Jerome's Words: Animator vs. Animateur

This week’s edition of Jerome’s Words will look at another coupling that is often found misused by our in-house translators. As you know, French being the official language here in Quebec, lexical interference is often a common occurrence in our agency’s translations.

Today’s words are Animator vs. Animateur. Often mistranslated in a Quebec English context, these false friends hold very different meanings. Consulting our trusty Canadian Oxford, we see that while an animator is a person who makes animated films, an animateur is someone coordinating or acting as a driving force behind an activity. 

What, you don’t believe people could mistake the two? Take the following example from the Ville de Montréal’s website, which manages to do just that:

In this respect, their enthusiasm was most eloquent: they liked the warm welcome, the skill of the animator in promoting discussion, the participants...

Language involves many levels and components, and as people working in the translation business it is our responsibility to correctly interpret the source text and find accurate counterparts for our target language. In this case, it may be hard, but the Montréal Gazette comes to the rescue:

The Montreal animator/director was in the midst of writing his memoirs, a good portion of which would focus on The Sweater (1980), his iconic adaptation of Roch Carrier’s short story.

As is true for all false friends covered in this blog previously, the case of animator vs. animateur begs to be taken seriously. Be honest, did you ever think about the difference before? Perhaps you have, but mostly likely not. 

This is what we try to achieve with these blog posts, to bring greater awareness into our translation family. We thus hope to have animated you enough so that next time you encounter animator or animateur, you can differentiate them correctly.

Finished with the Dutch Tree: A Review

So, it's been three months to the day since the launch of the Dutch course! I myself started Dutch on here only a couple of days after the launch and have been feverously at it ever since. Today I've finally done it: I've conquered the Dutch Tree!
  

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the entire Dutch Team for their hard work and effort! Jullie zijn geweldig en verdienen veel meer lof!  At the same time I hope it's okay if I write up a small review of the experience I had while completing this course.

When I first joined Duolingo my main purpose was to freshen up my French and maybe work on my Spanish, while waiting for the Swedish course to eventually come out. Well, you can see how well that worked out by the little flags next to my name on here. :D

After having finished all the trees of the other languages, I could barely wait for the Dutch course to come out. Finally a non-romance language for me to try out, yay!

Being already fluent in German and English, Dutch was (and still is) a breath of fresh air! Learning it sometimes reminds me of when I first started learning English. The similarities to my native language are so close, and yet the differences so odd and "alien" sometimes, that learning about the Dutch language and culture has become almost an obsession for me.

There are some things in Dutch that remind me a lot of my native language of Swiss-German, where they both seemed to have retained things that High German has dropped. Just the fact that a lot of Dutch words are of French origin, like in Swiss-German, is hitting my happy gland every time! :)

For a brief review of the Dutch course: First of all, you guys are amazing! I had a lot of fun working my way through the tree and getting to know it in and out through practice, practice, practice. I especially loved the last two skills. As I'm sure other people have already pointed out, giving us a way to learn about Dutch geography and food like that is fantastic!

There are still a lot of sentences that need more correct translations and that cause some frustration here and there. There's also some issues with typos not being recognized as such, but I'm not sure if that's a problem that can be fixed all that well. All in all, this is still a Beta course, and problems like those are only natural and will be taken care of with time, I'm sure.

I can't wait for Dutch immersion to launch eventually and to be able to translate some articles through that! In the meantime, I will continue making visits to the reverse course and the immersion section there.

I have been listening to Dutch radio for a while now (lang leve Radio 4!), and have just ordered my first Dutch book, which I shall read with pleasure! 

For you see, my Dutch journey isn't over yet! Mijn reis van het leren van Nederlands is nog lang niet voorbij! :)

My Three Days in Paris.

Hey fellow language enthusiasts!

I was in Paris for three days this week in order to have an immigration interview with the Québec Authorities. I wanted to share some insight with you guys about my trip. At the same time, as always, let me take this opportunity to once again thank the amazing Duolingo team for putting together this website, and for their great work!

I arrived at CDG on Wednesday morning and found my hotel some 300 meters from the Place de l'Étoile! I preceded to have a fantastic day, strolling down the Champs-Élysées, climbing up the Arc de Triomphe to take a look at the city from atop.

Like always, I found myself having a hard time adjusting to the sudden "change of language", but after about a half a day or so, I got more confident and I started to abandon my anglophone roots and address people in French. It's especially hard in a place like Paris, where most of the locals speak English to begin with, but it's always well worth the effort trying to speak to the locals in their native tongue.

As mentioned, the main reason for my trip to Paris was my interview with the Québec Authorities on Thursday. I had begun preparing for this interview almost half a year ago, but I still couldn't help myself from being nervous about it. Especially once the day of the interview came rolling in! There's always a lot at stake when it comes to immigration, after all.

One of the main factors of the interview was to determine my English and French language skills. Since English is my stronger language, I expected the interview to mainly take place in English, with only a few sentences in French to see how I would cope with them.

Well, as it turns out, almost three-thirds of the interview were held in French! For the mere fact that it went so well in French that we didn't even bother switching to English until around halfway through. And even then we switched back to French at the end to finalize the interview and to say our good-byes.

It went very well, to say the least, and it was an eye-opening experience:

To all the people out there who are too self-conscious and too shy about their language skills to practice them in the real world, try to jump your shadow! I know it's very hard sometimes -- it certainly took me a long time myself with French -- but it's well worth it! Even if it's just in baby steps, practicing your target language in a real-life environment is always very helpful. :)

I am now exited to announce that I am ever so closer to being able to call myself truly "trilingual". I'm not quite there yet with French (I have high standards when it comes to languages, you must know), but hopefully I'll reach my goal of being fully fluent in another year or two, once I've been able to finally settle and work in Montréal for good.

The biggest thing this whole trip has taught and shown me is that in language learning there is and will always be one huge decisive factor that comes into play. Yes, regular exercise and practice is important, so is determination and self-control. All these things need to be there. But the one big factor that's always gonna make a difference in learning a language is this: Time.

If I look at myself five years ago, where I was with my French, as well as my other languages, and then I look at myself now, all the trouble, all the hard work that went into it has been well worth it in the end. If you find yourself struggling, or if you're even on the brink of giving up and abandoning a language altogether, just try to imagine yourself in five, ten years from now and think where you'll be then. It's a nice picture, isn't it? :)

Anyway, to make a long story short, I had an pleasant three days in Paris! I hope you guys are having just as pleasant a time and hopefully an enjoyable weekend! Happy language learning everyone!

My One Year Duoversary!

Today is my One Year Anniversary on Duolingo! Yippee!

It's been a while since I posted my most recent milestone. Today I have the pleasure of announcing another one of my milestones and share it with the community:

My 365th day on Duolingo!

It has been an amazing year full of language learning, exploring of new foreign cultures, and broadening my horizons in a general sense. As I said before, Duolingo has certainly changed my life for the better. I can't wait to start my second year on here tomorrow!

Concerning my current progress: I am proud say that I finished my Portuguese tree about a week ago. It was the last one of the original "for English-speakers" trees that I had yet to conquer. I will now divide my time between refreshing the "old" languages and continuing to climb the steep hill that is the wonderful Dutch tree. It's amazing to be able to finally learn a non-Romance language on here! I'm enjoying myself a lot!

I hope you guys are having as much of a blast with being a member of Duolingo as I am!

My Experience with Duolingo

I don't know how many people out there have heard of Duolingo. Me, hearing about it has changed my life. I would like to share some of my experience with it.

It all started some 317 days ago. According to my official Duolingo streak, that is. I don't exactly remember how I came across Duolingo at first, but somehow I did. And I was hooked from the get-go.

First, let me tell you a little bit about my experience with language learning in general. I've always had a keen interest in languages and foreign cultures. When I was a young chap, I taught myself English for the sheer hell of it. Granted, I had relatives in the States and upon growing up in Switzerland you are bound to be exposed to American culture, but still, to this day I don't quite understand how I pulled off learning English as well and as fast as I did all by myself. 

Other than English, I didn't have all that much interest in other languages when I was very young. It's a shame, really. We had mandatory French classes where I grew up. But how I dreaded, even hated them! I couldn't stand the sight or sound of it! So when the time came, when we reached grade eight and French was no longer mandatory, I chose to play hoops with my good buddy instead, while my classmates bit their teeth out on French and got ahead in life. 

It wasn't until some years later that I was interested in languages again. At first I tried my luck with Spanish, but that didn't last very long. I gave Russian a chance, but soon abandoned it as quickly. Finally I settled on French. Oh the dreaded and hated language of my youth!

At first I didn't exactly know how to approach learning a new language. What had been so easy for English turned out to be far harder for French. I spent a year living in Paris, France in 2009, and eventually started moving to Montréal, Canada a while ago. Throughout all of this, my French steadily progressed, but at a slow pace.

Then I found Duolingo. I finished the French tree on Duolingo in around 30 days, if memory serves me right. I fell in love with it right away. It is so addictive! I learned more about French grammar from Duolingo than anywhere else before.

I kept my tree golden, did a lot of immersion, practiced, practiced, practiced, until I had reached a point where Duolingo could no longer help me. I now mainly rely on other sources and real life experiences to further my French.

So after that I found myself a little bored. Yes, I had conquered French on Duolingo! I had also had my fun with the German and English trees, reaching level 25 in both those languages. "But what's next?" I asked myself. Well, let's give Spanish a go!

When I started the Spanish tree on Duolingo, I had some previous knowledge of the language, but nothing too fancy. I basically started from scratch. And this is where Duolingo's magic comes in. It took me around half a year to finish the Spanish tree. I learned quite a lot. Starting from nothing, I would say I am now at a A2 level. I can read most things, but have yet to actually hold a real conversation with a Spanish speaker.

Keeping my Spanish tree golden, doing my fair share of immersion, I even started to follow the Spanish-speaking forums on Duolingo and read what the Spanish speakers were up to. But the honest truth is that after a while, Duolingo has done it's work and it's time to move on.

My next conquest, I decided, would be Italian. I've never had any incentive to learn Italian in the past. It is one of the rare cultures and a languages that I cannot identify myself with, for whatever reason. But, hell, here I have this website that teaches languages for free! Why not give it a shot?

I finished my Italian tree in around three months, fast-tracking it a little bit here and there. I am by no means an expert in Italian now that I finished my tree and reached the top level, but I have a good understanding of its grammar and I can read pretty much any text with the help of a dictionary.

Immediately after I finished Italian, I had to see what Portuguese was all about. This would make it the last of the current languages I had yet to discover on Duolingo

I am currently crawling up the Portuguese for Spanish speakers tree. It's an amazing way to learn Portuguese in my opinion, as it gives you a chance to see the differences between the two languages, and indeed the vast similarities. This way you also limit any confusion when learning multiple languages.

It will probably take me another month or two to finish my Portuguese tree, but being the lunatic that I am I wanted to at least reach Level 25 as soon as could. Just for the mere reason of completing Duolingo before all the new languages are released. Here's the end product of my journey so far:

 

But my journey isn't over. Soon there's a new batch of languages released on Duolingo:

Swedish, you lovely northern gal! 

And Dutch, sister of my mother tongue!

I'll be waiting for you guys with hopeful smiles!

Together we'll see where this Duolingo journey will lead!

My First Blog Post

I have been here before, finding myself creating a blog, going as far as to actually write down a silly first post to see what it would look and feel like. It never amounted to much. I came across my old profile that I have here by accident today and found myself retracing the same steps I took in the past; setting up a blog spot, giving it a name, choosing a design, trying to think of a possible theme. This time I feel like it could actually go somewhere, but who knows.

Sitting here in my room in Switzerland, at 03:29 in the morning, it feels rather calming to write down some words. Maybe nobody will ever read these pages. Probably so. Or perhaps someday somebody will come across this and find it interesting. However it may turn out, it is putting me in a peaceful mood, creating something like this, even though I don't really have anything to write about that people would deem interesting.