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If you have the time. Okay, I always tend to emit concerns about everything and feel like they might go wrong. But still. You have to get some time to finish a book and to understand it. Not so much, but a bit. And if more translators are chosen, it is to split up the time to translate, and if you include reading, well, you can't split the time of reading the text. That's the little efficiency problem here.

Otherwise, I agree. But how much time is reasonable for a translation? That question can be asked as well, and will tell clearly the expectations about the quality, after all.

Then you should, somehow, understand when the typos are voluntary and part of the text, and when it is not. This implies somehow you have a good understanding of the text. I find this is an hard point. After all, you say yourself it's about conveying the meaning of the writer. But the writer's style is maybe also about its mistakes and the fact he's not writing perfectly, eh?

Do you think the actual translator has a lot of contact with the author? I mean, translations is often managed by a team with conditions, but I doubt a lonely translator can contact the author and ask him the question.

Certaines langues, ou certaines cultures, sont reliés à un pays. Par exemple, la mozzarella est italienne. Je pense que les gens qui apprenent le français aiment la France. Ou au moins, ils aiment sa culture. Sinon, pourquoi vous seriez tenté d'apprendre le français ?

Donc j'aimerais savoir les parties de la culture de la France que vous aimez. Aussi, je voudrais savoir pourquoi ça vous donne envie d'apprendre ? Après tout, on peut trouver des choses intéressantes ou jolies. Mais ces choses ne nous donnent pas forcément envie d'apprendre.

Je ne sais pas si c'est simple de reconnaître la culture d'un pays. Mais j'espère que vous allez essayer.

I think English or French people succeeds to have different level of politeness without resorting to another alphabet. Familiar language isn't a new thing. That's not an argument in my opinion. I don't think Japanese have more diverse emotions than other human beings just because of their language. The way they have to express it is different, however.

The problem with the culture is what culture would you lost? What part of the culture would you suddenly loose because of that? As long as there's people who can understand the meaning of the historical texts, they would be able to translate it into the new language (that would be part of the archiving work, much like in modern world we have often to convert files to new formats) and so it wouldn't be loosed. 

Thanks for your point, +1

No, I'm not referring dark here as something bad, especially, but more to the fact it is unknown and not officially documented. For example, the complexiest vocabulary of a language, used in literature, is probably documented properly and on school you will have to try to read these books. Meanwhile, these "dark" lyrics are harder to understand because it's only temporary, cultural, unexplained and sometimes based on mistakes.

So, you want to translate lyrics to understand better songs and the target language in the end. But you can't really. Who would you ask on help? Is Internet providing good resources on these undocumented words? Should we focus on learners or natives when asking for help?

The subtle thing with "tout/toutes/tous/toute", which isn't the easiest to follow sometimes, is that it means many things at the same time.

Let's define it more simply than it appears: "tout" is when it's singular, masculine, and not plural. "tous" is plural, masculine. "toute" is singular and feminine. "toutes" is the plural, feminine. That's basically it.
Let's take "tout à fait". Here, it's not feminine. But if you take rather "tous les jours", "jour" is masculine since we say "un jour", but because we talk about many days and not only one, it becomes plural masculine with "tous". "Toutes les balles de tennis sont perdues" here is "toutes" because it's "une balle" (balle is feminine), and there's many tennis yellow balls. Or it would be boring.

Deprecating the learning of the native language of the country where you are is a complicated situation. But it depends, after all. If you travel from Italy to Spain and Spain is your home since few years. As well, you don't know everything from Spanish but you still would like to speak Italian because your parents did and so on. So, what's the native language? The language of the country? The language of the parents, grand parents?

Thanks for your notes and additional information. That's right, no all have access to Internet or so on. However, I wasn't really angry when writing messages, even if I have hard time to remember precisely my mood at that time.

The "lookalikes" in a learning language is one boring thing to attack and learn. Take the "pause" vs. "pose" example, but also the "verre" / "vert" / "vers", but I may talk about that one letter. Let me explain to you.
For example, "pause" is...exactly like in English, when you stop something but only temporarily, and this is something you can probably restart. Example, the pause button would be on a media player.
But it is also used for a period of times you need to get some rest. Like, when you stop working 15 min and you'll go back to work right after, it's just a little "out of time" moment.

Meanwhile, "pose", is coming from the verb "poser". This verb is used when you want to get your glass, for example, on the table, if you don't want to break it, you will try to "pose" it. It's also used on photography for models using special positions, called "poses".

Well, I live at my time and I have now the privilege to own a computer. I think you do as well and I'm talking about today. When it's about your previous choices when there was not, it's not really your fault, but there was books or movies or DVDs to learn before entering in that digital age. But communication increased with telecoms and Internet, yes, I agree.
So for childs that already chosen a language, don't loose much of your time on it. But in the future, if they want help on another language or for another child, it's still interesting you know.

You're right, but I think for the little childs, you would have better time by initiating them to really illustrative "movies" or shows for the 3 years or so on, and try to make the language learn at that time where what the story is doesn't matter much, but the child is still catching the words somehow. Because after, when you have to learn a language, to still like a content you have to understand it using translation etc.

The most ironical thing from the French for example is that, Quebec may protect more the French language than people from France would do it, you know. I think that rightly translated words aren't a problem and using ordinateur instead of computer is something I do on my everyday life. But I would certainly not going on the "too much" French. Some can't just be said in the language and sometimes, think about it, it is also something we should leave to U.S. and its English languages: they done many of the new computers invention, it is normal we use some words from them as a kind of tribute and respect, much like they use some sauces' name from French. 

Thanks!

Here's my first post:

I can't tell since I'm not from U.S., but I know I am studying a language since a lot of time and I was enforced to at least at college, not high school. It didn't helped me a lot to understand the language, but still. So maybe it depends of the country. You had to learn Spanish because the 2nd official language on U.S. is Spanish?

Meanwhile, you can be only native only with one language on your life, think about it. And me, if I would have to teach English to someone who needs help, I would go ahead, because I would only do better than nothing. Yes, I'm not the best, but I think I know enough given how often I write in English and that knowledge is already important.

The translation, like many transformation steps where you transform something from one form into another form, is not an easy science when you want an exact result. After all, many things can be bundled and "added" to the translation step, and the definition of translation depends of the person wanting it and doing it. That's the basic problem.
For example, you can try to correct the mistakes from the original text. But really, should you? Should you correct the typos, the broken grammar? Or should you try to imitate it, and perhaps receiving backfire because some may think the translator is unskilled meanwhile you are just following the original text? Should the translator have a style, or only do the work but just better than automated translation, but otherwise exactly as automated translation (without trying to put any style inside)?

One problem with literature (and so, often, books, doesn't matter if it's on your computer or on paper), is that it follows often the strictest and the most complex parts of a language. Sure, it depends of the book you read, but it would feature often a lot of grammar you wouldn't meet in everyday discussions and you will probably never hear, in fact, outside of that context.

So that makes a lesser priority to learn. But if you like to read, you would better spend some time to read on another language to associate how you like to read with the learning you should do. So, what is the best genre of book to read?

When you're thinking about having a child, if you really want to make that language learnt, you could start by learning it yourself and after you have few years to get fluent inside this language.

Yes, you're missing my point.
In school systems, you can't only say "you learn one language". When you're at school, quickly, you're enforced to learn other languages. So at one moment, you're enforced as well to choose a secondary language the child would have to learn. So my question is how would you negotiate the choice, will it depend of the child and how could depend on it? As well, what other languages would you try to teach to your child, outside of the mandatory native and secondary?

Laziness. Oh. Well, try to find something else than the test to motivate yourself. For me, a main motivation to understand a language was to understand some people around me, understand a culture I couldn't reach without learning this language, and understanding the population, and talking with it, or maybe finally integrating more myself inside it. I know it's a task on the long run but when you find someone that looks interesting or you know that some doors are so cool to open but requires you to understand that languages, the laziness of yesterday will go away tomorrow, because it's what you like. So I'm not much worried by this one. But I'm always fighting somehow the laziness.

Okay, you have now a complicated problem under your hands: you can't easily ask child about their languages' choices, even if you can try to take it into account, and you still have to choose a language to make them learn according to the scholar system. Even if it's not especially what you want, it is mandatory.

So, how to choose the right language? How to give the best and most useful knowledge to the child? Because after all, a wrong choice will have a learning cost meaning your child will do efforts for nothing and would have basically wasted his time. That's the problem. And your liking isn't especially the best learning choice for your child.

Okay, I know the title is a bit mysterious but I find it amusing! If you don't have a girlfriend, you won't hear it a lot, but it is still something popular in France.
Think about a duck. Not a real one, but their behavior. A little duck, or even a chick (in the duck meaning, not girl one). The yellow chicks tend to follow their mother at all costs in a really cute way.
Now, here comes the expression: "C'est un canard ce gars." (This guy is a "duck".). It means basically that this guy, with a girlfriend, is "following" too much its girlfriend to the point he overdoes it and basically, the guy is currently manipulated by the girlfriend. Examples: when offering "too much" gifts. Or so on.

The problem is that after, it is shared in English and in French, but there's more spaces before in the French language than in English. And to be honest, I think it may be just a way to more easily differentiate the two languages. I don't think every style decision was made based on a thoughtful analysis of what it implies and was just done that way because a choice has to be made. That's often how style ends up to become rules.

So the purpose of doing so and following these punctuation rules are more for looking like native and follow the "right" style depending of the language, than anything else.

Meanwhile there's many vocabularies available, depending of the domain you are talking about, if it needs more or less languages because it talks about a lot of phenomena you wouldn't want to describe in the same sentence but rather try to call it with a name, there's three "official" vocabularies, basically, vocabularies that everyone in French will probably know.

Firstly, there's the "langage familier". This vocabulary uses the easy grammar and words of the French language, and you would want to use it only for conversations with friends, family, or anything you want to make friendly and not really "official" or "authoritative".

Then, here comes the "langage courant". You talk to someone else on the street, or you are talking to a cashier but in a customer-employee relationship rather than trying to be friendly, or also with coworkers you wouldn't like, you would choose this language. It features a moderate complexity. Some administrations may resort to it, bu far from all.

Finally, you have the "langage soutenu". In this case, anything official or you want to make official looking should use this complex vocabularies. In this case, you will face the hardest rules of the French grammar and the hardest words. As well used in books or literature.

Whoa, honestly, I don't know why it is done like that. I must admit I hate when I see French texts with English or without spaces punctuation, it just makes things look less clean in my opinion, hence why I tend to learn and remember it. However, when it's English text it doesn't shock me since it's the normal punctuation.
I guess it is much cultural, to be honest, and not really thought. Even about simple things as ordering some languages and cultural conventions doesn't agree about how to do it. It's how we live with numbers after all: left to right text, but right to left numbers.

Some maybe wouldn't be able to explain it, but read something and writing something isn't the same task and when you write something, you're more going to remember it than when you won't write it. That might end up in a weird situation: something important but you didn't wrote will be forgotten, but something less important but written will be remembered on time. Weird, but true.

Based on that principle, instead of relying only on the text you usually write and the fact you may need it, why not try to write a dictionary of your target language yourself? For example, you need to learn English, and all words you can think of is written there. If you find some too obvious, don't waste time to write it, write rather the words you often meet but you don't understand straight away when reading. And you could go further: you may try to rewrite this dictionary few times a month in order to help your memory.

There's often a confusion with the punctuation in general when you speak about people writing both in English and in French, doesn't matter if you talk about French native speakers writing in English or English native speakers writing in French. As well, the confusion happens in both languages, so much that the French native speaker may be confused about French punctuation in the end.
So, as this is a common point people have hard time to remember, here's few rules:
After a colon ":" and a semi-colon ";", you need to put a space before and after, like "Les jours de la semaine : Lundi ; Mardi".
The comma "," is like in English, no confusion.
The "?", the "!" features a space before and after as well, like "Tu connais la place de Concorde ?".

Okay, hm, so, the native way would be: "On pourrait partir de l'Angleterre et aller en Espagne pour de longues vacances".
However, it depends of the meaning. Take the "long holiday". If you talk about the holidays happening between June and August, then, we would call it the "grandes vacances". But if you are just talking about a vacation with long duration, "longues vacances" has no special meaning regarding to "when you take the holiday".

Now, regarding to the "On pourrait". On basically means "we", but not if we speak about grammar, I'm still not sure of the reason. If you really want something more literal and formal, it could be "Nous pourrions partir de l'Angleterre et aller en Espagne pour de longues vacances". However, subjunctive feels inappropriate here, hence the "may" make it feel more conditional, hence my choice. 

Well, the question is: do you need to learn 7 languages? What doors will it open to you, and how? If you don't have a straight answer to the question, you know why you don't have learnt fully your 4 languages and you won't learn 7. You need motivation, and often motivation involve a purpose, a strong purpose.

Happy to hear I'm not alone to think that. Because even if half of the language learner community we think we can't when growing up, think about the population. I guess the number is worst.

You should allow yourself to forget some things then. But if we keep feeling guilty and bad when we forgot something, that's still going to happen, after all. With the digital age, honestly, with all the knowledge you have around at anytime, I take less time to remember something and more to search for it (once again) at each time I need it. And I don't feel bad about it.

Okay, so the post answers to the 2 posts above, but I won't quote because they are "close".

The thing about translation is not only about culture, it's about what people expects and how they execute the translation work. For example, when doing a translation, some won't provide the context, leading to bad work. As well, the problem is what people ask from the translator: they ask more for school grades than anything else, and these school grades will talk less about the culture than any real conversation or reading can get to you to the real usage of the language in your domain. That's the another problem you'll face.