Translations

I had an interesting chat with Roberta’s cousin Samuel this afternoon about the size of books here in Brasil after they have been translated into Brasilian Portugues. It’s very strange that books that have 700+ pages in English only have 500+ when translated into Portugues and we were talking about why this is. I think the main reason for this can be found in film subtitles here in Brasil as they are generally very bad and translated into sometimes what I would call baby-talk. Marshmallow from Sao Paulo are one of the worst companies I’ve ever seem when it comes to translating films here. Whole words are mis-translated and sometimes whole sentences of speech – usually from what looks like a lack of attention when the translators listen to the movie soundtrack. I have to confess I never read books in Portugues only in English and I encourage my students to watch or read on English too. Also it seems that translators here in Brasil seem to think that Brazilians need everything translated very simply, sometimes using baby language to translate from English into Portugues, a 200 page difference in a book i think everyone would have to admit is a lot of words. I know some English expressions get shortened down in Portugues to one or two words but from what my English students have told me this shrinking usually changes the meaning of the phrases or expressions completely, its very weird. I always recommend to my advanced students that they read or watch in English and just ask me to explain what they don’t understand instead of relying on sometimes dreadful Portugues translations.

testing, testing..

I finally got quite a few exercises up and running in Quizlet and created the links for them in the students wikis or I created a new Wikispace wiki as in the case of my EPG groups. I got them to take a quick look at the site this morning during the coffee break so they could have a quick look see and ask any question they might have about how to get into the site, using and configuring, etc. The Quizlet site is very simple to use and setup, the students only need is to register in the site to use the learn function. I will find out next weekend how they got on with it. They have my email and phone no just in case they want to call me about it. I think it’ll be a lot of fun for them to try it out. I have some to create for my MEC2 group this weekend, it’ll only take a short amount of time though. The site is really fast and does all of the hard work for me so by Monday morning I’ll have it all sorted out and ready to give the links to my students

Also this weekend I have to remember to pick up the stuff to make a cake for my kids group at Cambridge. I thought I’d get Roberta to give me a hand to knock one out Sunday night to take there Monday with some soft drink, just for a surprise   They have been working hard recently so I think it’ll be a nice treat for them. I’ll try to remember to take the camera with me to get some snaps of them, if they aren’t camera shy, of course   I like baking cakes and stuff for the students, it’s a nice way to relax with them after they’ve been working hard during the semester. Sometimes if we are ahead of the schedule we watch a movie in English and have a lanche or snack. This always goes down really well, students love watching movies hahahaha!! Usually we watch comedies or action movies, although I’m sure the girls would watch romance if the boys would let them

First post…

Today I finally found time to get into WordPress and post my first post I was using Blogger but decided to have a change and also I want to use wordpress with some of my students as part of trying out some Web 2.0 stuff. I’ve been interested in using Web 2.0 sites in class for quite some time, mainly my students tend to use Orkut a lot here in Brasil, but it’s not really a good social networking site – lots of viruses and stuff. In the blogroll I listed a few that I’m really into at the moment. Twitter is one of my favorites, it’s very addictive.

 This afternoon all of the groups of students at CCAA had a lanche (a snack break?). It was a lot of fun – lots of Coca Cola – and I took my camera to take a couple of photos… and forget to use it hahahaha!! Never mind, they have these things quite often. All the classes on Friday afternoons are three hour classes so its nice to have a break and eat something half way through. My class on Friday afternoon is MEC (Master English Course) and mainly teenagers, they are a lot of fun. They’ve been my students for quite some time and we are comfortable with one another. I teach mainly advanced groups, as well as business English and conversation classes. When we have one of these Roberta and I usually bake a cake to take along, this time was chocolate and lemon cream, there was none left at the end so I guess everyone liked it I haven’t eaten anything this evening after all the food from earlier on, I think it’ll just be liquid food like coffee or tea for the rest of the day