Let’s say I wanted to start writing in my target language. My thought was to first write a paragraph in my known language, in this case English, and then under that, write the same paragraph in my target language as best as I can.
Is this how the writing is done? Or is it just submit a writing sample in the target language alone without the corrector knowing what I really wanted to say?
Thanks.
Dean.
I personally try to think in my target language while I’m writing. An easy way to check if your phrases are used in real life by speakers (native or not) is to use Google’s autosearch. Just start typing something in your target language for a search, and see it get completed by the most common uses of that phrase. You can then check other usages of that same construction, and see what natives use. If you still want to go the translation way, you can put your native language phrase into linguee.com to see what results you get in you target language. Having said that, I’d advise you to try to write your whole paragraph first, and then check to see if there’s anything wrong with it. Next step would be to submit it for correction.
@Dean - You get charged for every word when you submit writing so it isn’t a good idea to submit text in your own language. However, after submitting your writing you can go to your selected corrector’s wall and paste your original text there so they will have your context when they correct it. Good idea! We are working on some changes in the writing correction area which will hopefully make this type of thing easier in the future.