#English oral

[lilbutmightyenglishsg]

English Oral Course Online: Boost Your Speaking Skills

Looking to enhance your English speaking skills? Join our comprehensive online English oral courses in Singapore and unlock your potential for effective communication in English. Our expert instructors are native English speakers with extensive teaching experience, dedicated to helping you improve your pronunciation, fluency, and overall oral proficiency.

With our online platform, you can conveniently access interactive lessons, practice speaking in real-time, and receive personalized feedback to target your specific areas of improvement. Whether you're a student, a working professional, or simply want to boost your English skills, our courses cater to learners of all levels.

Through engaging activities, role-plays, and discussions, you'll develop the confidence to express yourself fluently and accurately in various situations, such as interviews, presentations, and social interactions.

Don't let language barriers hold you back - enroll in our best English tuition Singapore today and embark on a transformative journey towards mastering English fluency. Start speaking with confidence and unlock new opportunities in your personal and professional life.

[skores]

Calamity Anneeeeeeee

[hedgehog-moss]

Top 3 Annoying Translation Mistakes I’ve Read This Year (from least to most annoying):

Category I - lazy calques that let you feel the original text under the translation, not in a good way

(English -> French) In the French translation of Hugh Howey’s Sand (Outresable), the word “robe” at one point was mistranslated as... robe. Come on! In French that’s a dress, the English “robe” is what we call a robe de chambre. And it matters! The protagonist is knocking at his mother’s door and she opens it wearing a robe rather than clothes, which (in context) suggests that she was having sex; when you translate it as opening the door in a dress, the reader pictures her looking put together and wonders why her teenage son is feeling angrily embarrassed. Sure there will be more context clues in the rest of the paragraph, but your translation is not supposed to make it harder for the reader to form an accurate mental picture.

Category II - clunky sentences that make the text unpleasant or confusing to read

(I almost used the French translation of Julian Fellowes’ Past Imperfect as an example, but I suspect the original of being clunkily written as well. Still I gave a couple of examples of clumsy sentences at the end of my review that really should have been noticed and fixed.)

(Japanese -> French) Some sentences in the French translation of Masuji Ibuse’s 黒い雨 (Pluie noire) were so clumsy I had to re-read them several times, including the very first sentence. In English it is translated very neatly as: “For several years past, S. Shizuma had been aware of his niece Yasuko as a weight on his mind. What was worse, he had a presentiment that the weight was going to remain with him for still more years to come.”

In French we get this: “S. Shizuma avait depuis plusieurs années le cœur lourd au sujet de sa nièce Yasuko ; et pas seulement depuis plusieurs années, car il sentait bien que ce poids indicible doublerait, triplerait avec le temps.”

If the idea is that this past worry is likely to persist or worsen in the future, “et pas seulement depuis plusieurs années” is a confusing (and repetitive!) way of phrasing it. It suggests something that extends further into the past, not the future... In contrast, the Spanish translation uses the exact same “what was worse” phrasing as the English one: “Y, lo que era peor, tenía el presentimiento de que esta carga seguiría agobiándole indeciblemente aún durante muchos años.”

Another example (among many) where both the English and Spanish translations use the same simple phrasing while the French translator seems to get tangled up in her own syntax:

EN: “In the event, though, he proved to have shown more care than wisdom.”

SP: “Sea como sea, el caso es que demostró tener más prudencia que sabiduría.”

FR: “Or, ces doubles précautions avaient produit un effet en quelque sorte aussi stupide qu’elles avaient été avisées [...]” This character tried to do the wise / cautious thing and it resulted in something bad, I get it. But the English & Spanish translations are objectively neater and less syntactically muddled than “his double precautions produced an effect in some way as stupid as they had been wise.”

Category III (the worst) - mistranslations that actually influence the way the reader experiences the story or characters

(French -> English) The English translator of Valérie Perrin’s Trois (Three) seemed either confused by or not able to recognise a lot of French slang, which she translated literally. At one point the word “pisseuses”, a derogatory term for girls (yeah it comes from piss) is translated very literally as girls “who wet themselves.” It’s like if the English word “bitches” was translated as “female dogs” in another language where the term is neutral, instead of using a word with equivalent sexist connotations. The word ‘pisseuses’ here is part of a misogynistic character’s internal narration. He’s an adult man thinking of teenage girls as bitches; instead the inexplicable translation “girls who wet themselves” just leaves you baffled.

The same issue pops up again later on, when the same character thinks of an old woman as “la vieille bigote”—bigot means very religious in French, but here it’s not to be taken literally, it’s used as a generic derogatory term for an old woman. The English translation is “the pious old woman”—too literal ! It sounds almost respectful? Or at the very least neutral, when actually the male narrator is thinking of the woman as “this old hag.” Also their exchange had nothing at all to do with religion so you’re left confused as to how he came to think that she was pious.

It sounds like nitpicking but these are pretty big mistakes in that they not only make things confusing but also impact characterisation. You’re not supposed to turn a character’s negative thoughts into neutral ones. The translator does it again to a female character later on, this time with the opposite effect—making her less sympathetic. She is describing her life (married to a rich but controlling man) as “des vacances à perpétuité.” In English, her life becomes “a never-ending vacation”, thus erasing the very strong connotation of prison carried by the French phrase 'in perpetuity’. You could have found some phrasing around the idea of a “life sentence” maybe—we’re supposed to empathise with this character who consciously experiences her life as a gilded cage, and softening the phrase in the translation reduces the reader’s ability to do that by making it sound like this rich woman is just bored with her life of leisure. Sometimes even small mistranslations can end up having a significant impact on how the reader reacts to a story and its characters.

None of the above are awful translations if you take the book as a whole, but all four of these books are by best-selling authors so if they get so many poorly-translated words or sentences what hope is there for the rest...!

[mishkakagehishka]

But honestly i do judge people who use chatgpt for their college work. Literally if you chose to study something, why would you use ai for your work. If you chose something you want to study, doesn't it feel like a waste to not do your own research and work for essays and the like.

[why-the-heck-not]

But aside from the absolute trainwreck that’s my bachelor’s thesis currently, the C++ course is starting tmrw and I’m kinda excited!! C++ is one of those that’s been on my ”to learn”-list for like 2-3 years now so I’m very happy to finally start (tho I did teach myself the very basics like a year ago, but haven’t used it since and have forgotten basically everything)

[ronanlynchbf]

and then an overwhelming sense of dread apear.

[popsicle-stick]

wanna make a folk costumes of britain zine sooo fuckign bad.........

[sleepy-vix]

it's actually not even funny. my maths grade right now is RIGHT on A- (80%) so if i don't get an A again this term it's going to fall back down to a B and i absolutely can't allow that

*proceeds to do nothing to study for maths*

[meloartist]

Yeah, I also want to see 2 season, especially Destiny and my favorite Delirium, but I'm also curius who will play Remiel and Duma.

[i think this ask was pre-s2 announcement bc 2022 but YEAH]

i'm a HUUUUUUUUUGE duma stan you dont even KNOW

[songsofbloodandwater]

In today's episode of "I set out to write down everything I know about this particular oral tradition, to have an easy-to-access reference in one place and make my procedures more organized"... I decided to write down my notes about duality in my tradition. Thinking it would be something easy to do...

Which made me realize that it's not easy because it's actually a really long discussion. I started writing down everything about hot and cold herbs and hot and cold conditions, then remembered male and female herbs and how those conditions refer to internal imbalances in the body, and then high altitude herbs vs low valley herbs, and their unique properties, and their relationship to Spirits of the land and to our own Spirits and community, and I'm still remembering things. I jot down two or three things and five more pop up in my brain and I hadn't realized I was just trusting my ability to remember all of these things when there's so much to remember. This is going to take a while.

Heck I wanted to put everything about both duality and quaternity in one place and it simply won't be possible. It's just too long. That quaternity post is going to have to wait until I find a way to write down everything about duality and make it make sense, that is, write it in an actually organized and easy-to-read way. To the best of my abilities, at least.

[tropicalfreckles]

Legit if I had the money to travel I would like to go to other countries and learn about their culture, experiences and folklore. I've been obsessed with folklore in general since I was a kid when I also got into mythologies. I would read legends, fairytales, etc; and it was all awesome. I wanted to go to the countries their originated from to learn more.

[acerathia]

"i would die for you." "I would kill for you." okay, but can you listen to me ramble incessantly about my favorite things?

[henry-fox-biggest-stan]

Most English teachers try to be mr keating, and it never works, they just end up looking like they’re trying too hard

But why is that

The reason why mr keating worked was because of Welton

If he went to a public normal school it wouldn’t have worked. Sure his classes would have been fun, but it wouldn’t have had half of the effect than his classes on Welton had.

Because Welton is super strict, the lives of the students are super strict, controlled by parents who want them to be what they couldn’t have been. Mr keating tells them than there’s more than one way to be, to make their own decisions, than not being a doctor or an engineer is fine, than wanting to be an actor or a writer is fine, than at the end of the day, their lives are theirs, to make them theirs because before they notice they will end.

Kids in normal public schools already know that. Sure, some might have more strict parents than others, but they know, they don’t need a teacher to explain it to them, they wouldn’t be realizing anything new.

In Welton, where everything is super strict and their lives don’t really even feel theirs (no matter how strict their parents are, they don’t need to be mr perry, but the fact alone than they are in Welton, a private boarding school, than they put them there specifically to succeed, even Charlie and Knox’s parents want them to be a banker and a lawyer), hearing that come from a teacher’s mouth, while teachers for so long just wanted them to do the opposite, to be quiet to obey to just do all the work without complaining, hearing a teacher, an adult in a position of power over them, tell them than they should, and can choose, that has an effect on them.

[amane-kamisama]

I pass. I passed it. I fucking pass....

HELP MEEEE IDK HOW TO EXPRESS MY FEELINGS FOR THIS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[i-was-bored-so-this-happened]

I keep getting into conversations with people about Hozier and they keep talking about how Irish his new music is and I keep being unable to stop myself from talking about Eat Your Young and how it is very much based on A Modest Proposal by Johnathan Swift which I was studying and writing essays on when Hozier released that song

[enfinizatics]

one of my students is currently doing her nails during the class while answering my questions. the things i let these kids do so they can stay entertained and listen to me……..