Please identify the language

[Aurinĭa]

Just like with translating, a lot of people who know two or more languages quite well think they'd be able to do it, but if you haven't had proper training, don't attempt to.

Wait, are you saying that people who haven't gotten education for it shouldn't even try to translate anything?

Sure they can try to translate! For fun, when on holiday for family who doesn't know the local language, in situations like that. But they shouldn't ever attempt any commercial translating, or even work for free.

How can that position make sense to have for someone on a linguistics forum, let alone an admin of one?

Linguistics ≠ translating. You don't need to know linguistics to be able to translate, and vice versa you don't need to be able to translate to be a linguist.

Or are you saying that people think they could translate stuff because they haven't tried, but that if they tried, they'd fail because they haven't had specialised education to learn it?

Yes. A while ago I participated in a research study, which consisted of judging the quality of short translated paragraphs. Some of the translations were made by professional translators, some by students of translating, some by bilinguals who had no training in translation, but of course you didn't get that information and who had translated what until after the test was completed. The last group (untrained bilinguals) consistently performed worst, much worse than the other two groups. The professional translators performed by far the best. It was a very interesting, albeit easy test.

if the implication is that people who haven't had specialised education are inherently less capable than those that have

That's self-evident, isn't it? People who have had training and practice are better at that thing than those who haven't.

self-learning is increasing and online lessons and dictionaries and whatnot are easily accessible

Self-learning only goes so far. You can't teach yourself tips & tricks you don't now, you can't teach yourself to recognise and avoid common mistakes, you need an impartial but experienced teacher to judge your translation attempts, show you what is wrong or doesn't work very well, and help you improve.

pretty much literally everyone speaks at least one language, so they already have a bae. Learning a second language in is really common around the world for various reasons, so translating between the fist and second language is generally not that hard.

Speaking a language ≠ being able to translate/interpret to/from it.

Funnily enough, exactly today I watched this speech of an interpreter speaking about her job and, at some point, she did mention that there is a tiny minority of interpreters who didn't have a formal education in interpreting, but they're very rare (and I can see why).

Formal interpreting education isn't all that old (a few decades, and shorter for many languages), so it's possible those interpreters entered the profession before that time, or speak languages for which no formal interpreting education exists.

[vijayjohn]

It's a habit I developed when studying interpreting

You studied interpreting? I've always wanted to know how that works. I wanted to do this for so long but never knew how to go about it.

You wanted to know how studying interpreting goes? It's fairly straightforward: you go to uni/college and study interpreting.

Yeah, but I didn't even know that until you mentioned it, I think. Now I'm kind of confused about how many colleges have that as an option. For instance, I went to the University of Texas at Austin, and I'm trying to figure out whether it has that option. I see this, but...that doesn't look like it has anything to do with coursework.

If I'd known that this was a thing, I would've probably gone into that instead of linguistics.

[Aurinĭa]

Yeah, that doesn't look very useful. You might have to look elsewhere, possibly even outside of the US. It'd also depend on which language(s) you'd want to use. If you would want to translate or interpret from French, you could do like JackFrost did and move to Canada, but (especially for interpreting), you'd be limited in where you could make a living doing that after graduating.
You're still young, though, you can take your time to learn a bit more about interpreting, find out what your options are, and decide later.

[Vlürch]

Sure they can try to translate! For fun, when on holiday for family who doesn't know the local language, in situations like that. But they shouldn't ever attempt any commercial translating, or even work for free.

Well, I kind of agree, but like... how could you regulate that without a ridiculously authoritarian monopoly on basically all of society, especially now that multiculturalism is the reality (whether the average person wants it or not), and all kinds of different languages are spoken by all kinds of different people? Preventing regular people from teaching the immigrants the local language is only going to isolate the immigrants even more, completely shutting them off from ever being able to integrate into the society they live in.

I mean, if the government gave every immigrant free (and mandatory) lessons, that'd be awesome, but that'll never work, especially if immigration and multiculturalisation continues at the rate it has been happening; and I'm from Finland, which AFAIK is still fairly homogenous compared to most European countries except for Poland, Slovakia and Hungary... if I wasn't as socially awkward, I'd definitely want to help the immigrants moving here learn Finnish, and a lot of people actually are doing just that. What kind of penalty would you impose on them?

Yes. A while ago I participated in a research study, which consisted of judging the quality of short translated paragraphs. Some of the translations were made by professional translators, some by students of translating, some by bilinguals who had no training in translation, but of course you didn't get that information and who had translated what until after the test was completed. The last group (untrained bilinguals) consistently performed worst, much worse than the other two groups. The professional translators performed by far the best. It was a very interesting, albeit easy test.

Alright, but how was it defined what's good and what's bad?

That's self-evident, isn't it? People who have had training and practice are better at that thing than those who haven't.

I guess, but I'm pretty fucked over education as a whole because I have none besides primary school myself, and a huge part of that is because of health shit that I had no control over... just allergies along with depression and other mental health problems in my case, though, but I'm definitely not the only one whose life became meaningless as a result of not getting enough education. Don't get me wrong, even if I had the opportunity to study linguistics or whatever else that I'm interested in, even if I wanted it, I couldn't, so it's not like I have any right to complain... but I still complain because it's annoying.

Self-learning only goes so far. You can't teach yourself tips & tricks you don't now, you can't teach yourself to recognise and avoid common mistakes, you need an impartial but experienced teacher to judge your translation attempts, show you what is wrong or doesn't work very well, and help you improve.

True, but maybe in the future that's no longer an issue. If everyone had free access to all material ever written on all languages and there were easier ways to find native speakers of various languages to interact with online for the very purpose of teaching each other the languages as equals, that wouldn't be a problem to begin with. My opinion is that all research on every subject should be publicly available for free. Yes, that means I'm a retarded leftist, no matter how "far-right" my views on social matters would be labelled by anyone left of literal Hitler.

Speaking a language ≠ being able to translate/interpret to/from it.

How can that even make sense in any other case except live translation/interpretation and highly technical things that most people don't understand anyway?

[vijayjohn]

I guess, but I'm pretty fucked over education as a whole because I have none besides primary school myself

I am almost unable to fathom this.

[Johanna]

Also, I'm lazy, so you can't tell that my signature is supposed to represent my name, unless you already know what my name is.

I'm even lazier; my signature changes so much that a receptionist at the police station told me to put some effort into it to make it more consistent when I went to renew my ID.

I changed my surname about 5 years ago, so I had to renew a bunch if stuff because if it. I started with my driving licence, and when I did I hadn't got my new signature down yet, so it looks very different from what is on my passport, which I renewed over a year later.

The person at the police station actually commented on that, how different the two signatures are.

Edit: The old one looks pretty much like what my name was back then, I got lazy once my surname gained a bunch of extended loops

[linguoboy]

My signature used to be perfectly legible. But my father advised me that that made it too easy to copy so I worked on making it into more of a scrawl. Now it's basically a line with bumps.

[vijayjohn]

My signature used to be perfectly legible.

Mine is basically just my name in cursive.

Now it's basically a line with bumps.

[OldBoring]

Is that your ECG?

[vijayjohn]

Is that your ECG?

No, just an ECG.

[Moraczewski]

Just some more offtop: I personally write with cursive most of the time, writing with non-cursive letters is tiresome for me because you have to lift your pen/pencil all the time. Most people here in Russia write in cursive. I also can write Armenian cursive which is even easier to write and read than Russian.

On topic: I've got another shortwave radio recording in a language unknown to me. Sounds like Armenian but I don't speak Armenian at all and can't tell. Anyone recognize this one?
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1yQKFTJB0zq

[voron]

On topic: I've got another shortwave radio recording in a language unknown to me. Sounds like Armenian but I don't speak Armenian at all and can't tell. Anyone recognize this one?
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1yQKFTJB0zq

This is Turkish.

[Moraczewski]

Thank you / спасибо, voron.

This is another one, I don't think I already asked about it here, but if I did - sorry for bothering. Anyway, here is the recording: http://vocaroo.com/i/s1TmHP5aDu9p

[IpseDixit]

Thank you / спасибо, voron.

This is another one, I don't think I already asked about it here, but if I did - sorry for bothering. Anyway, here is the recording: http://vocaroo.com/i/s1TmHP5aDu9p

The audio quality is really low but I'm pretty sure it's Arabic.

[Osias]

What variety?

[vijayjohn]

I think MSA, but I get the impression it's spoken by someone from sub-Saharan Africa.

[Moraczewski]

I think MSA, but I get the impression it's spoken by someone from sub-Saharan Africa.

It's quite possible, thanks. This may explain why on Russian forum of Arabic language people couldn't tell if it was Arabic.

A person from a Russian linguistics forum wants to find out in which language is this song:
http://www51.zippyshare.com/v/ZXY9kDjj/file.html

It sounds like Persian to me but as I told before, I don't speak neither Persian nor Armenian nor any other Eastern Indo-European language.

[vijayjohn]

My gut is telling me it's more likely to be Egyptian Arabic or some other variety of Arabic. Neither the style of the song nor the words sound much like Persian to me.

[eskandar]

This is another one, I don't think I already asked about it here, but if I did - sorry for bothering. Anyway, here is the recording: http://vocaroo.com/i/s1TmHP5aDu9p

I'm pretty sure it's Somali but really hard to say since the quality is so bad.

A person from a Russian linguistics forum wants to find out in which language is this song:
http://www51.zippyshare.com/v/ZXY9kDjj/file.html

My gut is telling me it's more likely to be Egyptian Arabic or some other variety of Arabic. Neither the style of the song nor the words sound much like Persian to me.

Definitely not Persian nor any variety of Arabic. The music is strongly Central Asian-sounding. This one is so quiet that with my volume at 100% and my ear pressed to the speaker I still can't make out the words, but it sounds like Armenian to me.

[voron]

A person from a Russian linguistics forum wants to find out in which language is this song:
http://www51.zippyshare.com/v/ZXY9kDjj/file.html

My gut is telling me it's more likely to be Egyptian Arabic or some other variety of Arabic. Neither the style of the song nor the words sound much like Persian to me.

Definitely not Persian nor any variety of Arabic. The music is strongly Central Asian-sounding. This one is so quiet that with my volume at 100% and my ear pressed to the speaker I still can't make out the words, but it sounds like Armenian to me.

It is this song (as answered by someone else on that Russian linguistics forum which I happen to read, too):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70uBL3ozMGI

And the language is indeed Armenian. Well done eskandar!