Taking Aim at Commo
a scholium on style and usage
Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a
style.
Jonathan Swift ["A Letter to a Young Gentleman, lately
entered into Holy Orders" (1721)]
Lost in Translation
Whatever the mandate, military personnel can expect and even look
forward to travel. A person at loose ends might join the Navy to
see the world, for seeing other countries is considered to be
educational even though a World War I song worried about keeping
a soldier down on the farm after seeing gay Par-ee. And
many a young swain either mooned over the sweetheart left behind
or sighed in relief when transferred to another assignment.
Meanwhile, those who currently go abroad learn by visiting other
cultures, seeing the similarities and differences in dress,
behavior and linguistics, being sometimes bewildered, and then
learning from them. This, despite the fact that English is
rapidly becoming a worldwide second language.
Although communication is interactive, certain words, especially
idioms can be either unclear or just plain untranslatable. For
example, Americans use the metaphor black to describe negative
circumstances as in black eye, blackball, or
black magic. In Germany it is the color blue that is to
be avoided, for being blue (blau) means being drunk.
Blau machen (making blue) means not showing up for work
or being AWOL, and blau bohnen (blue beans) refers to
bullets. The Turk has a different meaning for beans, as in
removing the broad bean from the mouth, which says someone
let the cat out of the bag. As for other parts of the
anatomy, the English jester might pull your leg while the German
takes your arm (auf den arm nehmen). Metaphorically, the
Englishman sleeps like a log or a top, a German like a woodchuck,
and a Russian like a marmot.
Colorful language is not limited to modern times. The Bible
refers to Jesus' family declaring he had lost his senses or
literally been separated from his intellect. Americans would say
someone had lost his marbles, a German indicate that
some of the cups were missing from the cabinet, and the Turk be
convinced that someone had eaten his intelligence with cheese
bread.
Sometimes there are recognizable parallels. Our Americanism
regarding the rotten apple spoiling the barrel is evident in the
British birds of a feather flock together, which becomes
the Italian sleep with dogs and get up with fleas, or
live with wolves and you learn to howl in Spanish. The
Latin proverb, deliberate often; decide once, translates
into the American builder's code, measure twice; cut
once. In English, you might be putty in someone's hands; in
German, the manipulation would be in wax.
Advice regarding warfare had a number of realistic comments
couched as dark humor. The French Foreign Legion's recommended
wWhen in doubt, gallop! The Italians noted the best
armor is to keep out of range. An Indian proverb urged that
one call upon God, but row away from the rocks.
On occasion, there are embarrassing slips (perhaps apocryphal)
from notables at the mercy of their speechwriters, such as when
President John Kennedy spoke at the Berlin Wall and declared "Ich
bin ein Berliner," not realizing that Berliner was
another name for the jelly doughnut we call a
Bismarck. President Jimmy Carter wondered at the
audience snickering during a speech, not knowing his "desires for
the future" was being translated as "lust" for the future. And
Helmut Kohl almost choked on a red hot pepper while visiting an
organic foods marketplace because an aide mistranslated it as an
appropriate "gift" for an enemy, not knowing the German word
gift meant poison.
On a more serious note, Nikita Khrushchev's cry at the United
Nations of "we will bury you," was actually "we will attend your
funeral," a statement intended to compare the economies of
Capitalism and Communism rather than posing a threat. Yet the
headlines continued, and in a small way helped prolong the Cold
War. We also look upon Niccolo Machiavelli's thesis in The
Prince as "the end justifies the means," when in actuality,
he wrote the far milder, "the outcome is what counts." And who in
America would not have taken offense, as did General Clay, when
our three-hundred-million dollar gift of grain and corn to
post-World War II Germany was looked upon as
chicken-feed?
Still, the art of linguistics has come a long way and is becoming
more sophisticated as technology offers speed and greater
accuracy in bringing about translations. At the dawn of school-accessible computers, students often amused themselves by
entering names into the spell check then giggling at the
distortions they could produce. Adults had their own fun, typing
in poetry or lofty prose for analysis, discovering that
The Gettysburg Address had a seventh grade
reading level, as did Newsweek magazine. Today's
electronic devices are faster, cranking out analyses and
translations at the click of a mouse. Yet words have connotations
far beyond their original expression so it continues to be the
work of the linguist to ferret out the subtleties of meaning.
Currently, an idiom can be electronically translated word for
word, provided that the same idiom in the target language already
exists or the individual words have a similar meaning. The
composition of the phrase or saying can also be classified into
groupings where the words cluster into similar or partially
similar meanings. In these instances, a machine might to a
reasonably good job of translation. It is when clusters have a
special idiomatic meaning that problems occur. A system must be
able to recognize the commonality as well as the special meaning,
while at the same time being able to modify the words placement.
To have a talk, or to take a picture, does not
convey the same meaning when it is translated into to hold a
talk, or to make a picture. When describing a card
game, there's a difference between placing your cards on the
table as opposed to laying them down.
Although there are many individual programs used for translation,
today's newer devices might be classified into two basic
electronic systems called translation memory and
machine translations. The first is a data system
that arranges sentence pairs between source and target language.
When something is to be translated, it will match approximations
or best fit. But since these are translations in full sentences,
the editing process is almost as tedious as it was before
computers and allows for only minor change. In contrast, a
machine translation analyzes beforehand,
reducing each word to its base, then searches the computer for
grammatical clues that involve inflection and derivation as well.
Both require an enormous amount of stored data and need frequent
utilization that reflects how usage adapts to change. In
addition, there are elements that can be tricky, such as the
German umlaut, Spanish tilde, and the characters in Russian,
Arabic and Chinese. A third system that focuses on
business translation makes use of both forms.
Sometimes a combination of all three becomes the system of
choice.
Certainly, this is easier than that translating like the ancient
scribes, but still less than perfect, since idioms rely on
special meanings. Like slang, they adapt in response to current
events. To address that, some linguists are working to develop
databases that deal entirely with specialized phrases or single
word recognition. But again, this requires enormous data. There,
a lexicon entry might consist of the word, its translation
equivalents, and its part-of-speech with corresponding
information, such as noun gender. Many of the lexicon entries for
nouns might need to give semantic clues such as abstract,
concrete, human and place. Then the vocabulary divided into
subject areas such as medicine, law, and so on.
Meanwhile, military personnel can only smile at their host
country's struggle with Americanisms, as when the Scandinavian ad
for vacuum cleaners was translated into "Nothing sucks like an
Electrolux," or when Clarol's
hair curler was hailed as a "mist" stick, which in German means
manure. Even the enterprising t-shirt
entrepreneur garnered a laugh with the message that was intended
to read, "I saw the Pope" (el papa) but turned into "I
saw the potato" (la papa). Then there are syntactic
disasters like the sign "No smoothen the lion" in a Czech
Republic zoo, and at the Majorcan shop entrance which stated,
"English well talking; here speeching American."
Language junkies understand that poetry is extremely difficult to
translate, given the metaphorical thrust of the genre. But idiom
has its own translating challenge despite similarities of
meaning. As Goethe said, "A lack of knowledge can be a dangerous
thing." To pursue the thought, one might note that the acronym,
MENSA, an organization of a quasi-genius (and
proud) membership, is the Spanish word for stupid
(female gender).
Still, the Italian proverb "A true friend is one that will take a
bullet for you in the war" is universal. And travel is indeed
broadening, that is, unless one is concerned about
gaining weight.
"Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did
there confound the language of all the earth."
Genesis 11;9
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