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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

#81

Post by anthk »

mcswell wrote: post #72
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 "Fern…

He would know both tele and vision. Remote viewng? Some kind of magic?

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#82

Post by plumeria »

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.

Nope, because of synonyms as well.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#83

Post by BDPW »

MangoToupe wrote: post #25
proteal wrote: post #17

I think a succinct way to describe my thoughts on linear algebra/language is that language has high dimensionality (ie many different basis vectors that may not necessarily be orthogonal) and that individual languages use a unique coordinate system to express thought. Each language is a lossy approximation of all conceivable thought and some languages can more efficiently represent the “all thoughts” vector space bec…

> Each language is a lossy approximation of all conceivable thought I'm not quite sure I understand this—I do have mental sensations/processes sans language, but I would not characterize them as "thoughts". To me, a thought is inherently linguistic, even if they relate to non-linguistic mental processes. So to me, learning a new language is very literally learning how to think differently.

I would argue that you can consider those thoughts. But this is the difficult bit, I've had the experience before of thoughts/feelings whatever ypu want to call them where words fall short. Knowing multiple languages helps a bit but it still falls short sometimes (very rarely).

Language is very effective at this, but I don't think thought is inherently linguistic.

To me language is just a way to label, group or organise these things. So when you learn a new one you learn a new 'labeling system/taxonomy' does that sound familiar?

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#84

Post by epistasis »

trostaft wrote: post #30
epistasis wrote: post #19

> If the mere sight of the above is like a punch in the face for you, don't worry. I'm not going to math you to death in what follows. I will only remind you of a tiny basic part of it that I think relates to languages. Yes, that mathematical expression is like a punch in my face, but not for the reason you think. I am offended that the rank of the matrix does not match the dimension of the matrix, not that I'm seein…

You probably mean that the size of the matrix is incompatible with the size of the vector?

Yes, and embarrassingly there are two mistakes in the comment! I used "rank" of the matrix rather than dimension too.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#85

Post by sevensor »

I like this as an analogy but not as an explanation. In fact, if you’re unfamiliar with linear algebra, this might be a nice way to think about projection onto a different set of basis vectors. But even the best human translators can be deeply at odds over what translation is appropriate for a term in its context. There’s never a right translation, let alone a uniquely right translation.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#87

Post by naijaboiler »

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…

I think he’s rather arguing that no language is perfectly translatable to another. He only uses “untranslatable word” an instance of that claim

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#88

Post by card_zero »

anthk wrote: post #81
mcswell wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 "Fern…

He would know both tele and vision. Remote viewng? Some kind of magic?

I found the word τηλαυγής (telauges), "far-shining", meaning "visible from far away". Like a lighthouse. So some theoretical ancient might hear "television" and understand it as "looking at distant landmarks".

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#89

Post by nomel »

manwe150 wrote: post #16
drivebyhooting wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That is the crux of the article premise: each synonym conveys similar denotations (principle component is I think what the article called it), but usually with some difference in connotations (the off axis contributions). You can nudge the languages vectors towards each other by adding enough synonyms and modifiers together, but they are always a little bit off even still

So, really, this can be simplified to the question "can written text fully convey all human concepts", some of which having labels in only some languages, which is an obvious "no".

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#90

Post by davidgay »

plumeria wrote: post #80
nyeah wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The GRE vocabulary is actually based on French, Latin and Greek, not English. Much less rare and unusual once you realise that.
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