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Would you be able to provide some examples of these untranslatable concepts or ways of thinking? I suspect that the fact that you can provide them, in English,

Would you be able to provide some examples of these untranslatable concepts or ways of thinking? I suspect that the fact that you can provide them, in English, means that English is as capable as any other language to at absorbing that idea and making it expressible. If different languages contain unique ways of thinking that can't be expressed in other languages, then what benefit is there to the preservation of that language? If the idea cannot be communicated outside its language, then what impact can it have on the world outside it? If it can be communicated, then why not simply use loanwords (as languages like English are very prone to doing) to absorb that particular concept into the set of concepts that can be expressed in the language?

japhyr 12y ago
I'll try to share some examples in a bit. Short reason this approach is "lossy": it's a huge game of telephone. Translation retains most of the translated concept, but not all of the concept's subtleties. The farther removed we get from the original, the less faithful the translation. We see this most clearly where it takes a paragraph of English to start to communicate the meaning contained in one word from some languages. Simple example: translate namaste into one English word. I come at this from a context of living in Alaska, and seeing firsthand the value of language retention, and the tragedy of language loss. I've also had great benefit from digging into other cultures' world views, and each of those experiences was heavily dependent on paying attention to the nuances of older languages. These concepts are hard to grasp if this whole topic is approached from a strictly academic context.
- DanAndersen 12y ago
  Why does it need to be translated into a single English word? This is the power of "preserving language as reference": I can look up the meaning and cultural context of "namaste," gain that information, and then I can use the word "namaste" as a loanword if there's not a suitable short word in English that conveys the same idea. That's how loanwords happen. Words aren't these indivisible blocks that exist in the universe outside of us. When we first learn what, for example, a "fish" is, we don't do a lookup in a mental dictionary for the brain-word that means "fish." We learn that whole paragraph about how fish are animals that swim in water and have gills and fins, etc. Then we come up with a name for that swimmy-water-animal-thing, and move on. If a foreign word or concept is not sufficiently similar to anything readily available in a language, that language grabs the foreign word as a loanword and moves on. That's what languages do. This means it's valuable to have this as a reference, but perpetual storage -- redundancies and all -- in the brains of generation after generation seems inefficient and burdensome to the brains who actually have to expend effort to store it and also compete in a global society. If they want to, more power to them, but I don't know if that's the best mandated investment of resources/time.
- WalterBright 12y ago
  The meanings and subtleties of English words also change over time. For a topical example, there's a front page article on Reddit on how Homer Simpson is distinguishing between jealousy and envy, a distinction that is being lost in modern usage. I have a friend who writes screenplays. One of the more difficult things is getting the language correct for period pieces. It's hard to tell what turns of phrase would be out of place in, say, the 40's, and what would be in place. Going back a little further, nobody alive knows what the Confederate "rebel yell" actually sounded like.
- brc 12y ago
  English is an open source language. It gets extended as needed. Schadenfreude is a word with no equivalent in English, so a big number of English people use schadenfreude as a direct way of expressing the concept. As long as the language is extensible then I don't see a major problem with translation losses, because they can just get incorporated into the language of the day. I get that each language has ways of describing certain things better than others, and those superior language features are likely tied directly to the culture that originally created the language. I just think that the cost of maintaining a large amount of languages might. T be worth it.

japhyr 12y ago

I'll try to share some examples in a bit. Short reason this approach is "lossy": it's a huge game of telephone. Translation retains most of the translated concept, but not all of the concept's subtleties. The farther removed we get from the original, the less faithful the translation. We see this most clearly where it takes a paragraph of English to start to communicate the meaning contained in one word from some languages. Simple example: translate namaste into one English word. I come at this from a context of living in Alaska, and seeing firsthand the value of language retention, and the tragedy of language loss. I've also had great benefit from digging into other cultures' world views, and each of those experiences was heavily dependent on paying attention to the nuances of older languages. These concepts are hard to grasp if this whole topic is approached from a strictly academic context.

DanAndersen 12y ago
Why does it need to be translated into a single English word? This is the power of "preserving language as reference": I can look up the meaning and cultural context of "namaste," gain that information, and then I can use the word "namaste" as a loanword if there's not a suitable short word in English that conveys the same idea. That's how loanwords happen. Words aren't these indivisible blocks that exist in the universe outside of us. When we first learn what, for example, a "fish" is, we don't do a lookup in a mental dictionary for the brain-word that means "fish." We learn that whole paragraph about how fish are animals that swim in water and have gills and fins, etc. Then we come up with a name for that swimmy-water-animal-thing, and move on. If a foreign word or concept is not sufficiently similar to anything readily available in a language, that language grabs the foreign word as a loanword and moves on. That's what languages do. This means it's valuable to have this as a reference, but perpetual storage -- redundancies and all -- in the brains of generation after generation seems inefficient and burdensome to the brains who actually have to expend effort to store it and also compete in a global society. If they want to, more power to them, but I don't know if that's the best mandated investment of resources/time.
WalterBright 12y ago
The meanings and subtleties of English words also change over time. For a topical example, there's a front page article on Reddit on how Homer Simpson is distinguishing between jealousy and envy, a distinction that is being lost in modern usage. I have a friend who writes screenplays. One of the more difficult things is getting the language correct for period pieces. It's hard to tell what turns of phrase would be out of place in, say, the 40's, and what would be in place. Going back a little further, nobody alive knows what the Confederate "rebel yell" actually sounded like.
brc 12y ago
English is an open source language. It gets extended as needed. Schadenfreude is a word with no equivalent in English, so a big number of English people use schadenfreude as a direct way of expressing the concept. As long as the language is extensible then I don't see a major problem with translation losses, because they can just get incorporated into the language of the day. I get that each language has ways of describing certain things better than others, and those superior language features are likely tied directly to the culture that originally created the language. I just think that the cost of maintaining a large amount of languages might. T be worth it.