It's interesting how malleable languages are: they adapt to fit us and what we want to say, but they also constrain us in their structures and limit us with their vocabulary.
Today, I had my students do one of my favorite assignments. I've given it maybe twice in the past and it's a task I do on my own, too. I let them choose a poem in their native language and then they translate it. After they finish, they read the poem in their native languages and then in English. It's kind of strange, but usually when they first start reading in their native languages, they laugh or giggle, as if embarrassed to be speaking their native language in class. But I always find the language the poem composed in to be so much more fluid and falling easily off the tongue then when it's spoken in English.
The students usually do really well on this assignment, no matter what their English level is. I know I can't tell what the poem is saying in their native language because my students are from all over the world, but even when I listen to their translations, the poems are beautiful.
Some things are lost in translation, and somethings are given a certain magic when translated.
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