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English native speakers (myself included) seem to have a real issue understanding that languages vary and aren’t all interchangeable collections of sounds. I bl

English native speakers (myself included) seem to have a real issue understanding that languages vary and aren’t all interchangeable collections of sounds. I blame the lack of bilingualism.

bluetomcat 5y ago
Languages have deeply embedded in themselves the corresponding culture and world views. A phrase like "not my cup of tea" would sound hilarious at best in most other languages. Narratives are even more culture-dependent. The same sequence of events can be presented with entirely different causal relationships based on the values of the writer.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  >A phrase like "not my cup of tea" would sound hilarious at best in most other languages. Only if translated literally word for word
  - messe 5y ago
    Obviously. That was the commenters point.
    - TchoBeer 5y ago
      The commenter's point was that there is information that can be expressed in one language but not another (they're not all essentially the same). The fact that you can't translate a figure of speech doesn't evidence this.
      - Zababa 5y ago
        I don't want to put words into their mouth, but I think the comment was more about how we think depending on the language we use rather than the concept we're able to express or not.
  - Freak_NL 5y ago
    A good translator can find a comparable idiom that neatly replaces it in the target language, but it is rare to have idioms that match exactly in their applicable scope. It depends on the context, on the tone of voice, on the age of the speaker, on other visible or hidden social classifiers, even on the region the original speaker hails from. This is something humans (i.e., experienced translators) excel at. It is something computers cannot do except at a very basic level — they lack the cultural knowledge and autonomous connection making capability needed. In Dutch I could translate 'not my cup of tea' in many ways depending on the context. Some examples: Neutral translation in lieu of additional context: „Dit is niet naar mijn smaak.” Young person in a social context: „Dit is niet echt mijn ding, nee.” Middle age manager in a white collar office environment: „Nee, dit is 'not my cup of tea', zeg maar.”¹ Ironic and/or cynical down-to-earth jocular fellow: „Dit is niet mijn kopje thee.”² 1: Note the literal borrowing of English. 2: A literal translation used humorously, knowing full well that this is not 'correct'.
    - stevesimmons 5y ago
      Nice examples! Please also do "Nu komt de aap uit de mouw!"
      - WJW 5y ago
        Don't forget the evergreen "Unfortunately peanut butter!".
    - TchoBeer 5y ago
      If human language reflect human culture, and NLPs are trained on written text, is it impossible that they can have the cultural context to make such a translation? Is it impossible that an NLP can get a query like "translate this phrase into informal slang Arabic" and the NLP properly does so?
      - Freak_NL 5y ago
        I find it improbable at this state, because 'understanding human culture' and bridging the gaps between two languages without compromising the quality of the prose depends not just on written text, but also decades of experience in being a human being in that society/language, and being able to make connections which may not be apparent from texts. A computer would also miss the final step: our monitoring function that accepts or rejects translations as silly, down-right anti-social, or totally apt — that well honed Fingerspitzengefühl that comes from the total sum of your experience and maturity. You would, in effect, have to train an artificial intelligence with a brain capable of mimicking ours by raising it as a child in our society (sometimes cheerfully acknowledged by sci-fi writers who employ such characters), and even then you would need to have a brain that processes certain events, happenings, and subtle hints the way a human being roughly does. Perhaps someone will manage to train one in a suitable manner one day (far far away — not in our lifetime), but I wouldn't want to be responsible for debugging it. Someone will manage to make one that is good enough for some purposes though. Plenty of semi-gibberish manuals included with products that strongly reek of machine translation these days.
  - bluetomcat 5y ago
    You can always find a good-enough substitute, but the original nuance will be lost. The native speaker can choose between "dislike", "would not prefer" or "not my cup of tea". The target language may have an even wider arsenal of phrases suited for different social occasions and across varying levels of politeness. Essentially, mapping the input to the output is a lossy process.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > A phrase like "not my cup of tea" would sound hilarious at best in most other languages. It sounds like total nonsense to me even in english. I know what it means but the entire cultural context surrounding tea is simply not available to me. I don't even drink tea to begin with. Always assumed it was some british thing.
  - aikinai 5y ago
    You don’t need any cultural context. I’m not particularly familiar with boats, and different types of things “floating a boat” doesn’t even really make sense, but “Whatever floats your boat” never had an impact on my comprehension.
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      > You don’t need any cultural context. Sure you do. At least if you're actually trying to understand what the words mean in the context they're used. I understand your "whatever floats your boat" example, including the cultural context. This tea business is completely foreign to me though. I have no problem understanding these things. It's easy to infer meaning when they're used in actual conversation. When taken in isolation and without cultural understanding, these idioms sound like those made up sentences used for language practice.
  - Sharlin 5y ago
    Idioms don’t have to make sense, and often don’t, due to semantic drift and language and cultural evolution. Indeed, one of the defining properties of an idiom is that it has meaning beyond its literal, reductionist interpretation.
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      Of course they make sense. Maybe they don't make sense today but they made sense back then to the people who started using the idiom. That's what I meant by cultural context. Something in their culture gave meaning to those words.

English native speakers (myself included) seem to have a real issue understanding that languages vary and aren’t all interchangeable collections of sounds. I blame the lack of bilingualism.

bluetomcat 5y ago

Languages have deeply embedded in themselves the corresponding culture and world views. A phrase like "not my cup of tea" would sound hilarious at best in most other languages. Narratives are even more culture-dependent. The same sequence of events can be presented with entirely different causal relationships based on the values of the writer.

TchoBeer 5y ago
>A phrase like "not my cup of tea" would sound hilarious at best in most other languages. Only if translated literally word for word
- messe 5y ago
  Obviously. That was the commenters point.
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    The commenter's point was that there is information that can be expressed in one language but not another (they're not all essentially the same). The fact that you can't translate a figure of speech doesn't evidence this.
    - Zababa 5y ago
      I don't want to put words into their mouth, but I think the comment was more about how we think depending on the language we use rather than the concept we're able to express or not.
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  A good translator can find a comparable idiom that neatly replaces it in the target language, but it is rare to have idioms that match exactly in their applicable scope. It depends on the context, on the tone of voice, on the age of the speaker, on other visible or hidden social classifiers, even on the region the original speaker hails from. This is something humans (i.e., experienced translators) excel at. It is something computers cannot do except at a very basic level — they lack the cultural knowledge and autonomous connection making capability needed. In Dutch I could translate 'not my cup of tea' in many ways depending on the context. Some examples: Neutral translation in lieu of additional context: „Dit is niet naar mijn smaak.” Young person in a social context: „Dit is niet echt mijn ding, nee.” Middle age manager in a white collar office environment: „Nee, dit is 'not my cup of tea', zeg maar.”¹ Ironic and/or cynical down-to-earth jocular fellow: „Dit is niet mijn kopje thee.”² 1: Note the literal borrowing of English. 2: A literal translation used humorously, knowing full well that this is not 'correct'.
  - stevesimmons 5y ago
    Nice examples! Please also do "Nu komt de aap uit de mouw!"
    - WJW 5y ago
      Don't forget the evergreen "Unfortunately peanut butter!".
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    If human language reflect human culture, and NLPs are trained on written text, is it impossible that they can have the cultural context to make such a translation? Is it impossible that an NLP can get a query like "translate this phrase into informal slang Arabic" and the NLP properly does so?
    - Freak_NL 5y ago
      I find it improbable at this state, because 'understanding human culture' and bridging the gaps between two languages without compromising the quality of the prose depends not just on written text, but also decades of experience in being a human being in that society/language, and being able to make connections which may not be apparent from texts. A computer would also miss the final step: our monitoring function that accepts or rejects translations as silly, down-right anti-social, or totally apt — that well honed Fingerspitzengefühl that comes from the total sum of your experience and maturity. You would, in effect, have to train an artificial intelligence with a brain capable of mimicking ours by raising it as a child in our society (sometimes cheerfully acknowledged by sci-fi writers who employ such characters), and even then you would need to have a brain that processes certain events, happenings, and subtle hints the way a human being roughly does. Perhaps someone will manage to train one in a suitable manner one day (far far away — not in our lifetime), but I wouldn't want to be responsible for debugging it. Someone will manage to make one that is good enough for some purposes though. Plenty of semi-gibberish manuals included with products that strongly reek of machine translation these days.
- bluetomcat 5y ago
  You can always find a good-enough substitute, but the original nuance will be lost. The native speaker can choose between "dislike", "would not prefer" or "not my cup of tea". The target language may have an even wider arsenal of phrases suited for different social occasions and across varying levels of politeness. Essentially, mapping the input to the output is a lossy process.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> A phrase like "not my cup of tea" would sound hilarious at best in most other languages. It sounds like total nonsense to me even in english. I know what it means but the entire cultural context surrounding tea is simply not available to me. I don't even drink tea to begin with. Always assumed it was some british thing.
- aikinai 5y ago
  You don’t need any cultural context. I’m not particularly familiar with boats, and different types of things “floating a boat” doesn’t even really make sense, but “Whatever floats your boat” never had an impact on my comprehension.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > You don’t need any cultural context. Sure you do. At least if you're actually trying to understand what the words mean in the context they're used. I understand your "whatever floats your boat" example, including the cultural context. This tea business is completely foreign to me though. I have no problem understanding these things. It's easy to infer meaning when they're used in actual conversation. When taken in isolation and without cultural understanding, these idioms sound like those made up sentences used for language practice.
- Sharlin 5y ago
  Idioms don’t have to make sense, and often don’t, due to semantic drift and language and cultural evolution. Indeed, one of the defining properties of an idiom is that it has meaning beyond its literal, reductionist interpretation.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Of course they make sense. Maybe they don't make sense today but they made sense back then to the people who started using the idiom. That's what I meant by cultural context. Something in their culture gave meaning to those words.