Saturday, March 8, 2014

Learn a language by translating songs



Learn a language by translating songs.

Translating song lyrics is a very efficient and fun way to learn a language.
Song lyrics usually have a very easy vocabulary, and because you can hear the singer, you can learn how the words are pronounced.

First find a good song on YouTube, or any website with songs.
Then search for the lyrics on the internet.
It is usually quite easy to find the lyrics of famous songs.
Then divide the song into sentences.
For each sentence translate the individual words.
Then use Google Translate (or any other translator) and translate groups of 2 or 3 words.
Don't try to translate the entire sentence at once, because automatic translators get confused and fail to translate. The trick here is to translate no more than 3 words at a time.
For example try to group words like adjective + noun, verb + object.
At this point you will be able to grasp the sentence, if not entirely, at least the basic idea of the sentence.
Don't worry if there are parts you still don't understand. Just skip them or post a question on Google Communities.
You can read any text if you know at least 50% of the words. In other words you don't need to know every single word of a text in order to understand it.
Try to memorize the lyrics and sing along.
I have been using this method to learn German and I can translate an entire song in less than 1 hour.
Measure the time it takes you to translate a song. Keep translating songs and you will see you will get faster and faster.
Go back to old translations and review them. You will see that you will be able to translate many parts that you couldn't understand back then.

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