One objection to interlinear translations is that it encourages other-language learners to translate when trying to use/learn the target language, to wit, best to think in the target language, not your native tongue. What to do? not use interlinear translations as one of your tools to comprehend/acquire the foreign language?
I think not, with an exception or two.
No one (of the rest of us) suggests reading whole books that have been translated and displayed in interlinear form. At least no language teacher should promote this. [objection coming soon] The object of learning is to take what you don't know perfectly and work with it until you do. This translates into bite-sized bits, or bytes if you prefer.
Which suggests offering what I and others more proficient than I do, provide language-learner friendly EN-to-EN translations. This is not interlinear but the intermediary step between being lost or almost lost in the target language to seeing in simpler target language what was lost/almost lost when grappling with an unfamiliar passage or short document presented in that target language, English here being only an example.
How can this transition be accomplished? Here is one way.
Have English practice conversations online for intermediate and above conversation partners. In process, correct, clarify, and expand or enhance the language that is or can be used with whatever topic is being discussed. Note these words, phrases, expressions, and potential uses of the language used or encountered. After the conversation has ended, take those notes, clean them up, perhaps augment with examples, and offer them to your conversation partners. Here is what that might look like in an email message as follow-up to an online conversation.
tooth pulled/extracted = removed from his/her mouth by surgeon or dentist or in your dog's case, the vet
pendant = a charm or jewel on a chain or cord worn around the neck
cremate = burn a dead body
urn = where the ashes of the cremated body are kept, sometimes
camping stove = portable gas stove
backpacking = to go overnight in the mountains or somewhere with a backpack . . . you carry everything you need, including water, food and chocolate
picnic = to eat outside somewhere other than your backyard, something special not just grabbing a sandwich and eating it on the park bench
If you are providing such online conversation practice sessions long term with a partner, about Christmas or another time make an e-book of all the notes and send it as a gift or resource. The recipient can use the book for study and review, or even search the book after conversations have long since ended. Here is an example in e-book format.
You were waiting for the exceptions, weren't you?
Well, one is a case I am very familiar with. In struggling with Latin for six years, I used interlinear translations that my father bought for me at the University of California bookstore. These were, for example, the speeches of Cicero. Given an assignment by my Latin teacher, I would look up the speech and use the interlinear translation to help me work up something I flipped as my own translation and handed it in. Survival but not thrival, you might say.
I don't know anyone, but there is at least one, who can think in Latin, or speak it. [https://www.alexanderarguelles.com/academy/ includes a circle on speaking Latin]] In other words, the goal of learning Latin for most of us is not to think in the language nor speak it. Interlinear translations, even of longer works, works that is that have practical value in helping to decode what was said long ago.
An aside having to do with a younger, er less mature, me. I took the interlinear Latin translations and tried to come up with my way of saying the same thing as the English lines provided. I could not produce my own, better English to English other than what appeared in the interlinear book. I was too inexperienced in my own language to do same. What are the implications of this for the EN-to-EN language learner? If the translation to easier to understand language is not very good, well that's a problem, if we assume we have a basic understanding of the target language. Hopefully for my students and conversation partners today, I am better at this "translation" skill. They will judge, after all I have had almost a lifetime to work on my abilities. But I never know without direct feedback, which I get if I ask.
The next exception is that there are some, for example biblical scholars, translators, and linguists, who want the full monty, interlinear translations and glosses of important or critical texts that have ramifications beyond the scholar's personal understanding and gratification. Longer interlinear translation displays have a place, but for the rest of us? not so much in my opinion.
