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> Japanese [...] is also significantly more expressive than English is My first reaction was to doubt it because I remember reading [0] that spoken languages

> Japanese [...] is also significantly more expressive than English is My first reaction was to doubt it because I remember reading [0] that spoken languages have roughly the same bit rate ( 39.15 bits/s on avg ). However, bit rate is far from everything (and this is also written not spoken), so could you try to explain what creates the expressiveness compared to other languages you know? [0]: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594

Dalewyn 3y ago
One of my biggest problems when translating from Japanese to English is figuring out how to convey everything. It sounds easy, but it really isn't; usually the English text becomes far too long and unwieldy. For a specific example, "itadakimasu" (literally "I will take it.") spoken at the start of a meal is a complete bastard to translate to English. "Thank you for the food." would be a translation of the core spirit of the phrase, but it lacks the elegance and respect of the way it is conveyed in Japanese. "Amen" would be a western cultural/religious counterpart that most westerners could relate to, but this adds religious undertones that are not in the original Japanese. Not to mention, "Thank you for the food." also overlaps with "gochisousama" (literally "Mr. Feast", "-sama" is an honorific) spoken at the end of a meal. Two very obviously distinct and different Japanese phrases, but the English translation ends up being more or less the same. None of this is to say English isn't expressive, but Japanese takes the expression game to a whole new level; yojijukugo[1] are the epitome of this using just four words to construct and convey what would be entire sentences or even paragraphs in English. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojijukugo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojijukugo
- HappyPanacea 3y ago
  Insightful, thanks!
- innocenat 3y ago
  Isn't it just problem in general translation rather than specific problem with Japanese? I couldn't think of any good translation for "Amen" in Japanese that is as compact either. Or something like "Bless you", whose concept doesn't exist in Japanese.
  - masklinn 3y ago
    Definitely, langages differ in plenty of nuances, especially cultural. With the possible exception of the very technical and matter-of-fact stuff there’s a huge amount of taste and artistry involved in pretty much every translation, with the exception of very close languages (commonly close enough to be debated as dialectal).
numpad0 3y ago
That's like saying most programming languages fall within similar runtime performance, but translation is also like porting codes. Doing that line by line or per-function especially for human reading can be hard and/or weird and/or borderline wrong, like you might have to stuff class definition for a struct, guess variable types from name, explain "// onload means entrypoint in HTML", things like that.
GartzenDeHaes 3y ago
Japanese tends to be vague, nonspecific, and the Japanese dislike directly saying what they mean. Since English should be specific and direct, there's a lot of interpretation and elaboration that needs to happen as part of the translation process.
deleted 3y ago
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kmeisthax 3y ago
Japanese is, for the most part, not more expressive than English, it's differently expressive. Same for every other language. The bit rate you mention is mostly a limitation of how quickly speakers can speak and listeners can listen. The cohort of listeners and speakers mutually agree on how to bucket the spectrum of experiences into a finite number of words, but different cohorts can bucket experiences differently. In practice this means there's a lot of English words that get smushed together in Japanese[0], and a lot of Japanese words that get smushed together in English[1]. Japan also has a lot of shared cultural experience that Americans or Brits won't recognize, and vice versa, which translators have to spend time explaining. [0] https://jisho.org/search/とおる https://jisho.org/search/とおる [1] https://jisho.org/search/知る https://jisho.org/search/知る vs. https://jisho.org/search/分かる https://jisho.org/search/分かる

Dalewyn 3y ago

One of my biggest problems when translating from Japanese to English is figuring out how to convey everything. It sounds easy, but it really isn't; usually the English text becomes far too long and unwieldy. For a specific example, "itadakimasu" (literally "I will take it.") spoken at the start of a meal is a complete bastard to translate to English. "Thank you for the food." would be a translation of the core spirit of the phrase, but it lacks the elegance and respect of the way it is conveyed in Japanese. "Amen" would be a western cultural/religious counterpart that most westerners could relate to, but this adds religious undertones that are not in the original Japanese. Not to mention, "Thank you for the food." also overlaps with "gochisousama" (literally "Mr. Feast", "-sama" is an honorific) spoken at the end of a meal. Two very obviously distinct and different Japanese phrases, but the English translation ends up being more or less the same. None of this is to say English isn't expressive, but Japanese takes the expression game to a whole new level; yojijukugo[1] are the epitome of this using just four words to construct and convey what would be entire sentences or even paragraphs in English. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojijukugo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojijukugo

HappyPanacea 3y ago
Insightful, thanks!
innocenat 3y ago
Isn't it just problem in general translation rather than specific problem with Japanese? I couldn't think of any good translation for "Amen" in Japanese that is as compact either. Or something like "Bless you", whose concept doesn't exist in Japanese.
- masklinn 3y ago
  Definitely, langages differ in plenty of nuances, especially cultural. With the possible exception of the very technical and matter-of-fact stuff there’s a huge amount of taste and artistry involved in pretty much every translation, with the exception of very close languages (commonly close enough to be debated as dialectal).

numpad0 3y ago

That's like saying most programming languages fall within similar runtime performance, but translation is also like porting codes. Doing that line by line or per-function especially for human reading can be hard and/or weird and/or borderline wrong, like you might have to stuff class definition for a struct, guess variable types from name, explain "// onload means entrypoint in HTML", things like that.

GartzenDeHaes 3y ago

Japanese tends to be vague, nonspecific, and the Japanese dislike directly saying what they mean. Since English should be specific and direct, there's a lot of interpretation and elaboration that needs to happen as part of the translation process.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

kmeisthax 3y ago

Japanese is, for the most part, not more expressive than English, it's differently expressive. Same for every other language. The bit rate you mention is mostly a limitation of how quickly speakers can speak and listeners can listen. The cohort of listeners and speakers mutually agree on how to bucket the spectrum of experiences into a finite number of words, but different cohorts can bucket experiences differently. In practice this means there's a lot of English words that get smushed together in Japanese[0], and a lot of Japanese words that get smushed together in English[1]. Japan also has a lot of shared cultural experience that Americans or Brits won't recognize, and vice versa, which translators have to spend time explaining. [0] https://jisho.org/search/とおる https://jisho.org/search/とおる [1] https://jisho.org/search/知る https://jisho.org/search/知る vs. https://jisho.org/search/分かる https://jisho.org/search/分かる