[HN Gopher] Phrasebooks are dying out
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Phrasebooks are dying out
Author : helsinkiandrew
Score : 65 points
Date : 2022-11-01 07:11 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| foooobaba wrote:
| Does anyone know of any good translation apps that also help
| facilitate learning?
|
| One problem I face is that I use translator apps to converse with
| some family and (mutual) friends and don't share common language,
| but when I translate a whole sentence or paragraph for example
| it's hard for me to learn the meaning without typing each
| individual word/phrase individually which is tedious, and breaks
| the flow when we are conversing. Furthermore it would be nice to
| be able to keep a record of the conversations (which often take
| place in person) and I would like to be able to go back and sort
| of be able to practice the phrases and conversations I had in the
| past. Mostly just english/french and english/spanish would do for
| me but other languages would be cool too.
| Euphorbium wrote:
| Feels like this was written by AI.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Now that we have advanced language models, standard hack
| commercial writing has fallen into the uncanny valley.
| abecode wrote:
| I went to a conference in Japan two weeks ago and before I
| travelled I got a Lonely Planet phrasebook from a used book
| store.
|
| I did end up using Google Translate on my smartphone more, but
| having a physical book that obviously marks you as someone
| learning the language is a useful and underrated benefit. I had
| 2-3 conversations ('interactions' is probably a better word for
| me actually using the Japanese) over the course of a week that I
| can attribute to the phrasebook, which is somewhat significant
| because at the conference English was the default.
|
| Also if the phrasebook is well organized, it can be a good
| scaffold for keeping the language organized in memory, so it can
| be a kind of a bridge between a simple translation lookup and a
| textbook. It's also like a fanny pack that has some retro appeal.
| Although the phrasebook had a dictionary at the back, it wasn't
| that useful. Having a proper dedicated pocket dictionary was good
| because it had words listed with phrase collocations/examples.
| eesmith wrote:
| The phrasebook I have from the 1950s is rather boring.
|
| Some parts were neat historical relics ("Where can I send a
| telegram?", "How much is it per word?")
|
| The oddest was the part about social life, ending with "Will you
| marry me?"
| myself248 wrote:
| Somewhere around here I have, or possibly I gave to my weird
| uncle years ago, a copy of "the worst-case scenario survival
| handbook", which has mostly-genuine advice for all sorts of
| interesting situations like how to stop a runaway car, how to
| stop a runaway camel, how to survive an avalanche, etc.
|
| In the back is a phrasebook, with a few dozen common phrases
| translated into a handful of potentially-useful languages. It
| includes such gems as "I am sorry, I did not mean to offend
| you", "please take me to a hospital", "why is the water brown",
| "where is the embassy", and the last phrase is "you will never
| take me alive".
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > "Will you marry me?"
|
| Probably written for GIs in Europe post-WW2
| mikestew wrote:
| My Italian phrasebook, printed much more recently than yours,
| has words and phrases for things one might say during sex. I've
| often wondered if I'm expected to remember in the heat of the
| moment, or if I'm allowed a quick glance.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Now I'm imagining a comedy sketch in which two people who
| insist on trying to speak the other's language while out on a
| date end up in bed, but both with their noses in phrasebooks.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even better if they're both in Paris, say, trying to speak
| French, and in the end realizing they both speak perfect
| English.
| bmacho wrote:
| No that would be worse.
| philwelch wrote:
| Yeah, I have a couple of phrase books that have an entire
| section of negotiating your way through an entire hookup,
| with phrases at the end like, "I have an early flight".
| netsharc wrote:
| Everything2 has a list of those: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ev
| erything2+when+having+sex+in&ia=...
|
| Hah, even in Latin
| duskwuff wrote:
| There's a bit of the Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook alive in
| E2's phrasebooks. The Parisian French and Quebec French
| translations have a rather different character from each
| other, for example...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Use a 'site:<domain>' restriction for a more precise
| search:
|
| <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aeverything2.com+when+havi
| ng...>
|
| Raw: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aevery
| thing2.com+when+having+sex+in
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| In the late 1980s I recall picking up a phrasebook for some
| southeast Asian language (Burmese, perhaps?) and seeing this
| cringeworthy phrase: "Muster the coolies by the bungalow."
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I've never used phrasebooks much; "thank you" and "Excuse me, I
| don't speak <their language>, do you speak English?" were quite
| sufficient. "Where is the toilet?" is also essential.
|
| But something that was _very_ useful in Paris was the menu
| translator book, thin enough to carry in your back pocket. I
| could stand outside and look at their menu, and almost all the
| food was listed in the book, which had chapters for meats,
| vegetables, dessert, etc. Then when I went inside I knew what I
| wanted.
|
| I don't doubt there are better apps now, but I can imagine a
| specialized product like this still being handy.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Reminds me of a time years ago, I had just arrived in China,
| had an unexpected overnight stay in a remot-ish city with my
| wife/kids, none of us could (yet) speak/read any Chinese, and
| the restaurant menu had no pictures (and of course no one spoke
| a word of English). This was pre-phone apps and we didn't have
| a phrasebook or pocket dictionary on us (can't remember why we
| didn't at least have that). We randomly pointed to words on the
| page and awaited the results. A whole group of waiters came
| over to our table to see, and there was lots of laughter from
| both sides. I can't actually remember what we ate, but I do
| recall we left untouched a few things that looked highly
| dubious in content.
| mattwad wrote:
| I was just in Colombia, and now you can use Google Lens on
| Android to translate posters and menus. It misses a lot but is
| "good enough" and you can even download languages for use
| offline.
| Shorel wrote:
| I wonder about translations for tamal, tajadas, pandebono or
| "principio".
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I haven't read (or tried) menu translator books for those
| things (whatever they are).
|
| I doubt anyone publishes those books anymore, but you can
| probably find them used.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Literally translating a menu, as Google Lens would do, isn't
| always helpful, though. Many dishes have names which are
| metaphorical (like "pasta primavera" or "drunken noodles"),
| or which allude to the origin of a dish (like "beef
| Stroganoff" or "Cuban sandwich"). Simply knowing what the
| words mean doesn't necessarily help you understand what
| you're going to be eating -- a guide like the one AlbertCory
| is describing can expand those words to more useful
| descriptions.
| Kye wrote:
| Restaurants near furry conventions like to change up their
| menus to match the theme. I wonder how well apps handle
| those.
| fractallyte wrote:
| And here's the original post that introduced Word Lens to the
| world: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2014555
|
| (Before Google acquired it!)
| pessimizer wrote:
| The main problem with phrasebooks is that you often can't make
| intelligible sounds in a language you don't know because you
| don't have the vowels, consonants, or tones. On the other hand,
| phrasebooks provide a useful springboard for use by immersed
| extroverts to communicate with, then be corrected by native
| speakers.
|
| When we're first learning our native languages, we're basically
| using a phrasebook that consists of set single- and double-word
| commands and statements. By learning how to vary and add stuff to
| those set phrases, we leverage ourselves into fluency.
| b800h wrote:
| The author assumes that these phrases portending doom ("they have
| cut off his arm"/"after he vomited his constipation was
| relieved") suggest something about people's attitude to foreign
| cultures. I think it's worth bearing in mind that it probably
| says more about their [largely British] senses of humour.
| ageitgey wrote:
| I remember using phrasebooks in the early 2000s in Europe. They
| were better than nothing, but never as useful as you hoped. If
| you were totally new to a language and didn't know any phrases,
| they best you could hope for was to point out a phrase in the
| book to someone as a way to communicate. And even if you managed
| to say something intelligible, you'd have no idea what the other
| person's response meant.
|
| They mentioned it in the article, but these days the Google
| Translate app completely replaces that role. I've had complex
| interactions (work, baby sitters, house cleaners, repairs, etc)
| with people who spoke zero English through Google Translate's
| interactive translation mode across multiple languages and it
| works amazingly well.
|
| On the other hand, I have a lot of funny memories about phrase
| books and things going wildly wrong. So I guess we will miss out
| those stories in the future.
| triyambakam wrote:
| I think Google Translate is still struggling with Thai language
| as I often get a lot of funny looks when I translate something
| into Thai and the English I get back sounds like a strange
| poem.
|
| Example: in my favorite coffee shop and the barista asks to use
| my phone to translate something. The English that comes out is
| "Drugs are high in the mountains"
|
| But maybe that was what he was actually trying to say, as that
| does seem appropriate for Thailand... However I was not
| inquiring about drugs, and when I was confused and translated
| just "drugs" he vehemently denied talking about that.
| bombcar wrote:
| Slang is still something that confuses the translation apps,
| especially if you have a simple phrase without much context
| clues.
| blowski wrote:
| A common problem was they got the level of formality wrong.
|
| I had a Portuguese one which translated "hi" to the equivalent
| of "Good day, Sir". While a Polish one translated "great,
| thanks" to "fucking brilliant!".
| contingencies wrote:
| Sounds like Polish people contributing to the training corpus
| are simply happier than the Portuguese contributor
| population, who perhaps also lived 100 years prior...
| tomcam wrote:
| > I remember using phrasebooks in the early 2000s in Europe.
| They were better than nothing, but never as useful as you
| hoped.
|
| I had the opposite experience. I found the phrase books to be
| by far the best way to get by, because I didn't have to worry
| too much about conjugation, word genders, and so on. One of
| them was the way I bootstrapped my way into speaking Polish
| with a girlfriend who spoke no English.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| >= _I have a lot of funny memories about phrase books and
| things going wildly wrong_
|
| Exactly this! Phrase books give you just enough of the language
| to get into trouble, but never enough to get you out of it.
| Like third-year Spanish students on a class trip to Mexico.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| What is phasing out phrasebooks isn't AI translation (although it
| helps of course) but the absolute domination of english
| malfist wrote:
| If english was good enough for Jesus, it ought to be good
| enough for everyone!
| malfist wrote:
| Nin Que Ding Ma
| bombela wrote:
| Excuse me kind stranger. But you appear to be writing your
| English wrong.
| [deleted]
| Lio wrote:
| _" My hovercraft is full of eels"_
|
| When I think of phrasebooks I think of Monty Python's Dirty
| Hungarian Phrasebook[1] sketch[2]. I've never been able to bring
| myself to trust them since first seeing it. :P
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Hungarian_Phrasebook
|
| 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1Sw0PDgHU4
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| It's pretty commonly known but this sketch has some inspiration
| from a real life phrase book "English as she is spoke". It was
| written by someone who did not speak English who used a
| Portugese->French and then a French->English dictionary to
| produce the phrasebook. Complete unintentional and amazing
| humor. In line with another great double translation
| masterpiece "Backstroke of the West"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_She_Is_Spoke
|
| It's an amazing read. You can find it free online.
|
| >Mark Twain said of English as She Is Spoke "Nobody can add to
| the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully,
| nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect."
|
| >Stephen Pile mentions this work in The Book of Heroic Failures
| and comments: "Is there anything in conventional English which
| could equal the vividness of 'to craunch a marmoset'?"[7] The
| original has "to craunch the marmoset", an entry under the
| book's "Idiotisms and Proverbs". This is the author's attempt
| to translate the French slang idiomatic expression croquer le
| marmot, used to indicate "waiting patiently for someone to open
| a door",[8] with croquer referring to the "knocking" or
| "rapping" sound, and marmot, a term for the grotesque door
| knockers in vogue at the time.
| m463 wrote:
| You make grins.
|
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/English_As_She_Is_Spoke
| hprotagonist wrote:
| monty python, but even better: three men on the bummel. The
| second half of chapter 3 begins:
|
| _He handed me a small book bound in red cloth. It was a guide to
| English conversation for the use of German travellers. It
| commenced "On a Steam-boat," and terminated "At the Doctor's";
| its longest chapter being devoted to conversation in a railway
| carriage, among, apparently, a compartment load of quarrelsome
| and ill-mannered lunatics: "Can you not get further away from me,
| sir?"--"It is impossible, madam; my neighbour, here, is very
| stout"--"Shall we not endeavour to arrange our legs?"--"Please
| have the goodness to keep your elbows down"--"Pray do not
| inconvenience yourself, madam, if my shoulder is of any
| accommodation to you," whether intended to be said sarcastically
| or not, there was nothing to indicate--"I really must request you
| to move a little, madam, I can hardly breathe," the author's idea
| being, presumably, that by this time the whole party was mixed up
| together on the floor. The chapter concluded with the phrase,
| "Here we are at our destination, God be thanked! (Gott sei
| dank!)" a pious exclamation, which under the circumstances must
| have taken the form of a chorus._
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2183/2183-h/2183-h.htm
| jgalt212 wrote:
| GPT-3 is an infinite phrasebook.
| yosito wrote:
| With machine translation, it's obvious why phrasebooks aren't
| popular anymore. But when I'm learning a new language, I do find
| it helpful to have a list of common phrases to study. While
| machine translation can help you with literal translations of
| things you want to say, you can't have high confidence that the
| translations are the most idiomatic way to express common things.
| Phrasebooks can help you with that.
|
| For example, in Hungarian, the literal translation of "Hi, how
| are you?" is "Szia, hogy vagy?", but you would almost never say
| that when greeting someone. Instead you would say, "Szia, jo
| napot!", which means "Hi, (I wish you a) good day!". If you ask a
| Hungarian how they are doing without any context you're probably
| going to put them off.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > "I non angur ai; tu ta duts angur ai" ("I have nine fingers;
| you have ten"); and "Ia chitt bitto tu jarlom" ("I have an
| intention to kill you").
|
| Essential friendly banter when visiting a place for the first
| time
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| https://archive.ph/SSq5p
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