English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

« first day (3002 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2217 days later) »

RegDwigнt

17:04

@Robusto It just means "sweetheart".

People should stop translating words literally. Where does that get you if you try to translate "woman", say?

tchrist

@RegDwigнt A man's wife.

Meaning his spouse. Hence, any man's partner is a woman by etymological fallacy, even a German shepherd.

This is the problem with terms like husband and wife. A wife is a man's spouse, a husband a woman's.

Partner and spouse don't suffer from that conflict.

RegDwigнt

It just means sweetheart or love. These do not have the original meaning of the Russian word, but the Russian word doesn't have the original meaning of the Russian word, either. Do not translate words literally morpheme-for-morpheme. That's called the etymological fallacy. Try translating the word "woman" literally. Or "October". See where that gets you. I am a native speaker of Russian, I have studied translation at university level, and I am closing this question as off-topic for the main site. You are welcome to take it to our chat instead, where translators hang around 24/7. Cheers. — RegDwigнt ♦ 45 secs ago

There. Done.

Now who else was asking what.

tchrist

If you have an Uncle Pat or Aunt Chris who tells you they no longer want to be referred to using the pronoun he or she, what then is their proper familial honorific thenceforward?

RegDwigнt

@Mitch I am calling myself many things. Indeed I just called myself a couple more things in that very comment above. I can call myself a couple more things for an additional fee of only $3000.

@MattE.Эллен they don't say anything in French. They just go le dieu du le ou la la le mon franc.

That is not saying much.

@tchrist in Russian a husband is married on his wife, while the wife is married behind him. Go translate that literally.

Ненаглядный is a gorgeous and rather untraslatable word, but as I've argued before in this very chat, so is "mother".

tchrist

Forespouse and aftspouse then.

RegDwigнt

17:19

Jul 4 '18 at 21:43, by RegDwigнt

In Russian, the very word "mother" already carries the connotation of "motherfucker". Even though the word "motherfucker" does not exist in Russian.

If I called my mother "mother" in Russian, she'd be very upset about not teaching me proper manners.

tchrist

@RegDwigнt I accidentally used tu madre en vez de tu mamá when talking to a Mexican teen the other day because in Spain it doesn't lead to insults or embarrassment. His face flickered but a moment and he said nothing, but I realized what I'd done. At least I didn't suggest that she had to coger un bus.

Catch a bus in Spain, screw a bus in Mexico.

RegDwigнt

@tchrist That.

To translate properly you need to speak both languages properly. You need to have a third language in your head, your internal representation of concepts. To these internal representations you map the individual words in all the different languages.

You can't translate gorgeous simply by thinking what the translation of gorgeous is. It has none. What it has is a meaning. You have to get hold of that meaning first. Then just express that same meaning using a different language. That and only that will get you the proper translation.

Basically you're a compiler. You need a parser and a lexer and an FSM and everything. A compiler that merely reads the input and googles "Wiktionary" will not be a very good compiler at all.

Mitch