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How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

latin.stackexchange.com

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Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#171

Post by [deleted] »

klodolph wrote: post #124
alcover wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes! It touches language and compression, both dear subjects to programmers. If the accepted answer stands, that's remarkable. I wonder how one could measure a language efficiency. Maybe syllable count ? But one would need a sort of assembly to translate to and verify that a sentence computes the intended information.

If you translate it back into English, “she had said goodbye too much”, it’s clear that the real question is, “did the author mean something by those choices which the translation obliterated?” Translation is a process which both erases information and introduces new information. Any comparison of languages which tries to evaluate which languages are more compact has to work with some assumptions about what informati…

[deleted]

Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#173

Post by magnat »

klodolph wrote: post #124
alcover wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes! It touches language and compression, both dear subjects to programmers. If the accepted answer stands, that's remarkable. I wonder how one could measure a language efficiency. Maybe syllable count ? But one would need a sort of assembly to translate to and verify that a sentence computes the intended information.

If you translate it back into English, “she had said goodbye too much”, it’s clear that the real question is, “did the author mean something by those choices which the translation obliterated?” Translation is a process which both erases information and introduces new information. Any comparison of languages which tries to evaluate which languages are more compact has to work with some assumptions about what informati…

> Translation is a process which both erases information and introduces new information

"Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful."

Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#175

Post by [deleted] »

nihiven wrote: post #51

I read the linked info and the comments asking why this was upvoted and it's a good question. The liked answer feels a lot like a text version of a TikTok video. It's an interesting fact that takes very little time to read and makes us feel that we've learned something about a interesting topic outside of our expertise. A TikTok example is a video about a 'little known' fact of quantum mechanics. The linked info give…

[deleted]

Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#176

Post by canistel »

seer wrote: post #113
alcover wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes! It touches language and compression, both dear subjects to programmers. If the accepted answer stands, that's remarkable. I wonder how one could measure a language efficiency. Maybe syllable count ? But one would need a sort of assembly to translate to and verify that a sentence computes the intended information.

While some languages “compress” information into less syllables, sometimes redundancy can be a feature. For example I feel like languages like spanish have longer words, but since the intonation doesn’t vary too much, fluent speakers can speak way faster, or to put it more accurately, fast speech is more prevalent. Similar thing I’ve noticed with the south indian language - Malayalam, just try to pronounce the name o…

Since you mentioned Malayalam, the sentence can be made into a single word in the language - vitacholliyirunnereyaval (വിടചൊല്ലിയിരുന്നേറെയവൾ). Sounds lyrical, but does it.

No magic but plain agglutination, and I am sure this should be possible in languages like Finnish too...

Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#177

Post by Someone »

alcover wrote: post #22
dTal wrote: post #7

People wondering why this is on Hacker News - probably the fascinating part is how a relatively complex 7 word phrase in English translates idiomatically into a 2 word phrase in Latin.

Oh yes! It touches language and compression, both dear subjects to programmers. If the accepted answer stands, that's remarkable. I wonder how one could measure a language efficiency. Maybe syllable count ? But one would need a sort of assembly to translate to and verify that a sentence computes the intended information.

Brevity isn’t the only goal with language; you also want robustness under noise and ease of random access (e.g. if you skim-read a text or if you enter a conversation a bit late or have to leave early)

In an optimally breve language the meaning of a text could completely flip when a single letter/syllable/phoneme is changed. That, in turn, means listeners have to hear every letter/syllable/phoneme perfectly.

Interestingly, natural languages already have a bit of both.

As an example, if you skim-read a text and restart at “He said she wasn’t there anymore”, there are 3 ‘back references’ in that sentence that require you to look back in the text to find the meaning of.

Also, a paragraph’s meaning can change by adding the sentence “Just joking.” Or even a simple “Not.”.

Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#179

Post by mbg721 »

bombcar wrote: post #156
klodolph wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you translate it back into English, “she had said goodbye too much”, it’s clear that the real question is, “did the author mean something by those choices which the translation obliterated?” Translation is a process which both erases information and introduces new information. Any comparison of languages which tries to evaluate which languages are more compact has to work with some assumptions about what informati…

It’s hard enough to translate when there’s one meaning - but good writers often use multiple meaning of the same words - either for deeper meaning or for humor or other layered meanings. That’s why the translations of Asterix are so impressive.

The Spanish dubs of the Simpsons have a similarly good reputation.

Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#180

Post by ekidd »

klodolph wrote: post #124
alcover wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes! It touches language and compression, both dear subjects to programmers. If the accepted answer stands, that's remarkable. I wonder how one could measure a language efficiency. Maybe syllable count ? But one would need a sort of assembly to translate to and verify that a sentence computes the intended information.

If you translate it back into English, “she had said goodbye too much”, it’s clear that the real question is, “did the author mean something by those choices which the translation obliterated?” Translation is a process which both erases information and introduces new information. Any comparison of languages which tries to evaluate which languages are more compact has to work with some assumptions about what informati…

> If you translate it back into English, “she had said goodbye too much”, it’s clear that the real question is, “did the author mean something by those choices which the translation obliterated?”

When translating for fun, I've often run into a choice between:

- Preserving the author's meaning as literally as possible.

- Preserving the author's style.

A translation can be literally very accurate, while destroying everything that made the original work charming. Or it might preserve the feel and the flavor of the original work, but skim over a lot of the details. A really good translation captures more of both, with fewer trade-offs.

Jorge Luis Borges encouraged his translators to improve upon his original work, if possible. He worked extensively with Di Giovanni, one of his translators, debating the best way to capture certain phrases in English: https://medium.com/@michael.marcus/dear-mr-borges-which-tran... His preference was almost always to capture the "feel" of the work, rather than a strictly literal translation.

I have an odd book, which contains three copies of the same story: An original in English, a French translation, and then a translation back into English by a new translator. The French version definitely loses something, and the second English version loses a bit more. But in the second English version, there is an occasional delightful turn of phrase, something that's briefly better than the original version. Translation is hard.

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