Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

aethermug.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 130 posts

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#91

Post by thaumasiotes »

bloppe wrote: post #33
seanhunter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some giant portion of English vocabulary actually are compound words. English loves using compound words but only if the roots are sourced from Latin or Greek : words like electrocardiogram ("electronic heart picture", sourced from Greek), agriculture ("field nurturing", from Latin), and telecommunication ("far sharing", a hybrid of Latin and Greek roots). Probably the overwhelming majority of the words in an English…

> English loves using compound words but only if the roots are sourced from Latin or Greek: words like electrocardiogram

This is false; English loves using compound words. One example of such a compound word is "fire department", which has identical syntax to the German compound "Feuerwehr". Whether a compound word is spelled with or without internal spaces is not a fact about the language, it's a fact about the spelling.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#92

Post by energy123 »

voxleone wrote: post #31

My personal analogy, useful in my early days: Translating is like finding a vector in another space that points in the same direction or carries a similar magnitude of meaning. In other words: The source sentence is a vector in “language A space.” The target sentence is a vector in “language B space.” A good translation finds a vector that has the same direction (same meaning, intent, tone) even though it lies in a d…

I know what you mean, but semantics is about relative positions of points in a given space. Comparing two points from two different spaces is apples and oranges. I feel like this analogy should be salvageable with a small tweak, however.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#94

Post by nandomrumber »

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…

Your comment is silly, but I can play along.

English people will say something like: Germans have a word for everything.

Many of which are just sentences with the spaces removed.

Australia’s have a lot of those too, or worse: our speech is often nothing but a handful of vowels and a swarm of apostrophes.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#96

Post by nkrisc »

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…

The English word for “television” is television.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#97

Post by crazygringo »

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…

> 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 correspond to a single word in the other language.

You're forgetting about synonyms. The common adage that English has the largest vocabulary stems from the fact that it often has multiple words for the same thing. Sofa, couch. Autumn, fall. Etc etc. Other languages generally don't do this. I've never heard anyone suggest that English has words for more concepts.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#98

Post by dodobirdlord »

crazygringo wrote: post #97
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…

> 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 correspond to a single word in the other language. You're forgetting about synonyms. The common adage that English has the largest vocabulary stems from the fact that it often has multiple words for the same thing. Sofa, couch. Autumn, fall. Etc etc. Other languages generally don't…

There are relatively few cases of true synonyms in English (or any language). There are subtle differences in meaning, register, etc that are recognized by native speakers.

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#99

Post by mcswell »

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?

Might think it referred to someone with good distance vision (not myopic).

Re: Linear algebra explains why some words are effectively untranslatable

#100

Post by jleyank »

aitchnyu wrote: post #42
bloppe wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some giant portion of English vocabulary actually are compound words. English loves using compound words but only if the roots are sourced from Latin or Greek : words like electrocardiogram ("electronic heart picture", sourced from Greek), agriculture ("field nurturing", from Latin), and telecommunication ("far sharing", a hybrid of Latin and Greek roots). Probably the overwhelming majority of the words in an English…

A couple of ape cubs who learned sign language saw a duck and invented "waterbird". We have to know two dead languages to know if aquaplaning or hydroplaning is the right word.

Language while involved in that water related process is probably drawn from Anglo-Saxon or possibly Old Norse. No refined Mediterranean stuff.
Post reply on HN