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What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

bbc.com

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Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#11

Post by AstralStorm »

lordnacho wrote: post #7

This is a problem in just about every language that isn't English. Since the language of science is English, either you borrow the English word (which interestingly is likely borrowed from Latin) or you know a local word that. But at some stage your local vocabulary runs out, and you wonder whether you should just use English for everything in that domain to make it consistent. I've run into this problem with a load…

The word is medical Latin-Greek, which is actually neither of those.

(In many languages it is deoxyribonucleic acid with first part not translated.)

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#13

Post by abruzzi »

I would wonder, given that many scientific words--especially in chemistry--are a jumble of root plus prefixes and suffixes (de-oxy-ribo-nucleo-tide), and there are a LOT of these chemistry words, would it be productive to treat the signs the same way. So instead of a single sign for deoxyribonucleotide, you break it into a sort of compound sign that is built up from similar meaning sub parts? I know very little about ASL or BSL to know how much this sort of word construction already happens.

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#14

Post by TimTheTinker »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #3

This comment is made in full good faith. I get that being clear/accurate/specific is important, but isn't this what slang/shortnames are used for? Even in the most conservative engineering positions I've had, slang was used alot, since there are tons of things that have overly long/descriptive/technical terms which no one wants to use in everyday language/communication. The only time you would use them would be in do…

> This comment is made in full good faith.

FYI - per HN guidelines, all comments should be taken as if posted in good faith, including yours :)

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#15

Post by AcerbicZero »

Why even use sign language, when you could just do real-time speech to text, and just read what is being said? Is that actually less efficient than signing?

Edit: So rather than being entirely uneducated on this topic, I'm googling it. There seems to be some disagreement between which is better, and it also appears to be a somewhat sensitive topic (according to non-deaf people who are writing articles about deaf people on the internet. So take that for what its worth)

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#16

Post by [deleted] »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #15

Why even use sign language, when you could just do real-time speech to text, and just read what is being said? Is that actually less efficient than signing? Edit: So rather than being entirely uneducated on this topic, I'm googling it. There seems to be some disagreement between which is better, and it also appears to be a somewhat sensitive topic (according to non-deaf people who are writing articles about deaf peop…

[deleted]

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#17

Post by annachronistic »

AstralStorm wrote: post #11
lordnacho wrote: post #7

This is a problem in just about every language that isn't English. Since the language of science is English, either you borrow the English word (which interestingly is likely borrowed from Latin) or you know a local word that. But at some stage your local vocabulary runs out, and you wonder whether you should just use English for everything in that domain to make it consistent. I've run into this problem with a load…

The word is medical Latin-Greek, which is actually neither of those. (In many languages it is deoxyribonucleic acid with first part not translated.)

Is etymology so relevant? The lexicon of the word is scientific jargon; its language is English.

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#18

Post by pushcx »

On this side of the pond, the University of Washington has a large and growing ASL STEM dictionary: https://aslstem.cs.washington.edu/

I don't know how widely accepted these signs are and it has a serious problem with spambots, but it was useful when I was tutoring a Deaf friend in programming.

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#19

Post by pbhjpbhj »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #3

This comment is made in full good faith. I get that being clear/accurate/specific is important, but isn't this what slang/shortnames are used for? Even in the most conservative engineering positions I've had, slang was used alot, since there are tons of things that have overly long/descriptive/technical terms which no one wants to use in everyday language/communication. The only time you would use them would be in do…

In British Sign Language (BSL) when I learnt to a remedial level things like names (places, people, things) would be spelt out the first time, or when it wasn't clear, and then you'd use shorthand - just the first letter, say.

Kinda how we use initialisms and other abbreviations in speech/writing.

For common topics you'd get local slang that might not even be valid a few towns away -- BSL being somewhat like British-English in that respect!

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#20

Post by edgarvaldes »

annachronistic wrote: post #17
AstralStorm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word is medical Latin-Greek, which is actually neither of those. (In many languages it is deoxyribonucleic acid with first part not translated.)

Is etymology so relevant? The lexicon of the word is scientific jargon; its language is English.

In spanish it is Ácido DesoxirriboNucleico. It's very easy to construct, given that "ácido", "des" and "nucleico" have latin roots.
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