I led a week-long training session with the help of an interpreter. The audience’s understanding of English varied, and so the interpreter translated my words into Georgian. When you use a second language, your range of expression narrows because you lack all the nuances that your native language provides. And the translation of such non-native speech into a third language can reduce the power of expression further; even a skilled interpreter will inevitably change the meaning.<\/p>\n
The trickiest issue, however, was creating interaction. Discussions become very slow when all the contributions have to be translated. I was also caught off balance when a funny story I told was met with silence\u2014until the interpreter finished retelling it in Georgian, at which point people did laugh. This sort of delay hampers interaction, much like asking a question and not getting an answer till the following day.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the subject of my session was online tools and activities, which made it possible to create multi-lingual environments and foster interaction there. At the same time, my week clearly illustrates how essential a solid knowledge of English is, if you want access to global networks. When presenting MIT<\/a>‘s open learning resources, the deputy director of the Georgian agency commented with wry humor: If we want to keep our jobs, we either have to stop teaching English, or stop teaching anything except English.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I led a week-long training session with the help of an interpreter. The audience’s understanding of English varied, and so the interpreter translated my words into Georgian. When you use a second language, your range of expression narrows because you lack all the nuances that your native language provides. And the translation of such non-native […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,11,12,15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-english-en","7":"category-english","8":"category-wordoftheweek","9":"category-wordoftheweek-en","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1302,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions\/1302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}