Random language thread 6

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Antea » 2019-08-16, 20:06

- First, you have to be acquainted with legal vocabulary.
- Second, you have to know what the vocabulary of these legal figures or procedures mean in the language and the country from which you are translating.
- Third, you have to know the correct vocabulary that represents these legal features or procedures, in the language and the country to which you are translating ( not always the same, and not always the same concepts exist).

To make a good and an accurate translation (because words and their meanings are very important in legal documents), sometimes it requires to make some study of the legal field in the countries for which you usually make these translations.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-08-17, 5:44

Well, I wasn't actually translating legal documents; I was reviewing someone else's translation. But it's all still tricky! :P

In Iranian Persian, apparently, the word میده can be pronounced either meyde or mide. Meyde is fine wheat flour or white bread, and mide is a kind of dessert. In Dari, and probably also in Tajik, it's pronounced maida (I think in the sense of fine flour/bread). However, maida in both Dari and Tajik can also mean 'slowly'.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Osias » 2019-08-17, 17:23

Someone commenting in the series The Boy said one character maybe couldn't be sued/prosecuted by murder but by manslaughter. :hmm: I think that's what we mean in Portuguese by crime culposo. Ours being Direito Romano (Roman law system) maybe the distinction between culposo and doloso doesn't exist in the USA system. And English uses different terms for each crime.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2019-08-17, 18:23

Osias wrote:Someone commenting in the series The Boy said one character maybe couldn't be sued/prosecuted by murder but by manslaughter. :hmm: I think that's what we mean in Portuguese by crime culposo. Ours being Direito Romano (Roman law system) maybe the distinction between culposo and doloso doesn't exist in the USA system. And English uses different terms for each crime.

That sounds about right. Here's a description of the difference of How Is Manslaughter Different From Murder? (honestly I had to google it to make sure, but it's basically what I thought).
I think the points made in this discussion are also why there are bilingual dictionaries and glossaries focused specifically on legal terminology, and I think it's common for those who often do legal translating refer to them often. You just have to be cognizant of the date and place of publication when using them - an English-Spanish legal dictionary published in Mexico probably isn't going to be of much help when translating something for Spanish speakers in Spain, Guatemala, or Argentina, and if it uses British English, it probably isn't going to be all that useful if the English is meant to be American English or if it refers to the U.S. legal system, and so on. Even within the United States, there are differences in legal terminology between states, and I'm sure this isn't the only country where that type of thing happens. There are a lot of variables involved with any two sets of languages. No dictionary is going to replace personal knowledge of the situation, no matter how specialized the dictionary is.
I am quite impressed by court interpreters (and interpreters in similar legal or other very formal situations) who can do simultaneous or even consecutive interpretation. They don't have time to look things up or even give it much thought before speaking in those situations and the legal language used can be quite complicated. (Although I have also heard them make mistakes that even I, without any specialized training in the subject matter, wouldn't have made. No one is perfect and it's easy to criticize when one is just sitting in the back of the room listening versus the one who is on the spot doing the actual interpretation, but still, errors can have consequences and sometimes it's difficult not jump up and say "Hey, no, that's really not what they said!")

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-08-19, 4:54

Osias wrote:maybe the distinction between culposo and doloso doesn't exist in the USA system.

There is a distinction in the US between voluntary and involuntary murder/manslaughter. Is culposo vs. doloso something similar?

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Osias » 2019-08-19, 12:41

I think we can say it's similar, yes, but no the same. As far as I understand, if the guy is drunk or high on drugs, the crime can be considered doloso even if it was 'involuntary'.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Antea » 2019-08-19, 12:55

This is when you apply the Actio libera in causa.

In the legal field it is also necessary to know a little bit of Latin :wink:

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-08-20, 21:15

The Tamil amateur linguist I follow on Twitter is wondering "why there are breathy consonants in numbers in Kannada and Telugu." I'm not entirely sure what he means; I think he just means breathy voiced consonants in Telugu numerals, in which case I don't know (yet) what the answer is. (There aren't any in Kannada).

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Vlürch » 2019-08-22, 12:54

On Wiktionary, when Chinese terms are marked as (literary) but don't have Old or Middle Chinese pronunciations listed, does that mean they weren't yet used in Middle Chinese, let alone Old Chinese, but only in the modern Standard Chinese? For example, 次子 or 天馬? I mean, logically it would suggest that, but it could also be that they just haven't been added, or...?

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-08-22, 14:17

Vlürch wrote:On Wiktionary, when Chinese terms are marked as (literary) but don't have Old or Middle Chinese pronunciations listed, does that mean they weren't yet used in Middle Chinese, let alone Old Chinese, but only in the modern Standard Chinese? For example, 次子 or 天馬? I mean, logically it would suggest that, but it could also be that they just haven't been added, or...?

I don't recall seeing MC or OC pronunciations given for compounds, only for single characters. Presumably, if you wanted to know the earlier pronunciations, you'd just check the entries for each component.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Osias » 2019-08-22, 14:41

Come to think about it, my language is the only I know when weekdays have nome (given name) and sobrenome (family name). I mean, we can say quinta-feira but when we are more intimate with the day we can just say quinta.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Vlürch » 2019-08-22, 14:46

linguoboy wrote:I don't recall seeing MC or OC pronunciations given for compounds, only for single characters. Presumably, if you wanted to know the earlier pronunciations, you'd just check the entries for each component.

That's what I thought before, but then I saw that 舉人 has the Old and Middle pronunciations, and before that I'd known about 霏霏 but wasn't sure if that counted since it's reduplicated, so I figured it might not be the case after all. But maybe it really is just a matter of them not having been added to most terms for some reason?

EDIT: But it could be that it's included in that term because it's not only marked as (literary) but also (archaic, historical), and for some reason the standard on Wiktionary is to not add the old pronnactions to (litarary)-marked terms?

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-08-25, 21:57

I think you might be right that those first two terms you listed (次子 and 天馬) are relatively new in Chinese literature and didn't exist in Middle Chinese whereas the last two (舉人 and 霏霏) are attested in older varieties of Chinese, too.
Osias wrote:Come to think about it, my language is the only I know when weekdays have nome (given name) and sobrenome (family name). I mean, we can say quinta-feira but when we are more intimate with the day we can just say quinta.

Well, abbreviating weekday names is pretty common in languages that have them, at least (Mon., Tues., etc.). It's apparently possible to omit the 'day' part in some other languages like Arabic and Japanese, too, although I'm not sure what differences (if any) there are in connotation (i.e. I'm not sure whether one form is viewed as more intimate than the other or whatever).

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby OldBoring » 2019-08-26, 7:14

linguoboy wrote:So on the theme of "English words having very different connotations from their Romance cognates", I checked to see how the title of Die unendliche Geschichte is translated into Spanish and found it's La historia interminable. In English, The Interminable Story sounds like a story you can't for to be over. (Quoth the OED entry for interminable "(In modern use frequently exaggerative, implying impatience or disgust at the length of something.)".) Even unending and endless have a whiff of this implication, which is probably why the English translation has the title The Neverending Story. This evokes the phrase "I never want(ed) it to end!", which is praise for something highly enjoyable.

In Italian i wouldn't translate "the never-ending story" as "La storia interminabile", but "La storia senza fine".

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Osias » 2019-08-26, 11:34

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-08-26, 15:32

OldBoring wrote:
linguoboy wrote:So on the theme of "English words having very different connotations from their Romance cognates", I checked to see how the title of Die unendliche Geschichte is translated into Spanish and found it's La historia interminable. In English, The Interminable Story sounds like a story you can't for to be over. (Quoth the OED entry for interminable "(In modern use frequently exaggerative, implying impatience or disgust at the length of something.)".) Even unending and endless have a whiff of this implication, which is probably why the English translation has the title The Neverending Story. This evokes the phrase "I never want(ed) it to end!", which is praise for something highly enjoyable.

In Italian i wouldn't translate "the never-ending story" as "La storia interminabile", but "La storia senza fine".

The official version is La storia infinita. "The Infinite Story" would work in English, too, though the connotations are a little different. (Not exactly negative, but it sounds more like a science fiction title than a fantasy one.)
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Osias » 2019-08-27, 2:03

Sounds like a Marvel saga.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-08-27, 2:49

A couple of Indian folks were joking on Twitter about how popular Punjabi bhangra songs recycle certain words a lot, like [mʊɳˈɖa] 'boy' and [kʊˈɽi] 'girl'. A South Indian (I think from Karnataka, or perhaps a heritage speaker of Kannada) joked, "Can you really blame South Indians for getting drunk whenever Punjabi songs come on? They keep going [kʊˈɽi kʊˈɽi kʊˈɽi]!" because [kuˈɖi] in some Dravidian languages means 'drink!'.

Then this guy I follow talked about the possibly Dravidian etymology of [kʊˈɽi] in Punjabi, but I got confused and thought he was talking about the etymology of [kuˈɖi]. He also said it could alternatively be of Munda origin, and I was like "you mentioned [mʊɳˈɖa] in response to a joke about Punjabi songs? Well played. :lol:"

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2019-08-27, 4:50

vijayjohn wrote:A couple of Indian folks were joking on Twitter about how popular Punjabi bhangra songs recycle certain words a lot, like [mʊɳˈɖa] 'boy' and [kʊˈɽi] 'girl'. A South Indian (I think from Karnataka, or perhaps a heritage speaker of Kannada) joked, "Can you really blame South Indians for getting drunk whenever Punjabi songs come on? They keep going [kʊˈɽi kʊˈɽi kʊˈɽi]!" because [kuˈɖi] in some Dravidian languages means 'drink!'.

Then this guy I follow talked about the possibly Dravidian etymology of [kʊˈɽi] in Punjabi, but I got confused and thought he was talking about the etymology of [kuˈɖi]. He also said it could alternatively be of Munda origin, and I was like "you mentioned [mʊɳˈɖa] in response to a joke about Punjabi songs? Well played. :lol:"

The picture of the "old man" under the heading ਮੁੰਡਾ [mʊɳˈɖa] at Wikipedia in Punjabi here is kind of amusing (or disturbing, not sure which): ਮੁੰਡਾ ਕਬੀਲੇ ਦਾ ਇੱਕ ਬੁਢਾ ਬੰਦਾ could be "old man of the Munda ethnicity/tribe," or "old man of the boy tribe" ? :mrgreen:

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Vlürch » 2019-08-27, 19:02

For the first time in my life, I ordered something from Amazon; Bawden's Mongolian dictionary. I just couldn't resist the temptation because even though that's 50€ that could've been spent on food or something, getting a physical Mongolian dictionary is worth it and will definitely motivate me to actually at least try to learn Mongolian for real. It's supposed to be delievered in early September, and I really hope there won't be any problems because even though 50€ isn't that much in the sense that it's only like a week's worth of food, it's still a lot of money.

Mongolian is just so weird, at least in terms of phonology. I mean, not having /k/ while having /ɢ/ and having /ɮ~ɬ/ instead of /l/, etc. and the front rounded vowels having been backed all the way (although I could swear there are front rounded vowels in some Mongolian songs, but it's presumably allophonic or even just artistic license), and that /ai̯/ is phonetically [æe̯], etc.

Hopefully the dictionary will arrive just fine... no idea how it'll be delivered even if it comes, though, since it's a book and as such almost certainly can't fit through the mail slot. If they have to ring the doorbell to deliver it, what happens if I'm not home? :para:
vijayjohn wrote:I think you might be right that those first two terms you listed (次子 and 天馬) are relatively new in Chinese literature and didn't exist in Middle Chinese whereas the last two (舉人 and 霏霏) are attested in older varieties of Chinese, too.

Then, what was the old synonym for 天馬? I mean, there had to be one considering the thing it refers to has to be a pretty old concept and there are things like 驌, etc... so there presumably was a single-character monosyllabic word for it in Old Chinese.

A few more questions about Chinese characters, in case someone happened to know:
1) What do this, this, this and this mean? The first one in particular, because it looks really cool. I'd assume the second one is just a variant of 國, but is it? (Non-existent Wiktionary entries because they're "unsupported" on this forum.)
2) WTF even is this one??? Like... what?
3) Do the characters 又丶 and 亻乚 exist in Unicode? The Khitan word for "horse" apparently is composed of those (as one character), and while obviously Khitan-specific characters aren't in Unicode (yet), they just look like they should exist in Unicode separately... the first result on Google for the latter is one apparently saying it doesn't exist, but maybe it's outdated or means it's just not used in modern Chinese or something?

Aaaaaand a random thing about Korean because I'm still wanderlusting: apparently some words are spelled and prononuced differently in North Korea than South Korea, like 해빛 vs 햇빛. :hmm: Also, I think I've finally learned to recognise the first things about Hangul, that <ᄉ> is /s/ and <ㅡ> is /ɯ/. So maybe I have hope of learning to read it... maybe...

vijayjohn wrote:A couple of Indian folks were joking on Twitter about how popular Punjabi bhangra songs recycle certain words a lot, like [mʊɳˈɖa] 'boy' and [kʊˈɽi] 'girl'. A South Indian (I think from Karnataka, or perhaps a heritage speaker of Kannada) joked, "Can you really blame South Indians for getting drunk whenever Punjabi songs come on? They keep going [kʊˈɽi kʊˈɽi kʊˈɽi]!" because [kuˈɖi] in some Dravidian languages means 'drink!'.

:lol:

...and because I'm annoying and can't stop asking questions whenever anything seems even remotely interesting, I'll ask: is there any language where /r/ corresponds to the /ɽ/ or /ɖ/ of other languages? Or is it always just a correspondence between /ɽ/ and /ɖ/?


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