Prelude
A couple of days ago, I read an interesting article here: Real Education, by veteran writer Chuckles. Honesty to say, it does not suggest any particular ways to better learn a foreign language. Instead, it focuses on some universal aspects about learning, not only about foreign languages, but also about life. Very smooth and organized article, it is.
It sparks my thought to another issue, where can we study?
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Some places are naturally designated for study, like libraries or classrooms in school. But learning never stops there. Where did we first learn to wash hands before meals? At home. Where did we first learn team-working? In the sports we played. Where did we learn to respect others? From other people who respect us. The point is, as everyone knows, learning needs a good environment, encouraging and helpful.
This forum is titled “Study Abroad” to create a place that we can share some English learning experience, questions, and frustrations. The most popular type of posts here is translations. It is not quite the theme here, but it is fine though . I read some of them and found rather helpful.
The question is, what is encouraged here? I must apologize first for referring some of the articles published here and I mean absolutely NO person offense. This is a forum containing a lot of starters and the most important issue for starters is to go with the right direction. When a starter faces a translation problem and comes here for help, what do we do? We try to help. So, people would response and post their translations. Now, which translation is better?
That might be a hard question. But this forum judges articles by giving stars, which in turn, is an indication of the quality of the translations. I happened to read a notice posted by our host, Arely, on June 16, emphasizing the rules about giving stars. About 4 stars, it says: Articles in English that move a reader's heart and have few mistakes in English. Now let’s take a look at one recent article rated 4 stars:
On June 18, a translation from Yjprm got 4 stars. The original post is from Above, asking for help to translate some Chinese product description into English. And the translation done by Yjprm is obviously from some translation software. Look at this first line:
真空脱气机… And it was translated into “The vacuum takes off the spirit machine”. If this translation will be presented in a public place, especially to foreign companies interested to buy this product, the only reaction will be LAUGHING the teeth off! Does the vacuum machine we use take off our SPIRIT?
There are so many mistakes/problems associated with this translation, no mention some of the Chinese characters got left over, and I do not want to talk about them one by one. I also noticed that the other Chinese-English translations done lately by Yjprm are all from translation softwares. But if you read a translation done by Happyboyhua on June 17 about translating a poem into English, it was rated only 3 stars. Also, the original article mentioned earlier, Real Education by Chuckles, got 3 stars too. Just compare these two good articles to that 4-star translation, you tell me which has better quality.
My concern has nothing personal to do with Yjprm. The question is, how can this translation get 4 stars? Is this sort of nonsense machine-made translation encouraged here? Do our host(s) issue stars realize that this rating is serious misleading? Did our host(s) actually read the whole translation and notice the problems before issuing stars? What if Above, who asked for help, noticed the rating and took it for granted that this 4-star translation is a VERY GOOD one and used it in their product description book’s English version? What is the consequence of that could be?
Again, this forum is a place where people come to learn English. However, if misleading issues happen so often, what is the purpose here then? There is more than one case of giving stars that is misleading here. It is not going to be anywhere near “helpful” for sure. And I do think it is the responsibility of our hosts of this forum to ensure the right direction and fairness. Furthermore, all the readers here, including myself, should contribute and comment on what we read.
Learning is a long way to go and the very first step starts from where you stand, like here. The foundation is, studying onboard.
