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For better or worse, anything sufficiently subtle or complicated can't be translated 1-1 across languages. There are too many problems of context, meaning, etc
by mathattack 10y ago
For better or worse, anything sufficiently subtle or complicated can't be translated 1-1 across languages. There are too many problems of context, meaning, etc. For a strange example - the Intuit have 50 words for snow. How much subtlety would be lost translating that into English? It just wouldn't work.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/there-really-are-50-eskimo-words-for-snow/2013/01/14/e0e3f4e0-59a0-11e2-beee-6e38f5215402_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/there...
- ryanklee 10y ago> have 50 words for snow Untrue, but widely circulated and accepted myth [0] [0] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4419 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4419
- mathattack 10y agoFair enough, but the point still stands. Languages don't map 1 to 1.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agoI guess if you live in SV you might not have direct experience with this, but English has a lot more than one word for "snow".
- johngossman 10y agoIn Seattle we have 50 words for rain
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoRain, stupid rain, fucking rain, miserable rain...
- jtolmar 10y agoIn Seattle we have 50 words for surprise at the lack of rain.
- duaneb 10y agoReally? Like what? I can think of things like snow (sleet, flurries, blizzard, powder) but not any direct synonyms. We can't hold a candle to the Inuit.
- derefr 10y agoWhy would you have multiple words for the same thing, that don't carry different shades of meaning or uses? What do you imagine these 59 words are used for? Cute little nicknames?
- duaneb 10y agoI wouldn't say you should! I imagine the Inuit have a much more sophisticated understanding of snow than someone from Massachusetts.
- ImprovedSilence 10y agoMaybe not official oxford dictionary words for snow, but as a skier, I can think of: Powder, pow, fresh, fatties, corn snow, crud, corduroy, slush, champagne powder, wet snow, ice coast snow, flurries, whiteout, etc.. Some words describing how it lays, some describing how it falls, some describing what it turns into, moisture content, flake size. This is how you get to "50" (or just multiple) words for snow. English does it too. It's not just generic "snow" that gets described with 50 words... (but some are just flavor: pow, fresh whateveryougetthepoint)
- JoeAltmaier 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow tl;dr: they modify words by adding suffixes (e.g. instead of adjectives). So they have (can make) 50 words out of anything
- JaumeGreen 10y agoSometimes things go well if the translators are good enough. I read Neuromancer both in English and Catalan, in there there were programs called ICE (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics, so a firewall) and the programs to break them were called icebreakers. The catalan translator (Joan Fontcuberta i Gel) managed to translate ICE to GEL (I don't remember what the acronym mean, but it made sense). "Gel" is "ice" in Catalan, also is one of the translator's surnames. And so we could have "trencagels" as "icebreakers" (literal translation). So, yes, most things are not easily translatable, so when they are they stand up and show us the craftmanship of the translators.
- grkvlt 10y agoIntuit (sic) actually have fifty words for different types of _taxes_, the snow thing is a myth...