It isn't the World Cup but...

Duolingo Trophy

Logging into Duolingo recently, I found an unfamiliar symbol at the bottom of the page.  I had been expecting a circle with a new practice topic, like this one.  

Clicking on the new trophy symbol, I found myself congratulated by Duolingo for having completed "the skill tree."  Here is what I read: "First of all, you're awesome!  You've completed the Portuguese skill tree!" Wow!  Little ol' me? 

Duolingo invited me to continue maintaining language skills by doing short exercises. Also, if I wanted to, I could try my hand at translating documents.  I wasn't quite sure how I felt about that offer. 

Translator hard at work

The act of translation has a long history in the field of second language acquisition.  Translation was the traditional method of learning classical languages, like Latin and Greek.  As the interest in learning modern languages, and especially in actually speaking modern languages, grew in mid 20th century, translation was supplanted by other teaching methodologies.  So, to be truthful, I had a bias against the value of translation in helping me acquire other languages.  

The  Duolingo owl beckoned, however, so I decided to give translation a try.

First I was pleased to discover that my task was to translate from a second language into English, my native language, rather than vice-versa.  Big relief!  Also, I could choose a general topic to read and translate as well as other features, such as easy, medium or hard.  But this sentence caused me some thought: "Your progress within each tier depends on the votes your sentence translations receive from other learners in your tier or higher."

My introvert alarm went off.  I was going to have to interact with other Duolingo users?  And be judged by them?  Was my language ego strong enough for this experience?  

I decided to go for it.  I chose travel as the topic and jumped right in.  Thirty minutes later, with Portuguese and English dictionaries spread out over the desk,  Google Translate on my laptop favorites list, and an online thesaurus located, I was ready to submit several sentences. 

Within a couple of days, I  received two email notifications that my translation had been revised! What?  I'm a native English speaker.  How could anyone question my judgment?  Duolingo provided me with the original text, my translation, and the corrected text by my Duolingo peers.  Okay, the corrections were better translations than mine.

As with other features of Duolingo, this "real world immersion experience," as Duolingo calls it, now has me hooked.  I'm just on Tier 1, but at least I have received a few upvotes.

Can my ego hold up to get me to Tier 2?