Teachers and translators E-Book

Graciela Bulleraich

• Herausgeber: Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires
• Kategorie: Fremdsprachen
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 162

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Teachers and Translators: Enhancing their Reading and Writing Skills recommends that language teachers incorporate the reading and writing connection together with the influence of L1 culture as essential elements to achieve textual competence in the target language. The use of challenging magazine and newspaper articles with post-intermediate and advanced language learners has always been a priority in ESP (English for Specific Purposes). The purpose is to activate students' background knowledge, consolidate their critical thinking skills, raise their awareness in relation to varieties of English, figures of speech and coinages and, at the same time, encourage classroom research in such fields as journalese, legal and business English. Expository essay-writing is also incorporated in the course, following such patterns as the Comparison and Contrast essay and the Classification form

Leseprobe

Graciela Bulleraich

Teachers and Translators

Enhancing their Reading and Writing Skills.

Second edition

Revised and updated

Graciela Bulleraich

Teachers and Translators

Enhancing their Reading and Writing Skills.

Second edition

Revised and updated

Editorial del CTPCBA

Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires

2016

Contents

Cover

Legal

Preface

Introduction

CHAPTER I English as a world language

CHAPTER II The Legal Register

CHAPTER III The Business Register

Conclusion

Bibliography

Bulleraich, Graciela

Teachers and translators : enhancing their reading and writing skills / Graciela Bulleraich. - 2a ed ampliada. - Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires : Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 2022.

Libro digital, EPUB

Archivo Digital: descarga

ISBN 978-987-1763-38-2

1. Enseñanza de Lenguas Extranjeras. I. Título.

CDD 428.0071

© Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2016

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Graciela Bulleraich

Primera edición, Universidad Libros, 2012.

Segunda edición, CTPCBA, 2016.

Reservados todos los derechos.

Hecho el depósito que dispone la Ley 11723.

Prohibida la reproducción, alquiler, préstamo, canje o reproducción pública.

Diseño y armado: Departamento de Publicaciones y Diseño del CTPCBA.

Primera edición en formato digital: diciembre de 2022

Versión 1.0

Digitalización: Proyecto451

ISBN edición digital (ePub): 978-987-1763-38-2

Preface

Using challenging magazine and newspaper articles for post-intermediate and advanced language acquisition has always been a priority in ESP (English for Specific Purposes). Such articles enable active and vibrant professional dialogues as well as reading and writing enhancement involving research in such fields as journalese, legal and business English, among others.

At this stage of a Teacher or Translator Training Course, students are expected to develop and master a multi-strand syllabus in general, with the purpose of ensuring that grammar, vocabulary, skills, functional language and pronunciation are consolidated and extended through natural and realistic contexts and are all designed in a systematic way through the course.

In particular, the book is organized around discourse-oriented specialized texts to highlight varieties of English and encourage language awareness concerning style, wordplay, figures of speech, coinages and at the same time, favour learners´critical thinking skills.

The major aim is also to teach interactive processing strategies as well as top-down and bottom-up techniques in reading comprehension which modify and act on each other.

Similarly, because the writing component is essential in a course of this type, it is also incorporated in each unit in the form of expository essay-writing involving specific patterns illustrated with examples based on the main themes discussed.

In this way, both teachers and translators will gain extra exposure to a plurality of voices and registers (formal and informal) to broaden their knowledge of different controversial subjects.

Graciela Bulleraich

Buenos Aires, December 2015

Introduction

The English language owes obligations to various authors for numerous phrases and familiar quotations which have become “household words”

1. To begin with, Rudyard Kipling´s famous lines on the six honest serving men have been often used as a preliminary to understanding and writing ESP texts and as a foundation stone for Reading Comprehension.

I keep six honest serving –men

(They taught me all I know);

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who.

I send them over land and sea,

I send them east and west;

But after they have worked for me,

I give them all a rest.

(In The Elephant´s Child, 1902)

2. Neil Armstrong´s historic statements on the moon landing of July 20, 1969, during the Apollo 11 flight, have also been quoted by teachers and researchers to illustrate the use of the emphatic device of parallelism.

That´s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

3. The British linguists Robert McCrum, Cran and MacNeil used figurative language (simile) when claiming that

The English language surrounds us like the sea, and like the waters of the deep it is full of mysteries.

(The Story of English, 1992)

4. Tom McArthur accounts for the global evolution of English as a lingua franca using metaphors as figures of speech in

English is the Latin or Sanskrit of our time. Or, to draw on yet another culture, it is the medium of the world´s new mandarins …

(Oxford Guide to World English, 2002)

5. The Indian-American scholar Braj B. Kachru refers to the developments of the new “Englishes” in

English in one way or another has a presence in the most vital aspects of Asian lives including our cultures, our languages, our interactional patterns, our discourses, our economies, and, of course, our politics.

(Asian Englishes: Beyond the Canon, 2005)

6. An insight into Blended Learning: a mix of face-to-face and online approaches in

Computer science represents the literacy of the 21st century, a fundamental skill that will be needed by everyone to successfully engage with the modern world. Human creativity can be combined with the power of machines to solve disciplines.

P. Maguire

(The Irish Times, 2015)

CHAPTER I

English as a world language.

Reading

1.- Brief History of the English Language. Sources.

The English language belongs to the Indo-European group or family of languages which consist of a collection of reconstructed linguistic forms from which most of the present European languages – together with most of those of India and Persia (Iran) – have been shown to have descended. The people who spoke them have been named Aryans by the modern world or, better, Indo-Europeans, a name indicating the place of origin – central Asia.

Many thousands of years B.C. (about 5.000 B.C., late Stone Age people), starting perhaps from somewhere near the Hindu Kush mountains in the Eurasian grasslands of what is now western Russia, there lived a tribe of people whose language began to spread both west and east, as the tribes that spoke it migrated in both directions.(introduced by the Celts into the Danube area of Europe and beyond and by other groups in the east, into the Ural Mountains in Russia). As it spread, it naturally acquired particular local characteristics brought about by the various conditions encountered – geographical, climatic, ethnical and linguistic as it came into contact with other tongues. This language (Indo-European) is now extinct, but it was the ancestor of many modern languages which are spoken in every continent of the world today.

The Indo - European family of languages -formulated as a hypothesis by the British orientalist and jurist Sir William Jones in the late 18th.c.– is divided into two main groups, the Eastern and the Western.

The following table helps us visualize the astonishing linguistic dispersal that eventually produced English:

As for the other languages of the civilized world, they are divided by philologists into different major groups or families.

2.- A Chronology of the Development and Spread of English.

The early history of Britain is the story of successive invasions which ended in 1066. From the linguistic point of view, English is considered a “hospitable language” for the incorporation of words that have enriched it from the very beginning. Like the many people who have come into the United States through Ellis Island and other ports of entry, many alien words have been permitted to enter the language and become naturalized citizens of English. As with nations, so with words: English doubtless owes much of its vigor and expressiveness to these “borrowed” words and to its willingness to accept them as a regular part of the language.

One of the happy facts about lexical migration is that a word can go abroad to enrich another language along with the cultural items it represents, while still maintaining its original meaning and usefulness at home. Also, it can be borrowed directly or through a third language.

In this sense, most of the “immigrant” words found in contemporary English are said to have a double heritage: they have a native grammar and vocabulary that stem directly from their Germanic roots and, a borrowed vocabulary from other Indo-European languages, chiefly Latin and its offshoots (French, Italian, Spanish), such as“brotherly”from Germanic origin and “fraternal”from Latin.

- Inhabitants: Celts or Britons (other savage tribes were the Picts and Caledonians who dwelt in the north). (Celtic language).

- First invaders: Romans in 55 B.C. who represented the dominant culture. (spoke Latin). When the Roman Empire collapsed, the legions withdrew from England in 410 A.D.

Old English period, 400-1100 A.D.:

- Angles, Saxons, Jutes(Anglo-Saxon) in 449 A.D. The epic poem of “Beowulf”.

- Norsemen/Vikings/Danes (Old Norse) in 789 A.D.

- William the Conqueror (Norman French) in 1066.

Middle English period, 1100-1500:

- Nobility in England (English).

- Edward III made English the language for pleadings in the law courts (14th.c)

- Publication of John Wycliffe´s English translation of the Latin Bible.

- Geoffrey Chaucer and “The Canterbury Tales”. (The dialect of London)

- Accession of the Tudors (Henry VII) to the English throne (1485) increased the national pride which promoted greater writing.

Early Modern English period, 1500 – 18th.c.:

- William Caxton brought the printing press to England in 1476.

- William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon (16th.c.).

- John Dryden, poet and playwright. (17th.c.).

- Dr. Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language (1755).

- The Declaration of American Independence (1776) and creation of the United States of America, the first nation outside the British Isles with English as its principal language.

Late Modern English period, 19th.c. onwards:

- British Empire (19th.c.), the British Commonwealth of Nations (1931).

- Global/International language, World English, lingua franca…

- Varieties of English, Estuary English…

3.- A Hospitable Language

English is a hospitable language. Like the many people who have come into de United States through Ellis Island and other ports of entry, many alien words have been permitted to enter the language and become naturalized citizens of English. As with nations, so with words: English doubtless owes much of its vigor and expressiveness to these “borrowed” words and to its willingness to accept them as a regular part of the language.

One of the happy facts about lexical migration is that a word can go abroad to enrich another language while still maintaining its original meaning and usefulness at home. Also, it can be borrowed directly or through a third language. Most of the “immigrant” words in English came directly from their original source; some came by way of another language; for a few, it is not clear just what the origin or mode of entry was.

The major sources of early borrowed words is English were Latin, French, and some Scandinavian. Modern English, however, has taken in words from much more diverse sources, with many borrowings from Italian (piano, motto, fiasco, umbrella), Spanish (guerrilla, mosquito, cargo, junta), Portuguese (banana, molasses), Arabic (zero, algebra, sugar), Persian (tulip, orange), various Indian languages (pajama, bandanna, calico, pundit), Malay (amuck, batik), Tagalog (boondocks), Russian (steppe, vodka), Turkish (kiosk, caftan), and African languages (gnu, zebra), among others.

In addition to the many borrowed words in English generally, of which those listed above are only a small sample, several dozen words immigrated specifically into American English, along with the cultural items they represent. Both item and word thus became part of the American language and culture.

(English Teaching Forum)

4.- Babel runs backwards

The world´s languages are disappearing at the rate of one a fortnight. What to do?

“And they said one to another, go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole Earth…And the Lord said, behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do…let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another´s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the Earth.” That ended the building of the tower of Babel, and started the confusion of tongues.

The usual way to read this passage from Genesis is that God punished his people for getting too uppity. Multilingualism was a curse to bring them down to Earth – an expulsion from the paradise of effortless communication.

If that is what happened, the Lord certainly made a thorough job of it. The single language that may have been spoken at the dawn of modern mankind, perhaps 60.000 years ago, gradually diversified into huge numbers. Perhaps tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of languages may have evolved and then died as the people who spoke them first flourished, then perished. The vast majority left no written trace, and so no trace at all. A few, such as Sumerian, Etruscan and Mayan, survived in writing but became extinct in daily life. Others, such as Latin, Sanskrit and ancient Greek, were preserved in written form but also evolved into live new tongues.

Languages have been coming and going for millennia, but in recent times there has been less coming and a lot more going. When the world was still populated by hunter-gatherers, small, tightly knit groups developed their own patterns of speech independent of each other. Some linguists reckon that 10,000 years ago, when the world had just 5m-10m people, they spoke perhaps 12,000 languages between them.

Soon afterwards, many of those people started settling down to become farmers, and their languages too became more settled and fewer in number. In recent centuries, colonization, trade, industrialization, the development of the nation-state and the spread of universal compulsory education, among other things, have helped to extirpate many languages that had previously prospered in isolation. And in the past few decades, thanks to globalization and better communications, the rate of attrition has greatly accelerated, and dominant languages such as English, Spanish and Chinese are increasingly taking over.

At present, the world has about 6,800 distinct languages (and many more dialects), according to Ethnologue, a database maintained by the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Dallas. The distribution of these languages is hugely uneven. The general rule is that temperate zones have relatively few languages, often spoken by many people, whereas hot, wet zones have lots, often spoken by small numbers. Europe has only around 200 languages; the Americas about 1,000; Africa 2,400; and Asia and the Pacific perhaps 3,200, of which Papua New Guinea alone accounts for well over 800. The median number of speakers is a mere 6,000, which means that half the world´s languages are spoken by fewer people than that.

Already well over 400 of the total of 6,800 languages are close to extinction, with only a few elderly speakers left, none of which seems to have much chance of survival as a language.

Worse, probably 3,000 or so others are also endangered. Linguists classify languages on a scale ranging from “safe” (learnt by all children in the group, and spoken by all its members) to “critically endangered” (only a few old speakers). On that scale, “endangered” comes in the middle, meaning that children no longer learn the language and only adults speak it.

(The Economist, 2005)

Reading Comprehension:

Top-down processing: Background Information: the myth of the Tower of Babel; from unity to diversity; from monolingualism to multilingualism; dead languages; endangered languages …

Bottom-up processing: paragraph division; vocabulary; parallelism; structures: to run backwards; become extinct …

5.- Move Over English: the Web Beckons

A translator looks at the Web´s impact on how he views language.

As a true translator, you will take care not to translate “word for word”. When the Roman bard Horace stated this still enduring paradigm, Latin was indeed the then-known world´s lingua franca, and so it remained for more than a thousand years. What is happening now, since English and the World Wide Web are dominating the information-society agenda?

“A lingua franca is still needed, just as it is needed for airplane pilots, and until Esperanto becomes popular I suspect that English will continue to hold its present position”, says Donald Fangler, professor of Russian literature at Harvard University. True? Nicholas Negroponte, head of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is one of those who trusts the nature of the Web, writing in Wired magazine that English as a lingua franca should not be confused with cultural identity. “It is not possible to colonialize the Net and turn its users into English-speaking puppets,” he writes.

Babel Revisited

Maybe in this field predictions are as reliable as the Babel myth, which is still held responsible for the confusion linguarum, the diversification and apparent disorder in which languages coexist. As it often happens, literates seem to have the supernatural gift of divination. In stories written decades before the Net was conceivable, Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges dreamed and wrote of a library that contains all possible books. (“The Library at Babel”), of a man who cannot forget a single thing he´s ever seen or heard (“Funes the Memorious”), of a book that contained all possible outcomes of any action (“The Garden of Forking Paths”), of a map so accurate that it completely covers the kingdom it describes (“Of Exactitude in Science”), and a country where there is no plagiarism, because all books are considered the work of a single author, who is everyone (“Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis, Tertius”). Needless to say, Borges has been translated into dozens of languages, and a project called Gutenberg is close to fulfilling his dreams, creating the first universal online library.

However, the simple and natural fact that idioms are scattered and diverse has obsessed Western civilization since the dawn of time. Lately, in our digital times, the menace of letting English become the one and only world language is increasingly prevalent, and some countries are taking quite serious steps to defeat the enemy: did you know of the French “Ministry of Francophony”? We are all curious to know what the word “Minitel” will mean now, since this French-developed online chat service is allegedly going to be shut down.

In China there is a governmental authority that does the same watchdog job as the French Ministry. Yet, according to Xueni Ye, who manages the Chinese department at International Communications, some stylistic rules indeed have to be established in the proliferating online market of international languages, especially in the interest of worldwide end.users. The Internet is often praised for its ability to transcend international borders at the click of a button, yet this dream crashes with realities of local languages. Neologisms abound in the Net, and the press does its best to keep an eye on them. But trying to translate “Jargon Watch” from Wired magazine (or any other Wired article for that matter) in Hindi or Mandarin can be utopian. Infotopian, some would say.

Infotopianism, or the chimerical pursuit of the perfect information society, is evident when it comes to translations: languages are in constant transformation, and keeping up with the even faster changing Web is a whole new kind of job. Relentless globalism is the theme that haunts virtually all discourse about the future of business. When it comes to commerce, having the privilege of communicating in more than one language really makes the difference, and will hopefully help expand the markets in the future. As for now, everybody is equal on the Internet, but some are more equal than others: the anglophones.

Gimo Lorenzelli (Language International)

Reading Comprehension:

Top-down processing: Prior knowledge: the word and sense dichotomy; translators and the Web; Esperanto; Babel revisited; Jorge Luis Borges and his works; France and China and the Internet…

Bottom-up processing: lexical items: lingua franca, neologisms, infotopian articles; English hegemony…

6.- Native strengths

Not only does preserving Welsh and our minority languages enrich our lives, but bilingualism also maintains links with our cultural heritage, says Susan Bassnett.