency for a third, and I would like to indicate that even my native Danish is not on the same level as that of a Dane who has spent decades working seriously with Danish in Denmark. I often have to ask myself "how would a Dane say this", just as for my non-native languages. I even find that ticking "native" for my native Danish is to some extent misleading, because it only tells someone where I was born and grew up, not what I can do in Danish, and what I can't do.
I would also like to be able to set different specialty fields, working fields, and services by language combination, as there are huge differences from one language combination to the next.
As far as I can see, I can't. It's native or not, and it's the same for all combinations. It's not very helpful when trying to help outsourcers find out what you can do quite well, and what you can't do so well.
I just looked at the translator search form that outsourcers would use to find a suitable translator. It reflects the absence of sufficient granularity I referred to above. In the absence of such granularity, "native" is just about the best choice they have, and "native" includes anyone from good proficiency to the absolute top. It must be extremely frustrating for outsourcers.
This state of affairs isn't very helpful for those who can truly claim to be in the top, as they can't distinguish themselves from the more average translators. I happily leave the more demanding jobs to them. Such translators can easily justify higher rates.
It isn't very helpful either when I want to avoid giving the impression of proficiency in certain combinations.
Maybe we are barking up the wrong tree by asking the question about what native means instead of asking how settings and search facilities could be made more accurate so that translators can paint a more accurate picture of themselves, but I admit that that would strictly be off-topic.
with what you said. It is all too simplistic. I never write in any of CVs or letters that "I am a native speaker of X' because it is just a vary vague, biased and not practical term, which I do not like. I usually indicate the level of fluency in different languages. Here you have no choice, though--so most people are not really lying, in my opinion--they have no choice.
So, if there were more options, I would write
Dominant language, based on the number of years spoken, level and education--English--academic level.
Polish-- native level--high school level--mostly passive--in writing
Russian--native academic level--mostly passive with regard to writing, these days
Swedish--close to native--fully fluent
German--intermediate
Spanish--fluent
Latin--slightly problematic academic level--passive
Lithuanian--basic or just general--nothing business related
Basic understanding of a few other languages
297 of graduate and undergraduate credits, mostly in English language studies, linguistics, creative writing and philosophy with 3.85 GPA. (all in English)
I hope that should be sufficient, for a $0.12-0.15/word translation job--for $0.20 might add a few more things. Like years of translation experience, plus legal education and experience, independent resaerch in linguistics.
But, then the filtering by "native language' would have to be abolished.
also, I think it would be helpful for the outsourcers, if all the translators indicted the level of their source languages.
[Edited at 2014-10-19 12:34 GMT]
| | | | | Just a final thought, then | Oct 19, 2014 |
The native/non-native discussion will obviously never be resolved, but I cannot help but say that at this point the shovel has fallen deeply, irretrievably into the hole and as I have always believed, the longer a non-native prattles on the more their non-nativeness is apparent (don’t worry, I include myself in this when I speak my L2). Frankly, I find it hard to believe that any language professional would ignore words/idioms/phrases simply because they don’t like them. Excuse my profanity,... See more The native/non-native discussion will obviously never be resolved, but I cannot help but say that at this point the shovel has fallen deeply, irretrievably into the hole and as I have always believed, the longer a non-native prattles on the more their non-nativeness is apparent (don’t worry, I include myself in this when I speak my L2). Frankly, I find it hard to believe that any language professional would ignore words/idioms/phrases simply because they don’t like them. Excuse my profanity, but WTF?
There is no reason a non-native should not translate into their L2 so long as the result is a comprehensible and true rendition of the original. There must be absolute comprehension of the original, and I have seen many cases where the target language is the native language but where there was little to no comprehension of the source. As an example, I recently sought an official translation by a ‘sworn’ or ‘certified’ translator, a total of 75 words. The ‘sworn’ translator (who must have a university degree and pass a proficiency test administered by the Justice Ministry), who translated into his native language, misunderstood an entire paragraph and thus one of the problems was that the abbreviation of ‘endorsement’ (end.) literally became the word ‘end’. Luckily this posed no problem as it was just a formality, but it made me doubt the entire system of ‘sworn translators’ in this country.
Some 3,000 posts ago, Lisa got it right - we all know what ‘native speaker’ means and we all know if we are one (in whatever language that may be). There is nothing wrong with not being a native of a particular language, provided we don’t pose as one and attempt to convince others there is no difference between native and non-native. There is. ▲ Collapse
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Michael Beijer
المملكة المتحدة
Local time: 19:17
عضو (2009)
هولندي إلى أنجليزي
+ ...
| $0.04, maybe $0.05 | Oct 19, 2014 |
LilianNekipelov wrote:
with what you said. It is all too simplistic. I never write in any of CVs or letters that "I am a native speaker of X' because it is just a vary vague, biased and not practical term, which I do not like. I usually indicate the level of fluency in different languages. Here you have no choice, though--so most people are not really lying, in my opinion--they have no choice.
So, if there were more options, I would write
Dominant language, based on the number of years spoken, level and education--English--academic level.
Polish-- native level--high school level--mostly passive--in writing
Russian--native academic level--mostly passive with regard to writing, these days
Swedish--close to native--fully fluent
German--intermediate
Spanish--fluent
Latin--slightly problematic academic level--passive
Lithuanian--basic--general
Basic understanding of a few other languages
297 of graduate and undergraduate credits, mostly in English studies, linguistics, creative writing and philosophy with 3.85 GPA. (all in English)
I hope that should be sufficient, for a $0.12-0.15/word translation job--for $0.20 might add a few more things. Like years of translation experience and legal education and experience.
[Edited at 2014-10-19 12:15 GMT]
I think you might be overestimating your ability to write correct English somewhat.
If I were an agency (which I'm not), I'd probably rank you at around $0.04/source word, maybe $0.05, rather than the $0.12-0.15/word you mentioned above. Almost every single one of your sentences in this thread contains at least one mistake. Many of them are non-native errors, but there are also all kinds of other strange things going on, such as horrendous punctuation, for example.
Michael
| | | | DLyons
أيرلندا
Local time: 19:17
إسباني إلى أنجليزي
+ ...
| Time to call it a night. | Oct 19, 2014 |
Moderator is needed at this point.
| | | | Erik Freitag
ألمانيا
Local time: 20:17
عضو (2006)
هولندي إلى ألماني
+ ...
| post deleted | Oct 19, 2014 |
DJLyons, you're probably right.
Post deleted - OT (and probably ineffective anyway).
[Bearbeitet am 2014-10-19 12:47 GMT]
| | | | | No, I am not --I always know what someone's wring in English is worth. | Oct 19, 2014 |
Michael Beijer wrote: LilianNekipelov wrote:
with what you said. It is all too simplistic. I never write in any of my CVs or letters that "I am a native speaker of X' because it is just a vary vague, biased and not a practical term, which I do not like. I usually indicate the level of fluency in different languages. Here you have no choice, though--so most people are not really lying, in my opinion--they have no choice.
So, if there were more options, I would write
Dominant language, based on the number of years spoken, level and education--English--academic level.
Polish-- native level--high school level--mostly passive--in writing
Russian--native academic level--mostly passive with regard to writing, these days
Swedish--close to native--fully fluent
German--intermediate
Spanish--fluent
Latin--slightly problematic academic level--passive
Lithuanian--basic--general
Basic understanding of a few other languages
297 of graduate and undergraduate credits, mostly in English studies, linguistics, creative writing and philosophy with 3.85 GPA. (all in English)
I hope that should be sufficient, for a $0.12-0.15/word translation job--for $0.20 might add a few more things. Like years of translation experience and legal education and experience.
[Edited at 2014-10-19 12:15 GMT] I think you might be overestimating your ability to write correct English somewhat. If I were an agency (which I'm not), I'd probably rank you at around $0.04/source word, maybe $0.05, rather than the $0.12-0.15/word you mentioned above. Almost every single one of your sentences in this thread contains at least one mistake. Many of them are non-native errors, but there are also all kinds of other strange things going on, such as horrendous punctuation, for example. Michael
probably only The New York Times language would be worth more. Are all the people in the GB so rude these days--what has happened? I lived in England many years ago, and people were nice--slightly prejudiced--some of them but nice. We usually do not encounter rudeness like that here, in everyday life.
Do you hold any degrees in English? It might not be enough to just learn English on a boat from Holland to Hull, anymore. Please show me ... show me the alleged mistakes--please, so I could laugh.
Punctuation--it is not an essay.
There was 'my' skipped in 'my CV"--I hope you don't imagine that I would ever say anything like that--without the personal pronoun, but some of you people, just look for any typo to satisfy you need for spotting" non--native' mistakes, which are a fiction.
There weren't too many sentences in that post either, most of the things written were not sentences, so I am really not sure what you meant by sentences.
In fact I found a few small mistakes in your profile as well. As to punctuation--look how people like Prof. Chomsky, or the son of Tolkien write--according the grammatical rules of punctuation, not skipping most commas, claiming that it is just for convenience. I was recently nicely surprised to finally could see a text that had all the punctuation in order, even if it might look excessive to some people. You just don't know what good American English is like.
The last time I have heard something about 'non-native' mistakes was that:
--you cannot use "they" when referring to an individual as opposed to individuals
--you cannot use "was' (3rd person singular) in conditional tenses
--too many commas--non-native mistakes
--you cannot use Simple Past referring to the recent future.
All wrong--with regard to American English. This all not true. So, do not try telling me about that type of "mistakes".
And to tell you honestly, I would never guess that English was your dominant language by reading your profile--but people write different things in their profiles--I personally do not like my own, because I hate writing CVs and resumes. you may find some punctation mistakes there for sure--because it is all just too boring I am not trying to be rude, or vindictive--I honestly would not, it might be the structure form another language lingering around or something like that--not even the small, mostly punctuation, mistakes.
If fact, the only people who sound 99% educated British English speakers to me are Ty Kendell and Charles. The rest--I could not tell for sure, if I were to analyze it as an investigator--let's say. Everybody like interesting things, in nice English, but people here--I asked a few, would not be able to tell what variety it is--native or non native.
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Michael Beijer
المملكة المتحدة
Local time: 19:17
عضو (2009)
هولندي إلى أنجليزي
+ ...
LilianNekipelov wrote:
with what you said. It is all too simplistic. I never write in any of my CVs or letters that "I am a native speaker of X' because it is just a vary vague, biased and not a practical term, which I do not like. I usually indicate the level of fluency in different languages. Here you have no choice, though--so most people are not really lying, in my opinion--they have no choice.
So, if there were more options, I would write
Dominant language, based on the number of years spoken, level and education--English--academic level.
Polish-- native level--high school level--mostly passive--in writing
Russian--native academic level--mostly passive with regard to writing, these days
Swedish--close to native--fully fluent
German--intermediate
Spanish--fluent
Latin--slightly problematic academic level--passive
Lithuanian--basic--general
Basic understanding of a few other languages
297 of graduate and undergraduate credits, mostly in English studies, linguistics, creative writing and philosophy with 3.85 GPA. (all in English)
I hope that should be sufficient, for a $0.12-0.15/word translation job--for $0.20 might add a few more things. Like years of translation experience and legal education and experience.
[Edited at 2014-10-19 12:15 GMT]
[…]
probably only The New York Times language would be worth more. Are all the people in the GB so rude these days--what has happened? I lived in England many years ago, and people were nice--slightly prejudiced--some of them but nice. We usually do not encounter rudeness like that here, in everyday life.
Do you hold any degrees in English? It might not be enough to just learn English on a boat from Holland to Hull, anymore. Please show me ... show me the alleged mistakes--please, so I could laugh.
Punctuation--it is not an essay.
There was 'my' skipped in 'my CV"--I hope you don't imagine that I would ever say anything like that--without the personal pronoun, but some of you people, just look for any typo to satisfy you need for spotting" non--native' mistakes, which are a fiction.
There weren't too many sentences in that post either, most of the things written were not sentences, so I am really not sure what you meant by sentences.
In fact I found a few small mistakes on your profile as well. As to punctuation--look how people like Prof. Chomsky, or the son of Tolkien write--according the grammatical rules of punctuation, not skipping most commas, claiming that it is just for convenience. I was recently nicely surprised to finally could see a text that had all the punctuation in order, even if it might look excessive to some people.
[Edited at 2014-10-19 13:18 GMT]
Sorry, I don't have time to embark on an analysis of all the weird and wonderful things you said in this thread. You might benefit from paying a professional proofreader/editor to have a look at your writing. And I'm not trying to be sarcastic here, I really mean it. It seems you really aren't aware of the quality (or lack thereof) of your writing in English.
I'm sure you'll find a few errors in my profile, that's entirely normal. No one is perfect. However, I dare say they will be of a different order of magnitude than what you have thus far shown us here.
Michael
[Edited at 2014-10-19 13:35 GMT]
[Edited at 2014-10-19 13:36 GMT]
| | | | | Different magnitude--mine are minor--regular rush writing | Oct 19, 2014 |
Michael Beijer wrote: LilianNekipelov wrote:
with what you said. It is all too simplistic. I never write in any of my CVs or letters that "I am a native speaker of X' because it is just a vary vague, biased and not a practical term, which I do not like. I usually indicate the level of fluency in different languages. Here you have no choice, though--so most people are not really lying, in my opinion--they have no choice.
So, if there were more options, I would write
Dominant language, based on the number of years spoken, level and education--English--academic level.
Polish-- native level--high school level--mostly passive--in writing
Russian--native academic level--mostly passive with regard to writing, these days
Swedish--close to native--fully fluent
German--intermediate
Spanish--fluent
Latin--slightly problematic academic level--passive
Lithuanian--basic--general
Basic understanding of a few other languages
297 of graduate and undergraduate credits, mostly in English studies, linguistics, creative writing and philosophy with 3.85 GPA. (all in English)
I hope that should be sufficient, for a $0.12-0.15/word translation job--for $0.20 might add a few more things. Like years of translation experience and legal education and experience.
probably only The New York Times language would be worth more. Are all the people in the GB so rude these days--what has happened? I lived in England many years ago, and people were nice--slightly prejudiced--some of them but nice. We usually do not encounter rudeness like that here, in everyday life.
Do you hold any degrees in English? It might not be enough to just learn English on a boat from Holland to Hull, anymore. Please show me ... show me the alleged mistakes--please, so I could laugh.
Punctuation--it is not an essay.
There was 'my' skipped in 'my CV"--I hope you don't imagine that I would ever say anything like that--without the personal pronoun, but some of you people, just look for any typo to satisfy you need for spotting" non--native' mistakes, which are a fiction.
There weren't too many sentences in that post either, most of the things written were not sentences, so I am really not sure what you meant by sentences.
In fact I found a few small mistakes on your profile as well. As to punctuation--look how people like Prof. Chomsky, or the son of Tolkien write--according the grammatical rules of punctuation, not skipping most commas, claiming that it is just for convenience. I was recently nicely surprised to finally could see a text that had all the punctuation in order, even if it might look excessive to some people.
[Edited at 2014-10-19 13:18 GMT] Sorry, I don't have time to embark on an analysis of all the weird and wonderful things you said in this thread. You might benefit from paying a professional proofreader/editor to have a look at your writing. And I'm not trying to be sarcastic here, I really mean it. It seems you really aren't aware of the quality (or lack thereof) of your writing in English. I'm sure you'll find a few errors in my profile, that's entirely normal. No one is perfect. However, I dare say they will be of a different order of magnitude than what you have thus far shown us here. Michael [Edited at 2014-10-19 13:35 GMT] [Edited at 2014-10-19 13:36 GMT]
If you are concerned about a few minor mistakes in my writing, you must find most of the other people, other than those born and educated in England--preferably at Oxford or Cambridge, totally illiterate.
http://en.prothom-alo.com/lifestyle/news/51980/Why-we-miss-typos-in-own-writings
Here are the reasons why it is better to have another person to proofread your writing, proofread it a few days later.
As to other things--I really think you need a degree in English to be able to fully evaluate English--especially creative writing. Fora--I would not pay that much attention what people write in a rush.
[Edited at 2014-10-19 14:10 GMT]
| | | | xxLecraxx (X)
ألمانيا
Local time: 20:17
فرنسي إلى ألماني
+ ...
If someone translates into his L2/B-language (or whatever you want to call it) and has happy clients, why does it bother you?
| | | | Phil Hand
الصين
Local time: 02:17
صيني إلى أنجليزي
This thread's probably dead, but still...
Peter Zhuang wrote:
Will I ever claim to be a native German speaker? No (unless I am utterly stupid).
...
It's about demystifying the nebulous aura of unattainableness surrounding a native speaker.
That looks like a direct contradiction to me, and that's precisely the point I want to make. Responsible linguists generally don't claim to be native in a language that they didn't learn as a kid (please don't anyone take that as an insult - I regard some of the people in this thread as honourable exceptions). And there is a reason for that, but it is at the very least a bit slippery.
I actually think there is something a bit magical about it - my childlike wonder at the amazing ability of language to inform, move and inspire us is not dead yet. And I don't think we have comprehensive scientific explanations for it all yet, so it is still one of the magical corners of the universe.
I also think it's extraordinary how hard learning a language is. Right now, with my Chinese, I feel like I'm stuck in Zeno's paradox: put in another 10 hours, and I get halfway toward whatever goal I've set; another 10 hours and it's halfway again; and again; and again. Not sure I'll ever get there... And this is fascinating and worthy of comment.
It is certainly not about imposing "Globish" on anyone
Yeah, it really is. Because globish is what non-native English speakers tend to write, and if you take away clients' ability to discriminate by native language, non-natives will dominate. I'm sure you've seen some of what passes for translation in Chinese-English. Big, respectable companies using deeply unrespectable, half-digested rubbish. I don't know about other pairs, but in C-E, bad English is endemic. I've lost jobs because I insisted on writing decent English. Along the way, clients ask me, "Why should we believe you, when we've been translating it as 'Welcome you to our hotel' for years?" And really, the only answer to that is not my degree, or my experience. It's the fact that I speak this damned language.
If your argument carried the day, and the industry stopped using native speaker as an important criterion, then this last leg would be swept out from under me. After you, the deluge.
| | | | | صفحات الموضوع: < [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? | CafeTran Espresso | You've never met a CAT tool this clever!
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