Job Discussion Forums

[MO39]

I will now confess to having used translation to find the Spanish equivalent of "avoid like the plague" . According to my favorite on-line dictionary, "it's to be avoided like the plague" is "de esto hay que huir como de la peste".

[El Gallo]

I was just talking to my mother in the States and told her my snowy cable TV service is "chafamex"

[wildchild]

i asked a boy and girl if they were "brothers"... they reminded me that we have word for that already, 'sibling'.

[jillford64]

I've been back in the US for more than a year already and I still have to fight the urge to kiss all my coworkers on the cheek every morning. Such a lovely custom. I know it isn't peculiar to Mexico, but until I lived in Mexico I never got the hang of it. People in the US seem cold and distant to me now.

I recently started teaching technical writing at the company where I work, which is the first time I've taught anything since I returned from Mexico. At the end of the first class I actually registered surprise that I had to erase the whiteboard myself. In Mexico one of the students would always ask if they could erase the board.

[TheLongWayHome]

I don't see any problem with a little 'translation help' here and there as if you look closely at students' output, most of it could be classed as a (bad) translation attempt anyway. This can still be done within an English only environment. It's when the students become reliant on the teacher for their translations that no real language learning/retention takes place. If you supply the translation, it goes in one ear or it serves a purpose in that moment, then out the other. There's no meaningful way it will get into their long term memory.

Besides students end up asking you how to translate words like conveneciero, gandalla, chismosa, amarillista, malinchista, chafa, huevon etc. and miss the point of learning how those things are expressed in English.