つかえる英会話Daily / Travel

Claire: Here’s a question from our reader: Dr. Sutherland said it’s a good idea to copy a whole sentence or phrase from books etc. and put them in vocab books. He also said we should use our native language when studying a foreign language. Should we put translations when copying sentences and phrases in our vocab books?

Sutherland: That’s a very good point. As a general rule, I advise her…is it her?

Claire: Yes, it’s Miss.

Sutherland: OK. I advise the lady not to include translations, when it comes to sentences and phrases. This is because these phrases and sentences often include idiomatic expressions, many of which would not lend themselves to literal translation.

Claire: I see.

Sutherland: “Lend itself to” is a good example. It means “adapt easily to”. Suppose I’m a Japanese native speaker who is studying English and comes across “lend itself to” when reading your magazine, this interview. The first thing I do is to look it up in an English-Japanese dictionary, which tells me the phrase means “ni-tekishite-iru”. OK. I got it. Next, I copy the whole sentence, or part of the sentence, which would be “expressions, many of which would not lend themselves to literal translation”. By copying the context, I would know, for later use, “lend itself to” should have such and such a subject, and the word “to” is to be followed by a noun.

Claire: Yes.

Sutherland: And I wouldn’t put its Japanese translation along with the original phrase, because I don’t want to be thinking in Japanese when I study it later…in other words, I want to grasp its meaning not through its translation but as a kind of nonverbal experience. You know what I mean?