The habit of translation is an excellent habit to keep up.  For the study of an alien tongue not only improves your English, but has compensations in itself.

EXERCISE — Translation

1.  Translate from any accessible book in the foreign language you can read.

2.  Subscribe for a period of at least two or three months for a newspaper or magazine in that language, if it is a modern one.  Translate as before, but give most of your time to rapid oral translation for a real or imaginary American hearer.

3.  When you have completed your final written translation of a passage from the foreign language, make yourself master of all the English words you have not previously (1) known or (2) used, but have encountered in your work of translation.

2.  Mastery through Paraphrasing

It may be that you are not familiar with a foreign language.  At any rate you have some knowledge of English.  Put this knowledge to use in paraphrasing; for thus you will enrich your vocabulary and make it surer and more flexible.  The process of paraphrasing is simple, though the actual work is not easy.  You take passages written in English—­the more of them the better, and the more diversified the better—­and both reproduce their substance and incarnate their mood in words you yourself shall choose.

You may have a passage before you and paraphrase it unit by unit.  More often, however, you should follow the plan adopted by Franklin when he emulated Addison by rewriting the Spectator Papers.  That is, you should steep yourself in the thought and emotion of a piece of writing, and then lay the piece aside until its wording has faded from your memory, when you should reembody the substance in language that seems to you natural and fitting.  Much of the benefit will come from your comparing your version, as Franklin did his, with the original.  When you perceive that you have fallen short, you should consider the respects wherein your inferiority lies—­and should make another attempt, and yet another, and another.  When you perceive that in any way you have surpassed the original, you should feel a just pride in your achievement—­and should resolve that next time your cause for pride shall be greater still.  Even after you have desisted from formal paraphrasing, you should cling to the habit, formed at this time, of observing any notable felicities in whatever you read and of comparing them with the expression you yourself would likely have employed.

EXERCISE — Paraphrasing

1.  Paraphrase the editorial in Appendix 1.  You should improve upon the original.  Keep trying until you do.

2.  Paraphrase the second paragraph in Burke’s speech (Appendix 2).  Burke lacked the cheap tricks of the ordinary orator, but his discussions were based upon a comprehensive knowledge of facts, a sympathetic understanding of human nature, a vast depth and range of thought, and a well-meditated political philosophy.  In short, he is a model for elaborated discussions.  Set forth the leading thought of this paragraph; you can give it in fewer words than he employs.  But try setting it forth with his full accompaniments of reflection and information; you will be bewildered at his crowding so much into such small compass.