How does literal translation help in your language learning process?
Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation when we just want to know the meaning of the word itself, but specially when learning idioms, and slang, in general, most of the phrases in the target language won't be exactly the same as in our first language, this is when the literal translation betrays us and doesn't help as it's expected to do it. What do you guys think, is it better to find equivalent phrases and words to get closer to the real meaning in the target language even when the translation could go way far from its literal meaning? or do you think helps better to literally translate each word in a sentence? Please, leave your comment according to your own experience learning your second or third language, what has worked better for each of you? Thanks

Question

How does literal translation help in your language learning process?
Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation when we just want to know the meaning of the word itself, but specially when learning idioms, and slang, in general, most of the phrases in the target language won't be exactly the same as in our first language, this is when the literal translation betrays us and doesn't help as it's expected to do it. What do you guys think, is it better to find equivalent phrases and words to get closer to the real meaning in the target language even when the translation could go way far from its literal meaning? or do you think helps better to literally translate each word in a sentence? Please, leave your comment according to your own experience learning your second or third language, what has worked better for each of you?  Thanks

Answer

You will have to get as close to the meaning as possible, but translating each word exactly won't give you a true meaning of the idom.

Example :   A common English idiom is  Every dog has its day.

If you translate that word for word it would come out as  :  Cada perro tiene su dia.   That may or may not mean a thing to a Spansh speaking person.

Answers · 1

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