I’m currently working with an uncommon non-English language, and in the near future, may have the opportunity to ask a native speaker for translations of terms not available in any existing dictionary. Which words, terms, phrases, and ideas do you think it’s most important to be able to use?
Eg, to start with, I’m going to make sure any gaps in the basics of math and physics are covered: negative numbers, chemical elements, planet names; the sorts of things you’d find in a typical SETI primer. And I’ll be including some present-day technologies that were invented since the most recent dictionary available—cellphones, the Internet, etc.
But if I can convince this individual to supply translations for concepts such as “existential risk”, “intelligence explosion”, “cryonics”, or “decision theory”, which ones should I actually ask about? (Especially as they have their own life, and I may only be able to get so many translations.)
Put another way, for people who aren’t using English, what post-1970ish ideas are the most important ones to have specific words for to be able to talk about?
Put yet another way, as a thought experiment, if you were involved in helping put together a new conlang like Klingon, which concepts would you want to be sure the language included?
Put still another way, for a language that simply adopted the English word ‘cheese’ for the new concept, which post-1970ish-concept words do you think should be created from the language’s own building-blocks, and which should use English’s trick of simply incorporating a foreign term?
This actually happens all the time—some new word is invented, often in English, and now the other languages have to find a way to deal with it.
One possibility is to take the English word, and do the minimum necessary modification to make it feel natural, such as add or modify a suffix… more or less what a neural network trained on similar kinds of words would do. Another possibility, if the new word is composed from existing roots, use the translations of those roots and try to connect them in similar way.
Sometimes the rules do not allow an analogical operation, for example, in some hypothetical language it could be very unusual to derive the adjective “existential” from the noun “existence”, so you might end up with a more clumsy phrase for “existential risk” such as “dangers threatening the existence” or similar. Maybe not this specific example, but sometimes other languages are less flexible in some places than English.
Ultimately, the rules are not 100% exact; even if you translate the term breaking some of the rules, as soon as the translation gains momentum, people will use it, even if some language purists would complain.
Which words?
I’m currently working with an uncommon non-English language, and in the near future, may have the opportunity to ask a native speaker for translations of terms not available in any existing dictionary. Which words, terms, phrases, and ideas do you think it’s most important to be able to use?
Eg, to start with, I’m going to make sure any gaps in the basics of math and physics are covered: negative numbers, chemical elements, planet names; the sorts of things you’d find in a typical SETI primer. And I’ll be including some present-day technologies that were invented since the most recent dictionary available—cellphones, the Internet, etc.
But if I can convince this individual to supply translations for concepts such as “existential risk”, “intelligence explosion”, “cryonics”, or “decision theory”, which ones should I actually ask about? (Especially as they have their own life, and I may only be able to get so many translations.)
Put another way, for people who aren’t using English, what post-1970ish ideas are the most important ones to have specific words for to be able to talk about?
Put yet another way, as a thought experiment, if you were involved in helping put together a new conlang like Klingon, which concepts would you want to be sure the language included?
Put still another way, for a language that simply adopted the English word ‘cheese’ for the new concept, which post-1970ish-concept words do you think should be created from the language’s own building-blocks, and which should use English’s trick of simply incorporating a foreign term?
This actually happens all the time—some new word is invented, often in English, and now the other languages have to find a way to deal with it.
One possibility is to take the English word, and do the minimum necessary modification to make it feel natural, such as add or modify a suffix… more or less what a neural network trained on similar kinds of words would do. Another possibility, if the new word is composed from existing roots, use the translations of those roots and try to connect them in similar way.
Sometimes the rules do not allow an analogical operation, for example, in some hypothetical language it could be very unusual to derive the adjective “existential” from the noun “existence”, so you might end up with a more clumsy phrase for “existential risk” such as “dangers threatening the existence” or similar. Maybe not this specific example, but sometimes other languages are less flexible in some places than English.
Ultimately, the rules are not 100% exact; even if you translate the term breaking some of the rules, as soon as the translation gains momentum, people will use it, even if some language purists would complain.