The Outline

1. The notion of bilingualism

2. Types of bilingualism

3. Are bilingualism and translation the same?

The short content of the lesson

A good translator is by definition bilingual. The opposite is not necessarily true, however. A born and bred bilingual will still need two things to become a translator: first, the skills and experience necessary for translation; second, knowledge of the field in which he or she will translate. The skills and experience for translation include the ability to write well in the target language, the ability to read and understand the source language material thoroughly, and the ability to work with the latest word-processing and communications hardware and software.

• What does it mean to say “somebodyis bilingual”?

Many people speak more than one language. A bilingual person is someone who speaks two languages.

A person who speaks more than two languages is called 'multilingual' (although the term 'bilingualism' can be used for both situations). Multilingualism isn't unusual; in fact, it's the norm for most of the world's societies. It's possible for a person to know and use three, four, or even more languages fluently. But level of language proficiency is different.The mostinterestingexample of plural society presentsthe Republic of India. In India, nearly three times as populous as the former Soviet Union but occupying an area only one seventh as large, and one third as the United States but with a population of over a billion, India is one of the most multilingual countries of the world. According to the 1961 Indian census, the 1,019 mother tongues reported by the country’s citizens are assignable to 199 languages belonging to four language families. The country’s constitution recognizes fourteen languages plus ancient classical Sanskrit as national languages and three more as additional administrative languages, English among them. In a country where many languages are spoken but not all enjoy the same degree of prestige, bilingualism, multilingualism and diglossia are of common occurrence. For interethnic oral communication of an informal nature, Hindi or Urdu is used to a varying degree throughout the country (the two are very similar in their colloquial forms, but Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, Urdu in a modified form of Arabic script). For formal and written communication, English (its South Asian variety) is used to a great extent. When India became independent in 1947, the official use of English was intended to be only temporary. But the need for English continues and in some respects has even increased. For example, to translate technical and scientific works into Hindi would be a nearly impossible task. Today, half a century after India gained independence, knowledge of English is still considered indispensable for high government positions, and although only a very small percentage of the population speaks and reads English, Indians with a knowledge of English tend to be the cultural, economic and political leaders.

It’s interesting to know what languages are taught in Indian educational institutions? In secondary schools students are taught the regional language, Hindi and English (and in many instances their mother tongue is yet a forth language or local dialect). So the three language formula is observed in India

The most common instance of multilingualism is bilingualism, characterized by the ability to speak two languages. Not everyone agrees on definition of this term. Strictly speaking, bilinguals are individuals who have complete and equal command of two languages in all situations – in other words, those who are a bilingual, who pass for native more loosely, extending to those who can spontaneously produce meaningful utterance in a language other than their first.

Relatively stable bilingualism characterizes situation in Switzerland, which accords national status to four languages – German, French, Italian, and Romansh – and where bilingualism is common and trilingualism far more rare. At the same time, none of the four languages thrives at the expense of others despite the widely different percentages of their habitual speakers (German with over 65 percent, Romansh with less than 1 percent). In Canada, which in 1969 granted official status to both French and English, most bilingual Canadians live in the province of Quebec, where a large majority (over 81 percent in 1986) consider themselves French Canadians and are on guard against the spread of English at the expense of French, even though a great many of them (about 38%) speak both languages. A particularly interesting case of multilingualism exists among the Native Americans of northwestern Brazil and adjacent part of Colombia. Almost every member of at last twenty different tribes in a culturally homogeneous area is fluent in three, four, or more regional languages. The source of this phenomenon is strict tribal exogamy, a custom requiring marriage partners to be from different tribes, making multilingualism the cultural norm rather than the exception. Children first learn their parents’ languages, acquire two or more additional ones during adolescence, and often learn still others in adulthood.

However, English, the mother tongue of about 375 million speakers and the official or semiofficial language serving an additional billion people in the world, appears today to have little if any serious competition.

People whose mother tongue is English have a great advantage over speakers of other languages. Not only English is the official or unofficial language in some eighty countries, but it also favored as the language of international congresses, commercial negotiations, science journals, popular music, sports, civil aviation, diplomacy, technology and industry, and other undertakings or activities involving worldwide participation. In short, English has become the world’s number-one second language, even though resistance to it is growing in some parts of the Third World.

The primacy of English is of relatively recent date, deriving from the political, economic, scientific, and technological role the United States has come to play in the decades following World War II.

How do people become bilingual?

People may become bilingual either by acquiring two languages at the same time in childhood or by learning a second language sometime after acquiring their first language. Many bilingual people grow up speaking two languages. Often in America such people are the children of immigrants; these children grow up speaking their parents' native language in their childhood home while speaking English at school. Many bilinguals, however, are not immigrants; it is not uncommon for people born in the U.S. to speak English at school or work and another language at home. Children can also become bilingual if their parents speak more than one language to them, or if some other significant person in their life (such as a grandparent or caretaker) speaks to them consistently in another language. Sometimes a child will grow up in a household in which each parent speaks a different language; in that case, the child may learn to speak to each parent in that parent's language.

Sequential bilingualism occurs when children use their knowledge of and experience with a first language to rapidly acquire a second language. The first language may influence the way in which they learn and use their second language. Learning the second language is easier for children if the sounds, words, and vocabulary of the languages are similar.

Bilingual language development usually proceeds more smoothly when both languages are introduced early and simultaneously. When the parents each use a different language with their child, the child is less likely to experience language confusion. Research indicates that there are numerous advantages to bilingualism. Bilingualism has been reported to improve the following skills:

• verbal and linguistic abilities

• general reasoning

• concept formation

• divergent thinking

• metalinguistic skills, the ability to analyze and talk about language and control language processing

These abilities are important for reading development in young children and may be a prerequisite for later learning to read and write in a new language.

Types of bilingualism

• Enforced bilingualism which develops in migratory contexts leading to different sub-types;

• Elitistbilingualism which develops through bilingual education in the family;

• Instructed bilingualism which develops through the teaching of foreignlanguages in theclassroom;

• Geographically or socially induced bilingualism which develops because a person lives in a regional or social context in which several languages are spoken.

Bilingualism has a positive influence on cognition especially with elitist bilinguals.

The type of bilingualism influences the learning of another language.

Competence in the learner’s two languages plays an important role in learning another language

• Promoting competence in thelearner‘stwolanguagesenhancesthelanguagelearningabilitieswithrespecttoanotherlanguage

• Highly competent bilinguals have a specificallydevelopedabilitytorecognisestructuresandfunctionsofnewlanguages

While the process of multilingual communicative competence formation there are the following difficulties [5]:

• Contacts of different language systems;

• Language interferences;

• Absence of efficient multilingual instruction at all.

So, how are contacts of different language systems occurred? There are some cases of this language phenomena, observed by the linguists. They are:

A) Substitution of one language by other one while instruction - language shift, for example, when pupils of Kazakh nation, who speak fluently Kazakh go to Russian school. In some period the forget their native language;

B) Two languages can be used in turns depending on the requirements of situation – switching from one language into another one and vice versa. This case is observed mostly in the professional activity of language specialists and all others who approach language use conscientiously;

C) Two languages are merging into one language system while instruction, for example, the person uses both languages as one as it shown in TV-program “Our Kazasha”;

While contacts of different language systems it’s necessary to note language interferences which are on the following level:

• Phonetic interference (intonation, stress, sounds);

• Grammar interference (sentence structure, articles, endings and so on);

• Lexical interference (homonyms, false fiends of translator).

All these cases should be preliminary thought and avoided by the teacher while multilingual instruction.

Questions for discussions:

1. What does bilingualism mean?

2. How is bilingualism developed in society?

3. What countries are examples of bilingualism?

4. What are main problems of bilingualism?

Glossary

English	Kazakh	Russian
divergent		Расходящий
Enforced bilingualism		Вынужденный
Elitistbilingualism		Элитарный
language shift		Языковой сдвиг
switching		Переключение
merging		Слияние

Student's individual work:

1. Make an individual research of bilingualism.

Office Hours:

1. What is interconnection between bilingualism and translation?

2. What are main characteristic features of bilingualism in Kazakhstan?

Literature:

Main:

1. 1 Alan Davies. A Glossary of Applied Linguistics.– Edinburg University Press, 2005.

2. Пыриков Е.Г. Коммуникативные аспекты перевода и терминология: метод.пособие. – М.: Всерос. центр переводов, 1992. – С. 30 -65

3. Zdenek Salzmann. Language, culture, and society. An introduction to linguistic anthropology. Thirdeditions. – WestviewPress, 2004, Pp. 30-37.

Additional:

4.Касымова Г.М. Культура профессионального общения будущего переводчика. Учебное пособие по спецкурсу. – Тараз, 2004. - С.22-27.

5.Барышников Н.В. Дидактика многоязычия // Вестник ПГЛУ. Научный журнал. 2003, №3, с. 11-16.

Kazakh American University HAND-OUTS Discipline – Practical work on Culture of Speech Communication Academic year : 2013 - 2014 Number of credits – 2 Practical lesson№ 9-10: Dialect, idiolect Department “General Education and Humanities” Academic Professor- G.M. Kassymova Translation Studies Students 2-year