Thanks for the localisation
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@grkvlt said:
@pbean said:
Again, you guys give examples of concepts that could not be translated, but also give examples of what they could mean in English. There are words and expressions in other languages which have no equivalence in other languages, but that does not mean they cannot be described in those languages. [...] But we can just take that word, Saudade, from Brazillian Portuguese and introduce it into English, giving it the meaning of its description.
Apparently not: "In fact, one can have 'saudades' of someone with which one is, but have some feeling of loss towards the past or the future." [Wikipedia]
Apparently not what? It cannot be described in English, despite there being an entire "encyclopedia" article about it, describing it? Or can you not understand what the word means by the description?
Words are not something ethereal, they are not natural. They do not form from out of nowhere. Languages and words are man-made. If a word exists it means something that can be described or that can be pointed to (like an object). How do Brazilians know what Saudade means? How is it taught at school (if at all)? By describing the concept? If so, then the Brazilian Portuguese description can be translated to English. If a word cannot be described, it cannot exist, because it simply can't mean anything.
Every word has a definition, one way or another.
@Xyro said:
pbean, I believe what you're looking for is called "Human language". It has a gigantic vocabulary, and its grammar is quite complex as it depends on which vocabulary you use. As the superset of all our languages, it can contain all communicable concepts, including all new concept handles (words) which are imported automatically. Fortunately or unfortunately, it does not have governing oversight, but it nevertheless can be learned and taught.
We could reform this language to use a strict subset of concept handles, such to greatly reduce the overwhelming redundancy of the vocab. We would loose a great deal of unique features in this culling, I suspect, as there is not a 1:1 match of words to mark as redundant. Perhaps a better strategy would be to broaden our exposure to its vocab rather than strict its vocab to our exposure.
Every once in a while, you can find a play on words that can translate between languages. Quick examples: in the story of Adam and Eve, the name "Adam" sounds a lot like "earth" or "dirt" in Hebrew. One of my old professors remarked that if we want a more accurate translation of the story, we could translate his name as "Dusty". In the same vein is the meaning of the word "house". These days it's pretty much entirely structural, but we still recognize its meaning of a family line. With this in mind, the phrase "House of God" suddenly has two important meanings; the interplay between the two meanings in old Biblical texts is very relevant. (Poe used the same interplay in "The Fall of the House of Usher" as well as other similar untranslatable puns.) "House" is nice because its double meaning is recognized in a large number of languages, but it is not common in this. Sadly, most puns of this nature do not survive translation and would not occur to the reader without background knowledge. How much more would be lost with such a strict subset of Human language to use...
If from the moment of introduction only the new language would be used for new writings and communication, nothing would be lost. And in fact if the language persisted long enough and thousand or two-thousand years after its introduction people would find writings in that language, they could still understand it. Something that's not possible now, because for some reason we're struggling with translating certain words because we don't know the exact meaning of those words. But that has everything to do with context and less with the actual words. It should be apparent from the context what the word should mean. Yes, sometimes a word has a double meaning in its original language which is not seen by translators, but so what, really? Who cares about the exact meaning of old writings? What difference does it make if the original writer of a poem of 2000 years ago meant heart in a metaphorical way and not an anatomical way?
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@pbean said:
It should be apparent from the context what the word should mean. Yes, sometimes a word has a double meaning in its original language which is not seen by translators, but so what, really? Who cares about the exact meaning of old writings? What difference does it make if the original writer of a poem of 2000 years ago meant heart in a metaphorical way and not an anatomical way?
... wait a second, are you trolling?If not, I humbly suggest that you have no idea what you are talking about.
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@pbean said:
Every word has a definition, one way or another.
I disagree. Some words have many definitions; some definitions have many words. Some definitions have many words in one language, and none in another. Some concepts are simply not that well defined. Is there a clear definition for love? Truth? White? Ask 10 different people and you'll get 10 different answers. What is water? is this H20? But to a Chinese it means money, to a Sudanese it means life, to a Dutch person it means danger. I don't just mean the word water; I mean the concept of water. Can we even agree on what a "word" or "definition" is?
Again, language is inadequate. Get used to it. Usually it's no problem because we communicate with people who use more or less the same word/concepts matrix as we do, but once you start communicating on a forum with bloody foreigners, or in an outsourced project, or if you fall in love with someone with another language, you quickly find out just how inadequate.
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@Xyro said:
@pbean said:
It should be apparent from the context what the word should mean. Yes, sometimes a word has a double meaning in its original language which is not seen by translators, but so what, really? Who cares about the exact meaning of old writings? What difference does it make if the original writer of a poem of 2000 years ago meant heart in a metaphorical way and not an anatomical way?
... wait a second, are you trolling?If not, I humbly suggest that you have no idea what you are talking about.
Why would I be trolling? Because I suggest that the exact meanings of poems of 2000 years ago are irrelevant?
Apart from that, I have indeed no idea what I'm talking about. I'm schooled in only one field of knowledge and just get all the other knowledge from teh interwebz and Wikipedia, or form my own ideas about them. I don't know much about linguistics and literature, but I have views about them.
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I can't believe that in all of this, no-one seems to have remembered Esperanto a language designed to be easy to learn and be used to foster peace and understanding around the world. This language was created a century ago and is still only at 2 million or so speakers.
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@OzPeter said:
I can't believe that in all of this, no-one seems to have remembered Esperanto a language designed to be easy to learn and be used to foster peace and understanding around the world. This language was created a century ago and is still only at 2 million or so speakers.
That's because Klingon has a larger base [citation needed].@pbean said:Because I suggest that the exact meanings of poems of 2000 years ago are irrelevant?
If the whole point is to get everybody to communicate with the same language, how can misinterpretation and misunderstanding not be relevant? It contradicts the stated goal!Even if all we care about is language going forward, we still are left with the same problem. The phrase "lost in translation" is one of defeat, not progress.@pbean said:
Apart from that, I have indeed no idea what I'm talking about. I'm schooled in only one field of knowledge and just get all the other knowledge from teh interwebz and Wikipedia, or form my own ideas about them. I don't know much about linguistics and literature, but I have views about them.
Yeah, I'm way outside my domain expertise as well. I've done some freshman-y and amateur studies of linguistics and have watched a few TED talks on the nature of communication; I also have a housemate who studies ancient Hebrew. I'm pretty sure what I've claimed thus far is all backed by Googleable research, but only know enough to contradict you. :P
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@OzPeter said:
I can't believe that in all of this, no-one seems to have remembered Esperanto a language designed to be easy to learn and be used to foster peace and understanding around the world. This language was created a century ago and is still only at 2 million or so speakers.
And it didn't solve any problem mentioned above. Also, it was hardly the only one.
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Ugh.
Could we go back to talking about using English *for programming*? I don't think anybody wants to replace every language on Earth with it, and since it's an impossible task, this whole thread is too hypothetical for me.
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English for programming gets my vote.
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@b-redeker said:
And it didn't solve any problem mentioned above.
That was my entire point. If none of the constructed languages can entice people with a rainbow and unicorn approach to how good things will be by speaking them, then how in hell's name could you ever get the entire population of the world to switch to a single (or one or two) language(s)?
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@blakeyrat said:
Ugh.
Could we go back to talking about using English *for programming*? I don't think anybody wants to replace every language on Earth with it, and since it's an impossible task, this whole thread is too hypothetical for me.
I want to replace every language on Earth with English, but sure, I'll yield. ^^
English for programming (naturally) gets my vote too. I really don't understand why people are trying to localize IDE's, compilers, etc.
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@pbean said:
@blakeyrat said:
Ugh.
Could we go back to talking about using English *for programming*? I don't think anybody wants to replace every language on Earth with it, and since it's an impossible task, this whole thread is too hypothetical for me.
I want to replace every language on Earth with English, but sure, I'll yield. ^^
English for programming (naturally) gets my vote too. I really don't understand why people are trying to localize IDE's, compilers, etc.
My teachers were adamant in this: "You want to work in IT, learn English" so I don't see the point either and if translating the IDE is bad, using a language with keywords in another language is borderline suicidal
