A Day in the Life of a Translation Studies Student

The life of a student of translation studies is a very sad and stressful one. For most of the year, it is still dark outside when such a student gets up in the morning because many courses start at 8.15 am. Students are not even allowed to skip class here and there to stay in bed. They have to physically be in nearly all of their classes due to compulsory attendance in most courses. When this student has managed to crawl out of his or her bed to the unfriendly, cold and dark place that lies beyond the bed, there will be no time for breakfast because he or she is already late. At university, most of the lessons consist of instructions on the next group project or the latest home work. To get enough work done, most students even work through their breaks and nearly starve themselves to death. After such a dreadful day, which is routine for many students at the Department of Translation Studies of the University of Graz, students use up their last energy by going home. The only possible thing to do there before going to sleep, is sitting in front of youtube, facebook or tumblr to fill up the energy store for the next horrible day. Day after day, translation studies students live their gloomy and terrible lives like that.

Pronunciation Diary 2

My second blog post about pronunciation is more specific than my first one because I already knew what my mistakes were. When I read my pronunciation feedback I was not surprised to find out that my unvoiced “th” was not perfect yet because I had never given it special attention. So I checked the pronunciation page to find videos or texts about the “th”. I was lucky to find enough information online and also asked my peer Natascha for help because she is very good when it comes to pronunciation. From Rachel's English I knew what I should do but I was not sure if I did it right. So I asked Natascha if my threes sounded any better now. She was very nice and always told me when it sounded right and when I still had to change something. So when I knew how it basically works, I practiced on my own whenever nobody could hear me, like for example on my way home or in the shower. ;) I know that my “th” is not perfect yet and it still does not feel completely natural. I always have to think about it and when I do not pay attention I tend to just ignore it and pronounce the unvoiced “th” like “f”. However, I will try to be more aware of the unvoiced “th” whenever I speak and hope that I will sometime be able to do it like a native speaker.

Essay Correction Link 2

http://videoabe.blogspot.co.at/2014/01/essay-corrected-corrected-version.html

Studying Vocabulary

In this blog I will explain how I study my vocabulary and what works for me and what does not. As we had to study the Porter words this semester, I will focus on how I studied those. To begin with, I do the exercises in the Porter book. Even though some of the exercises are very doable, there always are many words that I do not know or do not know well enough. These words I write on the Vocabulary sheet included in the book. When I am done with that I check all the words on my Vocabulary sheet online to get a quick overview what they all mean. Then I start studying the vocabulary list on “vocabulary.com”. I have really come to like this website during the course of this semester. I does not only include very useful definitions and example sentences but you can also listen to the pronunciation of the words, which is very useful for PC2. For pronunciation the listening and spelling question part is especially great. On this level you have to read through the definition of the word but without the word and you should guess what is meant by the definition. If you do not know what it is, you can listen to the word and then spell it. This level is very helpful for me because I can easily check if I would have pronounced the word the same way. While studying the vocabulary list I write down all the words that are especially hard for me.

When I am done studying the list because I have mastered it I read through my “difficult words” again and check if I know how to define, explain and use them now. Then I study the ones that I still do not know again. This basically is how I study my vocabulary. For the last PC, this precess worked very well. I hope it will work for this one as well.

Pecha Kucha Experience

The Pecha Kucha project proved to be very interesting and fun in the end. At first I was not so sure about my topic but the more I got into it, the more interesting it seemed and the more motivated I got. Working with my partner, Natascha, was great as usual and I think we both enjoyed it. Starting the research and coming up with a good structure was pretty hard in the beginning. We were not sure what to include in our presentation and getting information out of Hendrik was very hard but that was probably the case because we asked the wrong questions. ;) However, after that one session in class when Frank talked to us and proposed that we could do our presentation in a more lively way, everything turned out fine. We really enjoyed making up dialogues and had very much fun imagining how the audience would react. Practicing and recording out Pecha Kucha took us longer than we expected because the Welsh words were very difficult to pronounce and we made mistakes or started to laugh again and again. In the end we managed and came up with a quite good recording, at least in my opinion. Then for our big day we did not have to practice much because we had gone through it so often when trying to record it but I was a bit nervous because our presentation was so different from all the other ones. But everything turned our fine and I actually had fun presenting our Pecha Kucha.

Essay Correction Link

http://natisenglishadventures.blogspot.co.at/2013/12/why-republic-of-san-marino-should-not.html

My corrected Telegraph summary

Before

The article „Europe has one foot in 'Japanese' deflation grave” published on the 23th of October in “The Telegraph” and written by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, outlines the European deflation crisis. It explains that Europe is slipping towards the deflation problem Japan is in right now. France, Italy, Spain and other European countries are in the beginnings of a deflation crisis already while some rich European countries like Germany seem still unaffected. Yet inflation is too low and dropping towards zero percent throughout Europe. Deflation can cause extremely dangerous runaway debt which countries have no chance of ever paying back. One possible solution for this problem is raising the inflation rate but yet unaffected countries like Germany are not in favor of this proposal. The author then suggests that France, Italy, Spain and Club Med allies should force Germany to implement reflation policies because this seems to be the desperately needed solution. Instead of changing policies, however, Europe is doing nothing to escape the disaster. They hope for global growth to save them, even though this is far from secure. To conclude, Europe is far from safe from a serious financial crisis and is doing nothing to stop it.

After

The article "Europe has one foot in 'Japanese' deflation grave" published on the 23th of October in "The Telegraph" and written by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, outlines the European deflation crisis.
It explains that Europe is slipping towards the deflation problem Japan is currently in. France, Italy, Spain and other European countries are in the beginnings of a deflation crisis already while some rich European countries like Germany seem still unaffected. Yet inflation is too low and dropping towards zero percent throughout Europe.
Deflation can cause extremely dangerous runaway debt which countries have no chance of ever paying back. One possible solution for this problem is raising the inflation rate but yet unaffected countries like Germany are not in favor of this proposal.
The author then suggests that France, Italy, Spain and Club Med allies should force Germany to implement reflation policies because this seems to be the desperately needed solution. Instead of changing policies, however, Europe is doing nothing to escape the disaster. They hope for global growth to save them, even though this is far from secure.
To conclude, Europe is far from safe from a serious financial crisis and is doing nothing to stop it.