Significant silence (London)

I was doing a translation exercise with Adam.

Students often translate at face value, i.e., if the word order in the source text is SVO (Subject Verb Object), the student will use the same pattern in the target language.  I can’t speak for other languages, but it doesn’t always work like this for Chinese.  

I distinguish between “grammatical usage” and “cultural/social usage” in my teaching.  An example:  “I don’t have enough money today” can be translated into the grammatically-correct Chinese version 我今天没有足够的钱 wǒ jīntiān méiyǒu zúgòu de qián / “I today not have enough of money”.  The more cultural/social usage rendition is:  我今天的钱不够 wǒ jīntiān de qián bù gòu / “I today’s money not enough”.  The focus is on the money, not on me.

The sentence in the passage I gave Adam was:  "My younger brother is a student at the College of Engineering."  This sentence can be translated using the SVO template (My brother is student), which was what Adam produced.  I then tried to get him to come up with a different perspective, i.e., instead of identifying my brother’s status (a student).  Adam couldn’t quite follow what it was I wanted (which was to say what my brother does, i.e., study), so I decided to prompt him with:  “What do you do as a student?”  Long silence.  Most telling, that.

(London, 2013)