There was a heated debate on a sentence discussion for the Duolingo Indonesian from English course: "Should Duolingo give us word-for-word translations or free translations?"
I recently opened the same poll on Reddit, asking which approach would better work for Clozemaster, another language learning app using the so-called "cloze-deletion test" method. Four options are available.
- Always prefer free translations
- Mostly prefer free translations
- Mostly prefer modest word-for-word translations
- Always prefer extreme word-for-word translations
Both of the approaches have pros and cons. But more Duolingo Indonesian course takers at the time supported word-for-word than free translations. Natural free translations make us more comfortable in reading long passages in English while they also make us confused with hundreds of possible answers. In order to manage the complexity and to take into account that the target users of Duolingo are absolute beginners, the majority of course takers prefer word-for-word translations.
To my surprise, the result (still ongoing, though) is more polarized on Reddit than on the Duolingo SD. So far, more users on Reddit support free translations. Please join the poll after reading the following example cases, and/or give your thought on this matter.
Case 1: idiom and word order (JP-EN)
JP: 昨日、トムは風邪を{{引き}}ました。
EN (free translation): "Tom caught a cold yesterday."
EN (modest W4W): "Yesterday, Tom caught a cold."
EN (extreme W4W): "Yesterday, Tom pulled an evil wind."
The {{cloze-word}} is a verb, meaning "to pull". But "pulled an evil wind" is not helpful for Japanese learners to answer it. I still wonder, however, which is better: putting "yesterday" at the end or beginning.
Case 2: passive form (ID-EN)
ID: "Silakan {{dinikmati}} kuenya."
EN (free translation): "Please help yourself to the cake. "(= Tatoeba version)
EN (modest W4W): "Please enjoy the cake if you like."
EN (extreme W4W): "Please be enjoyed with the cake."
The {{cloze-word}} is written in a passive form in Indonesian. Native speakers intentionally choose a passive form when they are offering something politely. An active verb in an imperative sentence sounds too direct and even insistent even if "please" ("silakan") is inserted.
The extreme version is the easiest one to fill in the cloze-word. But no English speaker says "please be enjoyed" with a passive verb.
The modest version uses the active form ("enjoy"), but adding "if you like" phrase may give a hint to Indonesian learners.
The free translation sourced from Tatoeba is very hard to guess the cloze-word. {{Dinikmati}} merely means "to be enjoyed".