🚀 go-pugleaf

> One problem with this idea is that different cultures do not always place
> the dividing lines that seperate one concept from another in the same place.
> Suppose, for example, that most languages have a word for the color "red".
> It is quite possible that some other language might place the dividing line
> between red and orange in a different place along the spectrum and have
> words for red-orange, and yellow-orange, but no word at all for what we
> would call "pure" red.
> 
> This is a simplistic example, but anyone who has mastered more than one
> language can, I'm sure, come up with examples of words in one language that
> have no equivalent at all in another language. "Gem�tlichkeit" comes to mind
> as a word that has no exact English equivalent; only a few words with
> similar meaning.

And the problem isn't just with everyday words; even technical lingo is 
faced with it.

I was hired to translate a code of ethics for the Canadian association 
of model rocketry enthusiast. My client was shocked to learn that 
words decribing types of rocket engines were not the same in French as 
in English. The origin of the problem was the original concept used to 
describe things were different in one and in the other so how the 
concepts were applied caused the division point between different types 
of engines to be based on entirely different principles. It posed quite 
a few problems in equivocating the text.

I remember reading somewhere that one of the fundamental differences 
between French and English was that French tended to describe what a 
thing did whereas English tended to describe the thing itself (or was it 
the other way around?). I imagine that that type of problem would come 
up over and over.


ng.translation,comp.ai.nat-lang,cu.ml.linguist-list,alt.language.a
machine translating technique could be evolved.

Pierre