I think Khmer who can speak and write good English can translate. But, Khmer are very good at making you believe they speak good English, but in reality they are not understanding fully most of the words being spoken and are just understanding the gist. Hence the inability to translate well. I'm fairly confident that Khmer emigrees that have been through the English host country's education systems would be able to translate from English into Khmer. Mu Sochea for example. Phay - the government Siphon, maybe not so much.ផោមក្លិនស្អុយ wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2019 11:31 amThey can, not particularly well but most Khmer people who read English could make a reasonable effort. (although many Cambodian English speakers are. Speaker only - they struggle to read it)
Many just don't want to as it is difficult and they are worried about getting it wrong
Why can’t Khmers translate into Khmer?
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how so?..i can understand the relative advantage compared to other khmers but a better future in cambodia? since when has cambodia become a bastion for merit?crazyjohn wrote: ↑Sun Mar 10, 2019 4:30 pmI have an 11 year old daughter who has been in Australia for 18 months. Her knowledge of English is amazing, now she is learning Japanese. She could easily do a translation.
Her English would already put her in the top few percent of Khmers who are fluent in English. Kids like this have probably got a better future in Cambodia than Australia.
i would slightly change that to say that your wife has the skills (acquired) and you have the gift (inherited)..SlowJoe wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:52 amTranslating is a gift and it is a gift i do not have. My wife on the other hand who used to be a translator, has the gift and can translate between 4 languages whichever way and whichever language on the fly. I have two native languages and i cant translate between them without great difficulty.
yes and i think it's a general problem of automation which is universal and has the affect of undermining traditional learning..a lot of the stuff that young people text/post these days is just gibberish consisting of a series of characters and far from resembling an actual language..kansaicanuck wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2019 11:57 amYes, I mainly meant writing by hand and remembering proper Kanji is becoming a lost skill. Reading comprehension hasn't fallen nearly as fast as writing but learning the characters go hand-in-hand with learning how to read and write them so it has fallen a bit as well.gavinmac wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2019 10:41 am
Can you explain this a bit more? Why would the explosion in text messaging and internet reading and smart phone use undermine a Japanese kid's ability to read and write in Japanese? Do you mean they can't form the letters any more because no one writes anything by hand? Or are they using too much English and forgetting or not learning Japanese?
I assume Japanese kids are texting each other all day long in Japanese instead of talking on the phone and thus I would think their reading and writing would improve.
As an example when you type Japanese into your cell phone on the keyboard you write it in either hiragana or katakana and when it's written in hiragana the phone will automatically change it into the proper kanji characters or you pick the proper one from a list. So whereas before people had to learn how to hand write each kanji character now a lot of kids can't correctly write these characters properly anymore because all they've done is typed them and picked them from a list. this is fine for daily life and doing assignments on their computers for school but when they have to write tests it's a big problem because they can't kanji they need. Having bad kanji writing skills in Japan is actually quite embarrassing.
This has been a big problem for many high school students who have moved to the west to go to school on Exchange programs as well. If they end up missing last four years of high school in Japan they hardly ever write (pen/paper) in their own language and when they go back to do uni entrance tests their written language skills are subpar.
Older people who grew up writing everything by hand and reading newspapers have a much better grasp of the written language especially. Kind of like how kids in the west cannot write cursive like older generations.
In recent years furigana (where tiny hiragana characters are written on top or beside Kanji) to help people know how to read the is getting much more common but was hardly seen before. *See pic example
part of it reflects i think a general overall decline in literacy which in turn further compounds that decline...
He's been in his room 35 years...time to let him out!
No, i maintain she has the gift. Ive watched her sit in front of a radio casually listening to foreign language programmes while cutting vegetables and now shes fairly fluent and converses with customers. Shes approaching fluency in her 5th and 6th language.badboybubby wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2019 7:08 ami would slightly change that to say that your wife has the skills (acquired) and you have the gift (inherited)..
Me, i went to uni and studied many years of painful concerted effort plus living abroad and i still only speak my native languages comfortably. I have no gift.
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