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Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

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Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#71

Post by mcswell »

pjsg wrote: post #5

The article seems to think that a word is untranslateable if there is no single word in the target language. If I'm not misreading the article, then this is completely obvious -- just consider the number of words in English and the number of words in almost any other language, and you will find that there are more English words than the other language. It is now clear that there exist English words that don't corresp…

"...there are more English words than the other language" There might be more words in some English dictionaries than in some dictionaries of other languages, but that may just be due to a lot more effort having gone into English lexicography than X language lexicography. I doubt that most native speakers of English know more English words than equally educated native speakers of some other language know words of their language.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#72

Post by mcswell »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #58
pjsg wrote: post #5

The article seems to think that a word is untranslateable if there is no single word in the target language. If I'm not misreading the article, then this is completely obvious -- just consider the number of words in English and the number of words in almost any other language, and you will find that there are more English words than the other language. It is now clear that there exist English words that don't corresp…

> It is now clear that there exist English words that don't correspond to a single word in the other language. But that's true of any language. Not only that, but English uses loanwords heavily which are often Anglicisations of words from other languages, which may not in themselves be just one word. "Ho ho ho", the flag-waving Little Englander types say, "Gaelic is such a stupid language, they don't even have a word…

"English also has no word for "television" Oh goodness sake. OF COURSE English has a word "television". The fact that you can trace its etymology back to Greek and Latin doesn't mean it's not an English word. If you confronted a native speaker of Latin who also spoke Greek (a common situation back then, also vice versa), they would have no clue what "television" meant any more than most people would know what a "Fernseher" is.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#73

Post by mcswell »

seanhunter wrote: post #9
pjsg wrote: post #5

The article seems to think that a word is untranslateable if there is no single word in the target language. If I'm not misreading the article, then this is completely obvious -- just consider the number of words in English and the number of words in almost any other language, and you will find that there are more English words than the other language. It is now clear that there exist English words that don't corresp…

Not sure this approach really accounts for the difference between a language like German where you have one compound word for a concept that would require multiple words in English. For one good example, the German "Nomenkompositum" is "compound noun" in English.

It's the same structure in both languages. Just because it's written as if it were a single unbreakable word doesn't mean it is--or contrariwise, the fact that it's written as two things with a space in between doesn't mean that it's two "words" in English. The problem lies in the meaning of "word." Is 'doghouse' one word in English, while 'dog house' is two? No.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#74

Post by nyeah »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #69
nyeah wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kind of is a proof if we assume that single words can be translated at all. Translate a single word from Language X (more words) to language Y (fewer words) and back. I can't uniquely recover all the words in Language X that way.

Does translation have to be a bijection? I don’t think so.

I don't know about that. For many practical purposes probably not?

I'm just on the thread following this idea: "The article seems to think that a word is untranslateable if there is no single word in the target language"

So we're talking about "translatability" of single words. Mapping multiple words of language X to one word of language Y is going to have some effect on translation.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#75

Post by Izkata »

sjducb wrote: post #38
drivebyhooting wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn’t a proof. Synonyms can bolster the enumeration sans augmenting novelty.

Synonyms rarely have identical meanings for example: Happy: Joyful, cheerful, merry, delighted Or Beautiful: Lovely, pretty, attractive The only truly identical synonym I can think of is flammable and inflammable

I thought there was a difference between those two in how they start burning, like one needs an external flame to start while the other can burst into flame without an obvious ignition source.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#76

Post by mcswell »

yubblegum wrote: post #47

Interestingly enough for this morning's walk I was musing over the tension between the hypotheses that: 'LLMs can map between languages in the vector space' (thus languages are ~equivalent); and 'Language affects thoughts' (as in German is good for Philosophy and English for getting things done). If both these thoughts are true, then it would appear that languages have topological characteristics. We can (topological…

"'Language affects thoughts' (as in German is good for Philosophy and English for getting things done). If both these thoughts are true..." Well, the second one isn't true (I omitted the first one in this reply). It is simply not the case that German is good for philosophy and English for getting things done, and similarly for most other such claims (French is better for talking about love, Italian is better for operas, etc. etc.).

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#77

Post by mcswell »

nph278 wrote: post #27

Just read Wittgenstein (The Blue+Brown Books / Philosophical investigations), and this confusion will go away. The difference between translation, definition, and explanation needs to be understood.

I'm thinking this is a joke, right? Wittgenstein always seemed to me to be a good way to get confused.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#78

Post by mcswell »

miltonlost wrote: post #48

Reading any poem that makes use of extensive wordplay within a language shows why there will always be some untranslatable aspect. You can't create all the exact shades of a single pun if all those shades aren't in a different language. Go translate an ee cummings poem and make sure to retain all its meanings.

Douglas Hofstedter's book The Ton beau de Marot.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#79

Post by mcswell »

The word 'word' is polysemous, and also vague. Polysemous: it can refer to written words or spoken words (or signed words, in sign languages).

Vague: does it mean all the inflected forms of a word, or just the stem without inflection? Example: is (are?) 'walk', 'walked', 'walks' and 'walking' four words, or one? What about "stand/stood"? (And languages where the bare root or stem can't appear by itself, like verbs in Spanish.) Derived words, like 'push' and 'pushy'.

Do compound nouns count as a word, or do only the parts count? Example: 'doghouse' (or 'dog house'). What about idioms? Example: 'to crane his/her/my/your/our neck(s)'.

What about different pronunciations? Is 'roof' pronounced to rhyme with 'aloof' the same word as 'roof' pronounced with the vowel of 'put'? And different spellings but same pronunciation: 'bear' vs. 'bare'.

What about words with different grammatical categories, like 'push' as a noun ("I gave her a push") or a verb ("I pushed her"). Or the same word with virtually unrelated meanings, "I pushed her on the swing" vs. "I pushed my ideas."

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#80

Post by plumeria »

nyeah wrote: post #65
realusername wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that the English dictionary is stuffed with legacy words that no natives understand. Is it even part of the language if no native use it? It's another debate.

It's stuffed with unusual and rare words, and no native speaker understands all of those. But I think most of those words are in use somewhere, for something.

Is there any overlap between these unusual and rare words and GRE vocabulary?
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