Adventures in Mexico: Part 2

          After we finished our first delicious lunch in Mexico, Mark and I headed on down the road towards Mexico City, several hundred miles to the south.  We wanted to get there in a couple of days, so we decided to drive until midnight. We didn't know what a surprise was waiting for us.
         At midnight we got to a small town with one motel, so we decided to stop and sleep there. It wasn't a very nice motel, but it was cheap. We were very tired, so we went right to sleep. About three o'clock in the morning, I woke up when I felt something run across my face. Something with soft little feet. I was terrified. I sat straight up in bed, turned on the light, and saw a rat the size of a cat run across the floor and into a hole in the wall. I remember it had a long tail with no hair.
        So I yelled at Mark to wake up, that there was a rat in the room. I explained to him what had happened. We kept on all the lights in the room for the rest of the night and sat up in our beds talking and reading books we had brought. And watching that hole in the wall. We couldn't go back to sleep.
        We were still tired at seven in the morning, but decided to get up and hit the road. We didn't even stop to complain to the motel manager. After our experience at the cafe the day before,  we thought we probably wouldn't be able to explain in Spanish what had happened anyway.
       That was the second funny thing that happened to us on our road trip to Mexico.  It wasn't funny at the time, but it is now!

Adventures in Mexico: Part 1

          I will never forget my first trip to Mexico after college with my friend Mark. We had both studied Spanish for a couple of years at college, so we thought we would go to Mexico and try it out. Well, we were in for a surprise.
          First of all, we crossed the border with no problems and after we were about 20 miles into the country we were getting hungry, so we decided to stop for some lunch at a cafe in a small town. They didn't have menus. The server greeted us and told us about the day's specials, in Spanish, of course. Mark and I looked at each other and then at her. We didn't understand a word she had said! So we just shook our heads and said "No entendemos." (We don't understand).
         So she smiled and gestured for us to follow her. She took us back to the little kitchen. Everything smelled delicious. She pointed at the different pots and told us what they had to offer for lunch. We still didn't understand anything, but we could see what looked good and what smelled good, so we just pointed at what we wanted while saying "Esto" (This one).  She nodded and took us back to the little dining room with four tables.
       A few minutes later, our food came. It was delicious! We asked for more. When we finished, we paid, gave her a tip, and said "Gracias" (thank you) and "Adios" (goodbye).  That day taught us several  things--we found out how good Mexican food is, how patient and kind Mexicans are, and how bad our Spanish was!
      In conclusion, this was only the first of many adventures that we would have on our trip to Mexico.  Understanding the language and culture of a new country can be a lot more difficult than you might think. But it is worth the effort. Have you ever had a similar experience when you visited or moved to a different country?

Language Interpreters and Translators

From the beginning of time there has been a need for someone to help people who speak different languages to understand each other; this is what language interpreters and translators do. I work as a freelance English-Spanish interpreter and translator. You might wonder what the difference is between interpreters and translators.

Interpreters work with spoken language. When two or more people need to communicate but don't understand each other because of language differences, the interpreter acts as an intermediary. Example: Juan and Bill need to talk about something. Juan speaks Spanish, but not English. Bill speaks English, but not Spanish. So they find an interpreter who speaks both English and Spanish to help them understand each other. Juan says something in Spanish to Bill and the interpreter tells Bill what Juan said in English. Bill replies to Juan in English and the interpreter tells Juan what Bill said in Spanish. And so the conversation can continue because of the interpreter. Professional interpreters play this role in a variety of settings in courts, hospitals, schools, businesses, government agencies, wherever language differences create a barrier to communication.

Translators, on the other hand, work with written language. They translate legal documents and agreements, books, pamphlets, Web sites, anything that is written in one language that needs to be translated into another language.

Because of the modern global economy and business and political dealings between people from different countries, there is an increasing need for interpreters and translators to facilitate communication. Many companies and individuals offer interpretation and translation services in different languages for different purposes. To be a professional interpreter or translator an individual needs to be very fluent in at least one other language besides his or her native language. This is referred to as the interpreter/translator's language pair; Spanish and English, in my case. There are courses and training programs for interpreters and translators and tests for certification in different types of interpretation and translation. One basic principle that both interpreters and translators follow is that their role is to act as a conduit for communication, adding, omitting or changing nothing in the process.

This might sound simple, but it can be difficult and challenging work, given the nuances of languages and cultural aspects of communication. For me it has been challenging, enjoyable and rewarding.

Spain Beats Germany

!Ganó España! Goooooooooooooooool. ¿Fue un milagro? No lo creo. Se me hace que España jugó mejor que Alemania y por eso ganó. No fue ni milagro ni suerte. Veremos si pueden ganar a Holanda este domingo. España nunca ha ganado la Copa Mundial. Quizás este es su año.

Spain won! Goal! Was it a miracle? I don’t believe so. It seems to me that Spain played better than Germany, so they won. It was neither a miracle nor luck. We will see if they can beat the Netherlands this Sunday. Spain has never won the World Cup. Maybe this is their year.

Living Abroad

Sometimes my students ask me what the best way is to learn Spanish. I tell them to go live in a Spanish-speaking country for as long as they can and avoid associating with Americans and speaking English while they are there. There is no substitute for this total immersion approach that I know of.

I have lived in Mexico for five years, one year after graduate school on a Fulbright Scholarship and I later taught at a university in northern Mexico for four years. When I lived in Mexico, I associated with very few English speakers and would sometimes go weeks and months at a time without speaking English. This was a very valuable experience for me and helped me really become fluent in Spanish and familiar with Mexican culture. As a result of these experiences, I look at the world in a different way, and can appreciate how Mexicans have a different worldview than Americans.

For this reason, I would recommend a living-abroad experience for every young person. It will help you learn a different language, culture, worldview, and at the same time, make you appreciate some of the things that we have in the U.S. that you might take for granted. So go volunteer for the Peace Corps or volunteer to work in Africa helping the people there. You will never be the same.

Language Learning: Input > Processing/Thinking > Output

I believe that with language learning it is important to talk about input, processing/thinking, and output. Input is listening and reading and output is speaking and writing. Processing/thinking is that complex process that occurs between taking in input (listening or reading) and preparing output (speaking and writing). I believe that in language learning input precedes and is more important than output.

Think about how a baby learns its native language. The baby spends about two years listening to what will be its native language being spoken by its parents, other adults and children, and programs on the television and radio. The baby is surrounded by this constant barrage of language pretty much all the time except when it is asleep. Then after two years the baby starts speaking its first words, and then its language begins to develop very rapidly for the next few years. By age five or six the child understands and is very fluent in its native language.

It's not that different with adults learning a language. They need to listen to the target language and read a lot in the language (input) before they are ready to start speaking and writing fluently (output). This has implications for language teaching. I tell my Spanish students to listen to as much Spanish as they can (Spanish TV channels and movies, Spanish radio stations, free Internet podcasts in Spanish) and read as much Spanish as they can (free Spanish newspapers at Mexican restaurants, books in Spanish for children and young adults, and reading Spanish sites on the Internet). I tell them not to worry if they don't understand everything they listen to and read. Just like babies, it takes a while for the input to all soak in, and then the output kicks into high gear.

Learning a Second Language

I'm teaching Spanish and English as a Second Language courses this summer at a community college. My students often ask me what I think is the best and fastest way to learn another language as an adult. My advice to them is usually along these lines: go and live in a country where they speak the language you want to learn and do not hang around with other people who speak your native language while you are there. Live as much as possible as the the people who live in that country do. Try to communicate in that language 24/7 as long as you are in the country. This is the fastest and most efficient way to learn a second language as an adult, and also learn about the culture, which is an important part of the language. This can be a frustrating and painful experience, but the best way to learn a language. It's called total immersion. I also advise students to stay away from anyone selling language programs or software packages that claim to teach you to speak a language fluently "in 48 hours" or some such short period of time. These programs are usually very expensive and don't deliver the results they promise. Anyone who has learned a second or foreign language knows that's not the way language learning works. Aside from total immersion, there are no miracle methods or shortcuts.