Upper education in china

I'm really curious to know how good your Chinese is, and what is the level required for this type of programme? (If you answered it already maybe you could just link to that post.)

Fantastic grades, congratulations! You're too modest, I'm sure the high marks are very well deserved.

16 hours ago, happy_hyaena said:

I'm really curious to know how good your Chinese is, and what is the level required for this type of programme? (If you answered it already maybe you could just link to that post.)

 

I would say 'functional' and that's about it. And that's not just me being modest. By functional I mean, I have no problems understanding anything in class and communicating with professors and completing tasks in translation and interpretation. But I'm lacking in certain registers, for instance, formal register... vocabulary isn't big enough, and lack knowledge in culturally specific things. And I obviously have an accent lol. 

 

I think this level is okay for the program, but if you were higher than functional it would probably be better, but having around my level you can still learn a good amount. Like I mentioned before the class is taught usually in a mix of Chinese and English, unless you have a teacher who would rather just speak Chinese, which I have had.. and tasks are between E-C and C-E,  so I think as long as one of your languages is better you'll have an okay time. There are a handful of my classmates that seem to struggle more than me, and I think its important to note because there is always an assumption that the foreign student will encounter more problems than their chinese classmate, but its simply not true. I think these students have a lower English level than my Chinese, and some of them come from parts in China that have an accent, so those students struggle with Chinese as well. One of my classmates who I ate with last week was looking at the menu, and I remembered she wanted Eggplant last time but got her order mixed up and ended up with tomato egg so I was looking for an eggplant dish for her to order when she mused out loud "番茄是不是茄子?" And i was like No.... its Tomato. And it suddenly dawned on me that last time when she got tomato egg it wasn't because a mix up in the kitchen but because she herself had ordered the wrong thing.  Then I partnered with this other girl who I've kind of worked with before but never in consecutive translation, so we were comparing our notes and I found her listening skills were quite low because she only got the very short beginning of the audio on The year of the Dog, where as I had nearly all the important points. 

 

Then again I think my school is definitely not the greatest. So that might be why this kind of level would be okay for an average school. But probably not appropriate for an outstanding school with an outstanding program. 

Interestingly, going back to your first impressions, your wrote that some of the students were insanely gifted. However, it seems that this perception is now changing. Any comments on that?

2 hours ago, Flickserve said:

Interestingly, going back to your first impressions, your wrote that some of the students were insanely gifted. However, it seems that this perception is now changing. Any comments on that?

 

Yepp! I still feel that way. There are a small handful in our class that are really truly gifted. Our class size is rather large, roughly 40 students, I would say about 5-6 are insanely gifted. The rest are like average and then a small handful that are a bit below that. The gifted students are really good at what they do. Actually for the sight translation class last week, the professor asked me to read the speech as one of the 'insanely gifted' students interpreted (sight translation is a bit like simultaneous) and I heard her interpretation as I was reading, and she really nailed it. I don't think I could do that at all. 

Thank you for this post. It is very interesting to hear about your progress. I appreciate the detailed descriptions you give and also the concrete examples.

 

I cannot use the quote functin on your post so I will just copy and paste.

 

Your quote

"in the speech Mrs. Obama says “parliaments around the world” and he asked the class “parliaments how would we translate that” we had some literal translations for the British parliament, then he elaborated that not all countries used this system and etcetc. There was also a point where she mentioned her husband. Many people translated as 先生, but he asked ‘who is her husband? He’s the president right? We should use 总统先生’. "

 

This teacher sounds very good. I like his examples. In my job I often deal with translators and there is one "error" that keeps appearing. The German text will typicall say "ausland" or "heimat" which means "abroad" and "home country" but when a text is translated the target group is obviously no longer German people (in most cases), yet they translate it directly.  Hence when people outside Germany read "home" or "abroad" they understand something different to the German audience.

Your professor's remark here takes such a scenario into account. Seems you are getting quality teaching.

 

In one of your other posts, you mention there are some "insanely talented" individuals. From reading your posts, I think you are also up there. Above all, the fact that your account is so detailed shows a lot of motivation and interest in the subject. This can come out of pure interest but often it comes from talent which then develops into an interest.

What makes these people you refer to stand out so much? Is it that they are quick when interpreting, their accent, their broad range of vocubulary, their ability to find the exact right term in an instant? (edit: read your previous answer afterwards)

 

I think you mentioned in another post about the memorisation skills of Chinese (ignore this if the post was not from you). I was curious why this was considered a special skill that needed a long time to learn. I was under the impression we all had "so much" storage space the brain for short-term memory items. Learning how to maximise this space surely cannot take years to learn? You obviously have been able to observe this first hand.

 

7 hours ago, grawrt said:

And I obviously have an accent lol. 

Is a foreign accent in Chinese possible if you do not make any tone mistakes? Or do you mean intonation an prosody?

7 hours ago, Tøsen said:

Is a foreign accent in Chinese possible if you do not make any tone mistakes?

Yes. Completely possible and happens all the time. Although there are the so called 4 (5) tones, each tone can take a different level in relation to the tones around it. Tones will often be shortened or cut in half (like what teachers tell you about the half third tone, but can actually happen for all tones, it's less distinct, but easily noticeable to a native speaker). For example, this evening I was corrected when I said …一個人有… all my tones were 'correct', but my 人 included a full 'n' sound at the end, where it should have been softer and glided into the 'you', also the tone was too 'full' (this was probably due to wrong emphasis from the meaning of my full sentence, which I can't remember anymore…)

@tomsima your explanation is really useful. Thanks for that contribution and the concrete example. You seem to have both astute awareness and also people who help you improve by pointing out details like that (your example when someone corrected you - that is a "luxury" having someone prepared to go into that.

14 hours ago, Tøsen said:

I think you mentioned in another post about the memorisation skills of Chinese (ignore this if the post was not from you). I was curious why this was considered a special skill that needed a long time to learn. I was under the impression we all had "so much" storage space the brain for short-term memory items. Learning how to maximise this space surely cannot take years to learn? You obviously have been able to observe this first hand.

 

Hm. Good point. I guess what I want to say is that memorization while yes is a skill that can be learned, in a class with Chinese students who have been using this skill since however long on a daily basis, their ability to memorize in a short period of time is much quicker than the average person. Im not going to use myself as an example because I have exceptionally bad memory, but my friend has a fairly good capacity for memory, but in one of our first classes, our teacher taught us the symbols for short-hand from a long sheet and during the 5 minute break he told us to review it for a short test, everyone took the 'test' at the same time but only two students were called to the board. My friend with a fairly good memory got 2/5, the two Chinese students memorized all 5/5, looking around the classroom, my classmates had 4/5 or 5/5. By the next class (one week later) every student was 100% capable of writing in the shot hand symbols taught. It took my friend another 2 weeks. I never mastered it, but it took me more than half the semester to get used to writing in short hand (and I find now after a winter of no practice i've seem to lose that skill completely hahaha). 

 

I know its just a small example but over the course of the term I've seen a lot of skill with memory that's surpassed anyone I've ever met. But then the con is that they're not very adaptable and don't seem to understand what they're memorizing much of the time. For our sight translation class last term we had to give presentations on news briefs and almost everyone would memorize them, but when my teacher asked them to summarize it was really difficult and they kept going back to their loop of memorization before she lost it. 

 

 

On 05/03/2018 at 10:28 AM, grawrt said:

know its just a small example but over the course of the term I've seen a lot of skill with memory that's surpassed anyone I've ever met. But then the con is that they're not very adaptable and don't seem to understand what they're memorizing much of the time.

 

I guess what you develop in one skill is to the detriment on other skills simply from lack of practice.

On Monday, March 05, 2018 at 3:28 AM, grawrt said:

their ability to memorize in a short period of time is much quicker than the average perso

This is really useful to know.  They then have got some tricks up their sleeve but as any good chinese business person they will probably not share thesecret.

joke aside, I do think you will  always need some Analysis of to create the  neuron connections necessary.

I think the western schooling system probably require students to know some 85-90% of the subject whereas in China it is probably more like 95%, this means they do require more rote learning skills, but can rote learning  also be a talent.?

On Monday, March 05, 2018 at 3:28 AM, grawrt said:

I've seen a lot of skill with memory that's surpassed anyone

Impressed with the content of this observation.