Research in a second language
I'm doing a PhD thesis on eighteenth-century Anglo-Jewish women - cool topic, right? Never been done before, right? I'm starting to see why. It turns out that about 45% of my source material is in European Portuguese. I'm just entering the second year of a three-year program, translating this material incredibly slowly, and wondering if there's any way of speeding the process up. There's a lot of manuscript material to slog through, and I wouldn't want to hire a translator to go through all of it. I've also looked into language courses, but they're largely about ordering tomatoes in Lisbon and won't give me the grounding I need to go any faster.
Anyone have any advice for working in a second language - viz. doing the research and teaching yourself the language at the same time? This problem bleeding into my second year is sorta making me feel like I've walked into an arena with my pants down. Any advice would be really appreciated.
Anyone have any advice for working in a second language - viz. doing the research and teaching yourself the language at the same time? This problem bleeding into my second year is sorta making me feel like I've walked into an arena with my pants down. Any advice would be really appreciated.