Learning Translation: Learning English and French

I learn English for work and I continue reading French - sometimes watching TV5 Monde for pleasure. Truth be told, I used French for my graduate degree but stopped using it since end 2007. That is the reason I am writing only in English. Now it starts to become very unusual for me to open my mouth and begin a conversation in French. Though, I am happy that I am still able to read it properly. Japanese anime series are very popular these days. The fansubs (subtitling by fans) provide quality translation for those who do not speak Japanese to comprehend the series. I consider myself lucky enough to watch them in the original audio - Japanese - and read the subtitles in sometimes English, sometimes French and sometimes both. I often purposely click the pause button to be able to spot the language differences and learn them. Though the progress is slow, it surely is a reliable way to acquire the real sense of what the characters are saying. It helps learning words that are used in everyday language. Cambodia used to be basically francophone. That changes over time. Even French working in the country have to use English for communication in their office. But this phenomenon does not change the fact that French language still exists here. Lucky enough, a few friends of mine brilliantly speak both English and French (even better than I do). Though one of them used to question me about one thing: when drafting a document, the term the undersigned appear to be problematic. the undersigned as in We, the undersigned, blah blah blah. When I told the person to put the, he responded that in French, there is no article used, as in Je, [le] sousign, blah blah blah. And he asked: are you sure to put the? I have never noticed it until that he threw that very question at me. I thought back and answered that I am not sure about grammatical rules but that I am sure I used to hear and see it that way in both languages. That is the way I learn a language after all. I used to be a grammar-focused student and changed myself to more culture-focused and stopped asking the why questions for grammar. The best analogy that I gave him that time was: I am a student. In French, I am pretty sure they say: Je suis [un] tudiant. You do not need to ask for explanation from native speakers. The rule is simple: observe, remember and then use it the way a child does. I like surfing the internet. Whenever possible, I look for websites that are bilingual. I first came across www.linguee.fr which provides suggestions for translation French-English. It is very resourceful. Another website that I can learn from, if I have boring time to kill, is http://www.pm.gc.ca/ . The .ca already tells that it is Canadian. Many articles are well written in both English and French. What I am trying to say is, for translation purpose, learning one additional language also helps us understand things easier and faster. I used to help one colleague to translate a Khmer official letter to English containing the word . She also learns both French and English. She thought if it is objet in French, it should be object in English. But something crossed our mind. In English letters, we summarize the meaning in the subject line and there is no object line. But it is still true that we use objet in French letters. So the answer must be the culture differences. When we learn one language we learn the culture of that language. Finally, we agreed that is objet in French and is subject and not object in English. Phnom Penh, 23 March 2012 THARA Rathvisal

Translation:experience3