Part III: Understanding Theories and Issues in the Field Reflection on AL 6340: Translation in Second Language Acquisition I took

AL 6340: Translation in Second Language Acquisition during Summer III 2012. As a native English speaker, I was slightly apprehensive about selecting the course since I had never had to formally translate between English and other languages and feared I would not be able to contribute to the discussions. Throughout the course, however, I discovered that as a Japanese and Spanish language learner, I was able to apply the readings and discussions to my own experience. This in turn made the class more rewarding; I was able to learn a lot about the intrinsic process of translating between different languages particularly between Spanish and English. As an avid reader of English and Spanish novels, I wanted to gain proficiency in this area of applied linguistics in case I decided to explore translating books or other materials into English in the future. My professor, Dr. Kenneth Cook, is knowledgeable about several languages and was able to provide us with examples from several of his own extensive experiences with translation when he was teaching abroad and in California. We were tasked with researching translation problems between English and another language; most of the nonnative speakers in the group were very competent at explaining the common difficulties students would have when translating between English and their own L1. Since my L1 is English, I had to make a decision between Japanese and Spanish. My paper was aptly titled, Translation Problems between Spanish and English. I chose to discuss the difficulties translating between Spanish and English because I felt that Spanish was my second-most familiar written language and would therefore benefit me most in the future.

I believe there were several strengths in my paper. I always made sure to support the statements that I made with examples from reputable sources. I also wanted to ensure that the most frequent problems that occur between Spanish and English were exemplified, such confusion with linguistic features like false cognates and collocation in the respective languages. An example of a false cognate in Spanish is the word xito, which means success but looks like the English word exit. A difficult collocation to get across in Spanish is the English suffix -based, as in, Chicago-based case study, since there is no direct translation that implies the same meaning. Other than a few suggestions, my professor wrote no negative comments on my paper, which gives me hope that this is an area of research I could pursue further. I could improve this paper by doing a survey or interview with people that have to translate between the two languages on a daily basis, such as a professional translator or a firstgeneration American who has a Spanish-speaking family. I believe this would help make the paper more authentic and unique. Another possibility to strengthen my paper would be to give examples from some of the books Ive read in Spanish and had trouble translating. This would give an added element of personal experience to complement the older research. In conclusion, I believe this class was very informative and taught me a great deal about a subject that I previously had very little knowledge about. I was able to take the subconscious lessons I had learned from my experience as a language learner and analyze and reflect on why those problems could have arisen. I would like to continue researching this topic in the future.