In which, in the end, the Word was social and with the community
Posted By Kevin Gaugler on November 23, 2008
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Perhaps one of the most recognizable Biblical passages is John 1:1, which marks the beginning of creation: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In most modern Spanish bibles, however, one often sees the word “Verbo” or “Verb” used instead of “Word,” a closer match to the Latin “Verbum”. Sometimes, however, the word, “Palabra” or “Word” is used in Spanish bibles too. Biblios.com offers parallel translations and editions of biblical passages in multiple languages, a fascinating service for enthusiasts of both language and hermeneutics alike. The site highlights the nuances of language and the artfulness of the translator when transposing an idea from one language to another.
Online translation tools do a poor job of capturing such nuance. To demonstrate to my students the inaccuracy of translation tools I often direct them to Yahoo’s BabelFish tool and ask them to translate the word “take” from English to Spanish. The site provides the verb “tomar”, conjugated in the third person singular form of the present indicative tense, i.e. “toma”. Naturally, a one-word equivalent does not recognize the complexity of human expression. Next, I direct my class to WordReference, an online dictionary to perform the same task. The site returns a list of possibilities seven pages long. If the substantial list provided by WordReference still comes short of matching your original intent, the site also provides forums for each word so that its user base can help each other to reach the best translation. The dictionary, therefore, harnesses the collective knowledge of its users to make it’s dictionary more useful. What also makes WordReference powerful is the fact that every word of every definition is clickable, providing and infinite chain of opportunities for building one’s vocabulary. Besides Spanish, WordReference dictionaries are available in French, Italian, German, Russian and English. Wordreference even provides Firefox plugins so that the features of the dictionary can be accessed directly from your browser. I find that once I present to my students the features of BabelFish alongside those of WordReference, they never use BabelFish again.
Other sites have experimented with the idea of creating a social network around words less successfully than WordReference. WordSource, a self-described social dictionary, allows users to express their affinity for a word by giving it a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down or by adding photos and tags associated with that word. In the same spirit, Wordie is a site that lets its users create lists of phrases and words and share them with the community. Although the tool is highly Anglo-centric currently, an influx of world language instructors and students could change this quickly.
Frankly, one of the most promising on-line dictionary projects I’ve found lately is Lingro. The service let’s you click on any word in a web page for the definition in another language. It also remembers the words you looked up and gives you opportunities to categorize and learn the words. The number of languages is limited to English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Swedish and Spanish for now and all the words I looked up were not found in the dictionary but the service gives the users the tools to make the dictionary better by correcting errors or adding new words. I love the fact that I can have students read any on-line text now in Spanish knowing that every word is “clickable”. I predict in a short time, that I’ll need to do a more detailed post on Lingro as it becomes part of the essential language toolbox that I introduce to students.
Besides Lingro for building old-fashion vocabulary lists, my recommendation is Quizlet. It’s easy, it’s free and it’s social. What makes Quizlet different from traditional flashcards and vocabulary lists however, is that one does not do this tedious drilling and killing in isolation, but shares this task with the community. I, for example, created a list of vocabulary around a YouTube video about making tortilla española. Try playing the “space race” game to get a taste of the Quizlet experience. Once that you or your students know about the site, all can use it and share lists and even add it to a Facebook account. What fascinates me about Quizlet in particular is that it was designed by a 15 year-old high school student of French who wanted to design a better way to learn vocabulary. Watch an interview with the founder or a brief introduction to the free service below. In addition, if you are an aficionado of the word in any language we would love to hear about your favorite online dictionaries or vocabulary-related sites. Please share them with our community.
Quizlet’s Andrew Sutherland on The Morning Show
Quizlet Video Demo
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