Thinking like a linguist 投稿者: George Trail
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I've had the urge to start writing this one ever since yesterday... let me start by saying that it is a myth that well-established linguists, like myself, a professional translator - those who are authorities on language - are exclusively pre-occupied with saying what is right and what is not in verbal communication; even if our parlance and writing is clearly more educated than that of those who are not linguists (or should that be "are"?). I myself am not entirely non-prone to making linguisti... See more I've had the urge to start writing this one ever since yesterday... let me start by saying that it is a myth that well-established linguists, like myself, a professional translator - those who are authorities on language - are exclusively pre-occupied with saying what is right and what is not in verbal communication; even if our parlance and writing is clearly more educated than that of those who are not linguists (or should that be "are"?). I myself am not entirely non-prone to making linguistic errors - see the "arriven" anecdote in my previous blog. Or Lord of the Rings - when I first saw Legolas' name in print I always thought it was pronounced "le-go[as in "go"]-las" rather than what it really is: "leggerless". It was the same when I first learned of Katie Melua, who would eventually become one of my favourite singers; it started off with me thinking it was pronounced "me-loo-er" before I had a look around and found some live TV interview clip with her on Youtube where they pronounced her surname the way it is really pronounced: "mell-wa". These are mistakes on my part, but they are easily understandable and forgivable ones when you look at them from the proper angle.
Let me ask you a question. In purist English, are "helping someone to discover something" and "helping someone discover something" the same thing? I've been thinking that the former typically suggests conscious intent to help someone to discover something, while in the latter the person being assisted discovered something by chance - but in both cases there is the question of whether or not the same person was looking for that thing in the first place! Now, I may be right, I may be wrong; and I wouldn't be surprised if someone pointed it out to me that this rule in purist English genuinely doesn't even exist. But I believe that this paints a pretty good picture of what it REALLY means to think like a linguist.
Which brings me to my next point. Go to the "France" bit @ http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/. There is the sentence "France was a divided kingdom for much of the medieval period, but power gradually began to accumulate in the hands of the rulers of the Ile de France region centered around Paris."; but would the sentence "France was a divided kingdom for much of the medieval period, but power would gradually begin to accumulate in the hands of the rulers of the Ile de France region centered around Paris." be every bit as valid? Now, I'm not really here to strictly tell people how they "should" speak as far as what in truth is highly convoluted semantics considerations, are concerned; but from my point of view I wonder if the latter differs from the former in that it implies the story of a known orchestrated plan for the accumulation of the power, long before it actually happened. But it's just my idea; and I could understand anyone who would claim that I was rambling over trivia.
Not that I am going to leave it that - even punctuation can change the meaning of purist English. Right now I'm not actually talking exclusively about the "eats shoots and leaves" stuff I discuss in one of my most recent previous blogs. In the first paragraph of this very blog, note that the "those are authorities on language" bit is separated by dashes; is this actually right? For dashes formally stand for breaks in thought; and the virtual break in thought I'm talking about here possibly seems to stand for the hypothetical notion that it is a new or relatively new idea to me that linguists and translators are "authorities on language", or that it is a point of some irony. OK, now I really am going to stop. With this rambling, at least.
I have in the past believed that to show signs of thinking like a linguist, requires the use of examples; as I indeed have done in the previous paragraphs, when you think about it. Now, I'm not so sure. "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” (George Bernard Shaw). Meanwhile, someone had the audacity to claim in a professional translation blog that "There is no such thing as a perfect translation" http://word-trust.com/wordpress/?p=90.
One final point: as far as "thinking like a linguist" goes, it really strikes me how many translation agencies I have come across go out of their way to make it conspicuous that translation and interpretation are not the same thing; "because translation is written and interpretation is spoken." That's what they all say! Mind you, a written document, however polished a piece of masterful prose it may be, will not conveniently indicate which individual words should be stressed if one was going to read it as in the delivery of a speech that is to be compelling. It's that like time I read a line in Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband" that did make feel silly. I read, "I'm looking forward to meeting your husband, Lady Chiltern" in a way that suggested that I regarded Lady Chiltern as the husband of the person that was being talked to!
That's enough for now. I leave convinced that more blog writing here on "thinking like a linguist" will follow - maybe soon, maybe far in the future. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | reply to thinking like a Linguist | May 18, 2010 |
Thanks for your post George.
For paragraph 1, this is simply the result of the difference between spoken language, which is our real mother tongue, and written language, which is a code which tries to represent both the similarities and differences across all speakers and writers of the languages.
What you are trying to show is the difference between phonetics (exact pronunciation in isolation) and phonemics/phonology (how the sounds interact in various contexts), combined wit... See more Thanks for your post George.
For paragraph 1, this is simply the result of the difference between spoken language, which is our real mother tongue, and written language, which is a code which tries to represent both the similarities and differences across all speakers and writers of the languages.
What you are trying to show is the difference between phonetics (exact pronunciation in isolation) and phonemics/phonology (how the sounds interact in various contexts), combined with literacy (reading and writing).
The English language has radically changed over the centuries. The Great Vowel shift in the late middle ages has significant impact on the written form of the language.
If you want an excellent demonstration of the difficulties of learning all of the variants of the English languages, look up the poem "English is Tough Stuff" and it will show why language teaching must be practical and not simply purist.
As one of my professors (Phd in Linguitics) for my Masters in Linguistics stated in reply to a question from a non-native English speaker if "who" or "whom" was more correct, he said that for himself, the word "whom" was dead in his own vocabulary.
But it might be living in the vocubulary of others.
For paragraph 2:
The difference between "to discover" and "_null_ discover" needs to be looked at in the linguistic syntax at the Verb phrase constituent. The word "to" is a marker to indicate the infinitive form, but there are many examples where this is dropped in general sentences. I don't have any specific examples off the top of my head, but this is a great question to ask on the LINGUIST-List where there are many linguistic specialists who focus their energies on those kinds of analyses..
For paragraph 3:
your example of "_null_ + began" versus "would" + begin to ..." seems to not correspond to the usually accepted mix of tense and aspect for the sentence. The word "would" introduces a modal form (usually the conditional mode) which doesn't usually mix (in theory) with a present within a past context. However, language is constantly shifting, especially English, and so this can pass without being noticed.
In other languages, the rules and guidelines about use of mood, aspect and tense is more clear-cut and easier to define and also to dissect.
The LINGUIST-List would be again a great place to pose the question on this specific point, but rather on this topic it would rather need input from someone who has a research focus on issues related to the shift in English with regard to tense and aspect.
For Paragraph 5:
I also agree that there is no such thing as a perfect translation, and wrote a magazine article about this with respect to translations of the Bible.
The Bible as a Resource for Translation Software. by Jeff ALLEN. In Multilingual Computing and Technology. Number 51, Vol. 13, Issue 7. October/November 2002. Pp. 40-45.
http://www.multilingual.com/articleDetail.php?id=614
Downloadable PDF at: https://www.box.net/shared/uvz71c2xg7
From the examples provided there, I showed that the main goal is to have the most appropriate translation based on the expressed need and target audience, rather than trying to determine a one-size-fits-all perfect translation. The article explains the different types of translation and how these are taken into consideration in such complex translation projects which last 10-20 years (and not just 10-20 days).
Hope that helps.
Jeff ▲ Collapse
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