Suzanne Geht zur Bibliothek--Eine Kinder Geschichte
Suzanne mag lesen. Normaleweise lies sie auf English, aber jetzt wohnt sie in Deutschland. Das heisst dass, sie muss auch gut Deutsch lesen. Aber wo soll Suzanne Deutsches Buecher kreigen? Natuerlich, sie hat keine von Amerika mitgebracht, und will nicht viele Buecher kaufen. Suzanne brauchte eine Bibliothek.
In Magdeburg, Deutschland (wie die meisten europaeische Staedte) sind alles zusammen Nah. Suzanne kennt einen Bibliothek, und sie war nicht weit weg. Ein Tag nach Arbeit, geht Suzanne zu dieser Bibliothek. Sie fand eine Bibliothekerin, die sieht freundlich aus. Suzanne roch ein wenig wie Elephanten, aber die Bibliothekerin sagte nichts ueber es.
"Es tut mir leid, das mein Deutsch nicht gut ist. Ich moechte einen Bibliothekausweis," sagte Suzanne.
Die Bibliothekerin laechelte, "Prima! Ich brauche nur einen Pass und eine Poststueck."
"Gut" Suzanne laechelte auch, "Ich habe alles mit."
"Suzanne Christine Akerman--ein richtiger Deutscher Name!"
"Ich habe das gehoert. Brauchen Sie noch etwas?"
"Nur einen Unterschrift und fuenfundzwanzig Euro, bitte!" erklaert die nette Dame.
"Gerne" sagte Suzanne.
"Viel Spass!" rief die Bibliothekerin waehrend Suzanne weg ging, Bibliothekausweis fast gehalten.
"Mache ich!" sagte Suzanne, "mache ich."
Ende
TranslationSuzanne Goes to the Library: A Children's Story
Suzanne likes to read. Usually she reads in English, but now she lives in Germany. That means she has to read well in German too. But where should Suzanne get German books? Of course she didn't bring any from America, and she does not want to buy a lot of books. Suzanne needed a library.
In Magdeburg, Germany (like most other European cities) everything is close together. Suzanne knew of a library and it was close by. One day after work, Suzanne went to this library. She found a librarian who looked friendly. Suzanne smelled a little like elephants, but the librarian didn't say anything about it.
"I'm sorry that my German isn't very good. I would like a library card," said Suzanne.
The librarian smiled, "Excellent! I just need a passport and a piece of mail."
"Good," Suzanne smiled too, "I have everything with me."
"Suzanne Christine Akerman--A real German name!"
"So I've heard. Do you need anything else?"
"Just a signature and twenty-five Euros please," explained the kind lady.
"Gladly."
"Have fun!" called the librarian as Suzanne walked away, library card in hand.
"I will!" said Suzanne, "I will."
The End
In addition to writing ridiculous snippets like the previous one, I have been reading children's books that I checked out from the library to help me with my grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I can very easily read books along the lines of "Clifford the Big Red Dog," but was more impressed with my ability to muddle my way through some small chapter books. When was the last time anyone was excited about me reading chapter books? Probably second grade.
Because our kindergarten is very small, we don't have access to a school library and therefore are always short on books to read to the children, especially English ones. So the added advantage to my translation ability is that I can read books that are originally in German if I am able to translate them into English fast enough to make the story compelling. (It's not so interesting if my translation sounds like, "Okay, then Simon...yelled, and he...uh, ran to his Mom. She--I mean they--no wait she, took his books and...I don't know what she did. She did something with his books.") My latest triumph was an impromptu naptime story translation of a book called, "The Queen of the Colors." The only hitch was that I skipped a word describing the color yellow because the best direct translation I know for the word "zichig" is bitchy. They don't really use the word bitchy in English children's books, so I decided not to use it when translating either. Is yellow a bitchy color? I hadn't noticed.
I am not the only one improving my language skills in Magdeburg. The children at the kindergarten have progressed beyond what linguists call the "silent" stage, where the students aren't actually silent, but respond entirely in German. Most of the children have moved on to throw in English words and phrases, but by no means always correctly. Lately when I ask the children if they've washed their hands, they protest, "Ich war schon wash your hands!" which means, "I already did wash your hands!" Similarly, after lunch I occasionally hear, "Darf ich brush your teeth?" (May I brush your teeth?). The instinct when hearing something like this is to correct the child, but this ends up being even more confusing. "No, you may brush YOUR teeth" is enitrely unhelpful to the new English speaker. I am impressed with one girl in particular who is always spouting whole thoughts in English, sometimes with perfect grammar and in context, for instance "That is a good T-shirt!" or "Erika's Momma is outside." Sometimes she and the other students nearing this stage remind me of cave men, "Me no eat broccoli!" The best thing to do in these situations is praise the child for attempting sentences, even when what you feel like doing is laughing.
In an entirely different realm, I am also teaching some animals a few things, though more slowly than I had hoped. The way my hours are split between the kindergarten and the zoo is not ideal for training animals, so I usually can fit in only one session a day with an animal. In spite of this, I do now have a rat that performs a few silly behaviors like jumping through a hole, rolling a small canister with her nose and climbing a rope etc. Next she will be doing a demonstration of "fetching" an object with a particular smell, to illustrate how keen a rat's sense of smell is.
The second rat is...special. I have never had an animal fixate on ME quite so heavily before, and I don't know what I did wrong, but this rat feels much more rewarded by being ON my person than she does by receiving actual rewards of food. This means that for a while, she would only perform behaviors that resulted in her ending up somewhere on my body. It was not productive. Each time she earned a treat, I would hold the tiny piece of cornflake or dried fruit out to her, and instead of taking it from me, she would race up my arm. I am still in the process of trying to work around her obssessive behavior, but it took a little creativity. Instead of having her perform the same routine as her "sister," I created a routine where this rat does get to end up on me after each behavior, which is very rewarding for her, if a little strange. So when she demonstrates her climbing ability, she starts on a low bench and climbs up a rope that I dangle in front of her, so when she reaches the top, she is standing on my hand. She can also perform this without a rope, climbing al the way from the ground to my shoulder. The audiences are equally impressed with this.
The next successful behavior started out as a disaster, and I think the rat really trained me on this one instead of the other way around. Because of the neurotic need to be touching me at all times, I couldn't stand over the rat while training her--instead of pushing the canister like she was supposed to, she would latch onto my sweatshirt and climb up to sit on my head. To negate this, I started standing back from her a little, so she could not reach the sweatshirt to climb. She started jumping. At first she only jumped a very short distance, but before long, I was standing across the training room and the rat was taking flying 4-foot leaps toward me with reckless abandon. This is only a really cool trick if you WANT the rat to do it. If what you want is for the rat to retreive a small wooden stick, launching into the air and landing with a tiny thud on your chest is less desirable. However, springing across the arena to a trainer is pretty engaging to an audience, so I decided Sasha won that battle. She doesn't roll anthing, and she gets more applause for the behavior she taught herself than any that I actually taught her. And sometimes when she's supposed to be retrieving a small wooden stick, she still flings herself at me spontaneously, but so far I've caught her every time, and she seems to trust that I will continue to do so.
Another animal that I have been working with, Eddie the llama, turned out to be much smarter than I gave him credit for. When I explained to the lead keeper what I wanted to train Eddie to do, he said, "Go ahead and try" but didn't have much faith in Eddie (or maybe it was me he didn't have faith in!). I wanted the llama to recycle. My idea was for the speaker to drop pieces of paper in the arena, as if littering and for Eddie to pick them up and put them in a recycling container. It sounds like complex for a llama, but I am so thrilled with Eddie. He learned to pick up the paper from the ground in a total of five fifteen-minute sessions. Putting the paper in the bucket took a little longer, but not much. Who knew llamas were so eager to send messages to audiences about keeping the environment clean?
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