Most of the time I have been asked why I cannot do translations between Chinese and English. Well I can do some basic translations or interpretations, however, when things get complex, I just cannot do it. Well, I guess this is the way of how I learn a new language.
Basically, there are two ways of learning a foreign language. One way is you map all aspects of the foreign language into you own native language, letters, words, grammar, even pronunciation. By learning the language this way, you do not need to change the way you’re thinking. You can still use the same process you’re most comfortably with within your head, how well you can master this foreign language depends on how the mapping and translation process within your brain. Inside your brain, you simply build a virtual machine that took the input of the foreign language, translate into your own native language, process them using your own native language, translate it back to the foreign language, then give the output. The other way is you can first learn it by translating and mapping, to help you understand that foreign language. Then you simply build another system in your brain that uses this foreign language for processing. So later on, you have two separate systems that process different languages, natively. Well, I am the later one. I process English natively, that’s why the translation seems so hard to me.
I call the first learning method “Learning by mapping”, and the other one “Learning by Understanding”. There are so many applications in the computer world that adopts those two strategies. One example of “learning by mapping” is the WINE project, that intend to let Windows applications run on windows. WINE takes the windows API and translate them into calls on the Linux API. “Learning by Understanding” is like you have two systems, Windows and Linux at the same time, if one call is on Windows API then, throw them to Windows system, if the call is to Linux API, then throw them to Linux system.
Well, both of the approaches have their pros and cons. The learning speed of learning by mapping can be quite fast, since you only need to construct an intermediate layer tha mapps the foreign language to your familiar thinking language. The drawback of this approach is that the processing speed of this foreign language can be slower, since another translation layer is added. In addition, not everything can be mapped. The learning by understanding can be quite fast in the sense of processing speed, because you built a native system use this new language. However, construct this native system can be very hard. Well, you guys can decide which one suits you best.
Apparently, I am overwhelmed by research work, and start to talking stuff that’s a bit wierd. I knew it…
