Well, I must say I know Russian but haven't been in touch with this language for many years now, but I don't know Ukrainian. I was reading the news from Kiev and was listening to people speaking this language and I found out a lot of similarities between Polish-Ukraininian and Ukrainian-Russian. I was just picking up the words and expressions I could understand very well first and after a few days of - let's say -half-an hour of such practice I could fully understand everything in Ukrainian news and Russian as well. I didn,t use any technical devices, just the oldest way of learning an unknown language -by listening and piecing things altogeter. Anyway -these are the languages of the same group -Slavonic languages -it may make things easier.

Well, both Google and Bing Translate have each of the languages you mention. You could simply go to news sites in each language and hit "translate".

You'd probably need to figure out political differences between sites in a language and maybe follow several contrasting ones. Systems exist that will follow events and generate summaries; I'm not aware of any that are "free", but maybe someone does.

Parmi les 4 compétences, la compréhension écrite est celle où les théories psycholinguistiques ont eu le plus d'effets sur la production de démarches (voire d'outils informatiques). La simple acquisition lexicale (par automatismes) semble insuffisante pour établir de bonnes pratiques de lecture, l'appropriation constructive est un processus qui associe plusieurs démarches du sujet : le contexte et le cotexte permettent d'inférer le sens d’un mot. D'abord par hypothèses, ensuite en revenant sur des passages déjà lus, voire en évitant un mot inhibiteur. Voir les travaux des acquisitionnistes et des cognitivistes, à commencer par les travaux de Brasche, H.P. mais aussi l’approche constructiviste individuelle, dérivée de la théorie de Piaget, qui focalise sur l’activité du sujet ( la construction des connaissances est abordée comme un ensemble de processus d’“ assimilation ” des informations nouvelles aux schèmes anciens. Les connaissances nouvelles qui en résultent constituent les nouveaux objets de pensée sur lesquels les sujets s’appuient pour agir et développer de nouveaux schèmes. Ces travaux sont relativement anciens (années 1980-1990)

D’autres recherches plus récentes dans le domaine de la compréhension écrite s’appuient sur la proximité entre la L1 et la L2. À partir de l'intercompréhension (IC). Cette démarche a un double objectif didactique et psycholinguistique, l’activité métacognitive du sujet étant à la fois fortement encouragée et observée. Les objectifs sont : optimisation de la parenté linguistique et des pré-connaissances linguistiques et culturelles, prise de conscience du profil du sujet “ comprenant ” à travers ses stratégies de compréhension, incitation systématique à la découverte active. Une démarche comparable est celle des “ cognates ” développée au Canada par Brian Gill entre L1 anglais et L2 français (approche contrastive et repérage des formes grammaticales les plus fréquentes). L'IC a pu être développée depuis les années 1990, entre les langues romanes avec de très bons résultats en quelques dizaines d'heures de formation associant jusqu'à 6 langues en même temps (catalan, espagnol, français, italien, portugais, roumain. Un travail comparable est fait à partir des langues slaves.

D'autres démarches empiriques élaborent des stratégies en ayant recours à une variété d'outils. Les traducteurs automatiques bien entendu mais aussi, pour améliorer leur rendement, l'utilisation du web considéré comme un immense corpus linguistique où les résultats de la traduction automatique sont contrôlés. J'ai pu faire ce genre d'expérience avec des étudiants en prenant un événement unique et en traduisant plusieurs textes qui les relatent dans des langues différentes dans lesquelles le groupe avait des compétences variables, voire aucune compétence.

Patrick Chardenet, Dolores Alvarez, Manuel Tost, 2011, L'intercompréhension et les nouveaux défis pour les langues romanes, Union Latine /AUF

Accessible à https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Patrick_Chardenet/

You probably might use automatic translation tools (such as Google translate, or any other one). I do not use these tools for the languages your mention (Russian or Ukrainian), but my experience with some translations between French and English are rather good. I think that for understanding purpose, this is quite enough. Because my written English is enough good for writing directly in English, I generally use a automatic translator for translating a piece of text that I have already written in French. In this Case, I however need to check the translated texts and they generally require some rewriting.

Have a look at : Developing Intercomprehension in English, Dutch and German: A Methodological Model, Mario López Barrios Gabriela Helale

Facultad de Lenguas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina

(https://www.academia.edu/6618496/Developing_Intercomprehension_in_English_Dutch_and_German_A_Methodological_Model)

Translation tools + self help abilities (IC) and controlled rewriting through web corpus occurrences.

A simple, but effective way is to access the news form a language I don´t know, is to use the involved names of places or persons, newspapers (nouns) as the search terms. It would be convenient to write those terms in the original language. For example: "Россия" and "Владимир Путин" = Russia and Vladimir Putin. How? By using wikipedia. Type the terms in your own language. Then, pass the cursor over the list of languages that apper on the left. Yoiu can see "Русский" "Russian". That's all!

Este proceso es muy interesante en particular para todas las denominaciones de nombres propios que constituyen muchas veces " blancos semánticos " en lengua extranjera para un hablante exterior al contexto cultural (caso de las lenguas internacionales).

You can use Google translation tool; it's a very good tool. Usually you have to do some rewritings but in general it is acceptable.

My answer does not apply to Hispanic languages. Supposing there is a passage in French or Spanish. You do not know these languages but you want to understand the information expressed in the passage. First of all look at the characteristics of the test. For example, a letter, a postcard etc.Secondly isolate all transparent words that you find in the passage. Then form you view on the passage based on the transparent words.

I live in France and am certainly not fluent in this language. I use Google Translate - both the app and the desktop bar button. This is by no means accurate - and I have been the subject of some mirth on the part of French speakers reading my googled attempts! - but it is essential. But of course, what Google Translate services cannot do is offer insights into linguistic idiosyncrasy, phrases and sayings, and other 'tacit' deployments of language.

Karima Meftouh, what language pairs are you using Google Translate for and finding it acceptable? Thank you for replying.

Lesley Crane, I understand you use Google Translate mostly for producing French texts, e-mails, perhaps? Do you find it sufficient for reading news as well? Or any other texts beyond a few lines of an e-mail? How about shorter messages? Is it effective for text-messaging or tweets? Thanks for your reply!

Dennis Soku, thank you for those insights. You have a very reasonable strategy, and it seems like it's worked for you. What do you mean by 'transparent words' though? Cognates? Or words you know? Or grammatical links? Please elaborate, this is very interesting. I wonder if that's a typical heuristics and how well it works for others.

Rafael Ibarra, I agree that Wikipedia is a useful tool when it comes to 'named entities', at least that's what we call proper nouns in Natural Language Processing when we try to identify them and make sense of the message in text. So, the question is then, when you type the query into a search engine in its original language, you are likely to retrieve documents in that same language as well. How do you understand the meaning of the returned results then? Thanks for you input!

Patrick Chardenet, your first message puzzled me since it seems like an excerpt from your writing (in French) but I couldn't quite grasp the relevance. Your second message makes sense though it's a bit formulaic. I think you suggest to use some tools and d some re-writing. Your third message (in Spanish) supports the idea that this is an interesting question and brings up cultural aspects. What do you mean by 'international languages' though? And which process are you referring to when you mention 'proper nouns'? I think you're trying to demonstrate your point by using all 3 languages, but the essence of the 'lesson' is still escaping me. I, of course, agree it's interesting and important, and most importantly it's quite tricky! And clarifications would be most welcome! ¡Gracias! Et merci!

Thierry Olive, thanks! There seems to be some consensus developing. Translation tools are good for 'understanding the purpose', as you say and the translated texts require editing. This statement is actually consistent with the scientific literature on machine translation and its application. Users that need polished translation (meaning, grammatical human-translation quality) are often forced to make this decision: do they simply start from scratch or use MT as the first pass and then edit. If you think about it, in the work of a qualified translator this could either we a time saver (if there were many unfamiliar terms, and they were translated correctly) or a time sink (if the translator now needs to read both the original and the translated garbled up text).

Has anyone used electronic dictionaries? Translation aids? Translation tools other than G-Translate? Terminology banks? Someone mentioned parallel corpora? How useful are those and under what circumstances? Still looking to see what the common practices are, other than Google translate... THANKS TO ALL WHO CONTRIBUTED! Hope to hear more from you and others as well!

Alexander Rudnicky, thanks for the auto-summarizers pointer. Have you seen them cross-language though?

Hi Victoria,

I use Google Translate for just about anything and there doesn't appear to be a word length limit. It does help, however, that I speak some French as it is often the case that what Google produces is a very literal translation, which can sound odd to a native French speaker. I've also used it to translate legal documents in Spanish.

All you need to do is copy and paste the text that you want to translate into the appropriate text box in the Google app, and select the target language. Or, as I mentioned, use the Google translate button on the browser bar to auto-translate web pages into English.

I was given a passage in a language I have never heard about. The language is said to be ''Breton ?'' spoken in France. I examined the nature of the text and I realized it could either be a postcard or a letter. There was no address but towards the top right of the document there were two unknown words, followed by a comma and then '1974'. This gave me the impression that, that could be the date the document was written. The other three words I identified in the passage were first, the name 'Josephine' written after some unknown words at the beginning of the document. Secondly, in the document itself, the only word I understood was ''anniversaire'' which means 'birthday'. At the end of the document towards the right, there were some unknown words followed by a comma. Below these words was the name Edward. From the three known words I isolated in relation to the organization (nature) of the text, I realized the text could be talking about a birthday. It was probable that Edward celebrated his birthday and was informing Josephine about it or Josephine was about to celebrate her birthday and she wanted Edward to know about it. Looking at the arrangement of these words in the document, I opted for the second probability. I translated the document. My translation was found to be the best in the lot. I have used this strategy to teach beginners of French to answer comprehension passages successfully in Secondary schools and in Universities in Ghana. The strategies are: i. Determine the nature of the text in question,

ii. isolate transparent words (i.e words that look like words you known in some of the languages you already know)

iii. and then form you view.

Thanks for the elaboration, Dennis. So, the 'transparent words' are the ones you can recognize or can reasonable ascertain their meaning, like names and cognates.

Hello, Victoria, cencerning the last post on my brief contribution. I should remark the huge distance between the original verb “Access” and the new verb “understand”. This second question – which I feel is vague - would require to be familiar with the source of information: a newspaper, a journal, a magazine, a database, local or international; with its scope: political, commercial, scientific, social, religious, artistic, etc. Then, if you want to understand and are familiar with the sources of information, you should have in mind a specific purpose and write it in the language you do not know. Later, you certainly will need linguistic aids such as dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, electronic translators, thesauri, and so forth. However, all these conditions and scenarios (solved in some way), do not warrantee that you would understand the returned results, but you would be close.

Good call, Rafael! Understanding requires the ability to access, but accessing doesn't necessarily require the ability to understand. I shouldn't perhaps use both interchangeably.

I would assess it the same way Roger Ailes assesses news he does not understand for Fox "News" narratives, to be read over the airwaves. He once found that Jesus wrote in Aramaic that in the future he'd vote Republican. This was fully discussed and analyzed on Bill O'Reilly's Show "Whatever I'm for, they're against it."

Sorry, Hugh, are we talking about 'an assessment' or 'an access'? Honestly, I would have never thought to make this analogy. I'm obviously missing a cultural piece here. Could you (or someone) de-code for me? Thank you!

My assumptions

1. The writing of the language should be ‘recognizable’ to the reader

2. There should be words in the text which look like words in languages known to the reader

3. The syntactic arrangements in the language should be identical to that of at least one of the languages known to the reader

4. Then, it should be possible to get information from such a text

Techniques

1. Isolate the transparent words and interrogate them

2. Refine your views by drawing on logical conclusions

3. Reconstruct your views

Practice Text (In German)

Werd sind die Gideons?

Diese Frage oft von den Lesern dieser Neuen Testamente gestellt. Die nachfolgenden Einzelheiten geben Ihnen darüber Auskunft. Im Herbst 1898 begegneten sich in einem Hotel in Wisconsin/ USA zwei fremde Handelsreisende. Sie erkannten, daß sie beide Chriten waren, deshalb hielten sie demeinsam ihre Abendandacht. Gott gab ihnen den Gedanken, eine Vereinigung christlicher Handelsreisender zu gründen. Dieses Vorhaben fünhrten sie im folgenden Jahr mit einem Dritten aus. Nach gemeinsamem Gebet wählten sie den Namen ‘‘Gideons’’ aus dem Buch der Richter, Kapital 6 und 7im Alten Testamente. Gideon war der Führer einer kleinen Gruppe von Männern, die bereit waren, Gott zu dienem. Durch sie konnte Gott viel für sein Volk Israel tun.

Transparent English words noted in the text

• The heading has ‘‘Gideons and a question mark’’

(The question mark makes the reader think the writer is interrogating the name ‘‘Gideons’’. Anything that may follow may be a history and/ or explanation of the name).

• Neuen Testamente # Alten Testamente

• Hotel Wisconsin/ USA

• Christen

• Im Herbit 1898 (the syntactic arrangement suggest ‘‘the phrase means’’ in the year 1898).

• The position of ‘‘den’’ in the text suggests that it means ‘‘the’’.

• (Kapitel) 6 und 7

• Namen Gideon Israel

These isolated words appear to explain why the name ‘‘Gideons’’ was chosen. The passage suggested that a meeting took place at a hotel in Wisconsin in USA in the year 1898 involving Christians. The meeting had to do with the New Testament. A man from Israel, whose name ‘‘Gideons” is being considered is found in chapter 6 and 7 of one of the books in the Old Testament.

I have applied the techniques and I want people who speak German to tell if the technique has helped somehow in getting some information in this language that is unknown to me. I must say that some of the information derived may be right while others may not. This is natural. In real life situation, not all pieces of information that one receives are true.

Verification

To ascertain the truth of the message it has to be verified. In this regard, the learner would identify and seek help from a German/ English bilingual for assistance. The learner can also use a reliable language translation device that may be available to him.

There are now many on-line translation tools available. If the subject matter was sufficiently important, I would attempt to use them - with caution, as meanings can sometimes be distorted.