On being right...
Sep. 5th, 2001 05:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpThere are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right!
-- Kipling
The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
-- Twain
I used these two citations in my ATA talk last year to highlight what is perhaps the basic dichotomy of translation: on the one hand, finding the "right" word is important; on the other, there is often more than one "right" word for any given context.
I've only recently come to the conclusion that Twain's quote, while pithy (as are many of his other aphorisms), is poorly stated. Sure, there is a big difference between "lighting" and "lightning bug," but only an idiot would confuse one for the other.
On the other hand, let's play this hand out and ask: What's the difference between a "lightning bug" and a "firefly"? Which of these is the "right" word? (We'll leave aside the question of when to use the more formal Pyractomena borealis.)
Twain's example seems to rely almost on typographical error to get his point across. In real life, typos can be pretty embarrassing, as when the words "not" and "now" are interchanged:
The factory is now ready for production.
vs.
The factory is not ready for production.
Yet a typo is, by definition (except for some rare pathological cases), unintended. One can, perhaps, get closer to what Twain was trying to get across in the following line from last season's The X Files, when pregnant Dana Scully, a trained medical doctor, suddenly turns a little green, leans forward a bit, puts her hand on her abdomen, and says:
"I feel nauseous."
The cognoscenti will recognize the gaffe immediately. Something that is "nauseous" induces nausea. If Scully feels nauseous, the folks in her vicinity had better start looking for barf bags, as they will soon begin to feel queasy. Should that happen, they will not feel "nauseous," but "nauseated."
One could argue that this is an example of the "right" versus "almost right" word (though Twain, I think, was more concerned with the effectiveness of his words, as opposed to their literal meaning.) The counterargument, though, is that the vast majority (I suspect) of people who heard that line uttered understood it to mean Scully felt nauseated.
(This returns us to an old theme, that of how much punishment the language can take and still get the intended message across. We'll save that rehash for later...)
In the final analysis, subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle distinctions are not widely understood as such. If that be the case, what hope is there in trying to squeeze differences in meaning that may not exist at all?
I am not trying to make a case for laxity in language, here. It's more of an attempt to understand that the Kipling quote is true, despite there most certainly being several orders of magnitude more ways of flat-out wrongly constructing those famous tribal lays.
It's been a fairly quiet night... two more hours to go.
Cheers...
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Thanks Alex...
Date: 2001-09-05 05:09 am (UTC)As we study more and more Buddhism here, read the latest translations of earlier writings and try to make sense out of them, i.e., what does this have to do with my life?, i think we feel the need to articulate our experience in our own language and, using the language correctly, seems to be the first step in that direction.
However, as many of us are discovering ... we don't know the language well enough to accurately articulate what we want to express ... so when we give our talks ( i'm mostly thinking of the public talks we all give on Sunday mornings) we often talk about language and how a particular word came to mean this or that ...
My live-in friend of many years is Swiss and is fluent in three languages as are her six siblings ... sitting in their midst listening to them talk with one another, amazed at how they mix Swiss, French, English and German, often using all four languages in a single breath in order to say what they want to say ... is a language-lover's delight!
Wiio's take
Date: 2001-09-05 05:34 am (UTC)What is
Date: 2001-09-05 05:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2001-09-05 09:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2001-09-05 05:02 pm (UTC)i believe this is how the language evolves.
the major changes in Modern English were, i think, brought about by the uneducated masses and not the cognoscenti.
but, of course, i do prefer to speak correctly, rather than incorrectly, (when knowledge permits.)
interesting post! glad to have you aboard my friends list.
no subject
Date: 2001-09-05 05:58 pm (UTC)When the signal is strong and there is no noise, the speaker's voice is clear and you can understand everything that's being said.
As you move away from the station, the signal weakens and noise begins to interfere with the voice; you have to work harder to understand the message. By analogy, one must work harder to understand a poorly formed sentence.
As you move further away, the noise may cause you to misunderstand what's being said, despite your best effort to make out the message. (The same result may obtain for very poorly formed sentences.)
There will come a point where it's no longer worth while listening to that station, because so much noise is apparent in the signal, you can't tell what's being said no matter how hard you try.
You're right about how changes in the language are typically instigated by the hoi polloi and not the "elite" (whatever and whoever that might be). However, in the process, life gets just a little bit more difficult.
For example, there was once a time when the prefix "bi-" meant "every two" in words such as "biweekly," "bimonthly," and "biannual." This, despite the common tendency to use it in the sense of "twice." So now, check out the following definition, taken from Merriam-Webster OnLine (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=biweekly) for biweekly:
Main Entry: 1bi·week·ly
Pronunciation: (")bI-'wE-klE
Function: adjective
Date: 1832
1 : occurring twice a week
2 : occurring every two weeks :
So let me ask the following question: of what possible use is this word? If someone offers me a subscription to a "biweekly publication," what does that mean? They may as well tell me "every two weeks" or "twice a week" and forget using the word altogether.
Hmmm. I think I'm going to "promote" this thread to my journal.
Cheers...
no subject
Date: 2001-09-05 07:20 pm (UTC)what is nonsensical garble to one person might make perfect sense to another... when does a 'malformed' string of sentences become a dialect?
Re: Wiio's take
Date: 2001-09-05 10:24 pm (UTC)Cheers...
no subject
Date: 2001-09-06 10:55 am (UTC)A communication that makes sense to a recipient presupposes some kind of common basis for that communication between sender and receiver.
The further you get from that common basis, the harder it is to receive information, and quite possibly, to formulate thoughts as well.
Cheers...
no subject
Date: 2001-09-06 04:36 pm (UTC)on topic digression:
i think it was 3 years ago now that the factory at which i work hired on quite a few mexican national workers, so that within a very short time period they comprised 20, 30, 40 percent of our work force.
during this strange time when people were getting used to the idea of having to work closely with people who had no English whatsoever, i remember seeing a curious, yet reoccuring sight: two people would be working together, carrying on a conversation - one speaking totally in Spanish, the other totally in English. apparently they were communicating somehow, although i know for a fact that no one working there at the time had anything but perhaps the crudest knowledge of the other language.
the story goes on to see the mexican nationals become 70, 80, 90 percent of the work force in the next year, and me learning Spanish by the immersion method.
being taught Spanish by Spanish speakers with horrible grammar, i might add.
no subject
Date: 2001-09-06 08:25 pm (UTC)But for boundaries to be blurred, and for rules to be broken, there have to be boundaries and rules. Furthermore, I would maintain that not just any blurring or breaking will do the job, all other things being equal.
Expressing oneself in a foreign language is one of those times when things are not equal.
I was assigned to interpret at a news conference a couple of years ago for the first ISS crew, whose pilot was cosmonaut and ex-MiG jockey Yuri Gideznko. Yuri is a soft-spoken, really sharp guy and the fellow I'd want at the controls of any craft in which I was flying.
For some reason, he didn't speak in Russian during the conference (which is why I was there, to interpret for him), preferring to express his thoughts in his very limited English.
For example, when the crew was asked to comment on the personal qualities that made them, as individuals, ideal candidates to be station crew members, the best English Gidzenko could muster to start his answer was, "I like fly!"
It got a little better after that opening line (delivered with great enthusiasm), but it was evident that the speaker was a stranger to English (albeit not a complete stranger). Had the American crew member expressed himself the way Gidzenko did, however, the press might have started to scratch its collective head and wonder "What is this guy trying to say?"
I envy you your immersion experience. I'm trying to pick up some Spanish right now, (a) because I've always wanted to, and (b) because we get a significant number of Spanish-speaking people visiting the store, and I figure they'll remember me (and the store) better for my attempts to speak in Spanish.
Anyway... gotta go get ready for my shift.
Cheers...
no subject
Date: 2001-09-07 04:18 pm (UTC)buddhism might suggest that, in fact, there are no rules.
learning Spanish was great fun, and the mexican people are a joy to me.
you obviously have a lot of experience learning languages, but Spanish seems unnecessarily difficult. for one of our most complex verbs 'be', we have 5 different forms for conjugations, 6 if you count 'will be'.
they have two different verbs, 'ser' and 'estar' and each has upwards of 40 different forms. insane.
no subject
Date: 2001-09-08 08:19 am (UTC)When I say "there have to be boundaries and rules," please understand that I'm not trying to take the position of the Grammar Gestapo and insist that every utterance be pegged to a precise latitude of right and longitude of wrong, with suitable public punishment of offenders.
On the other hand, I am not against drawing a line - somewhere - and then taking a stand to urge people to exceed that minimum requirement when they communicate, if only from a sense of self-preservation.
Cheers...
no subject
Date: 2001-09-08 09:01 am (UTC)Re: What is
Date: 2001-09-08 06:28 pm (UTC)I only just figured out that you split the question between the subject and the body of your post.
The "tribal lays" refer to the stories of a tribe, and "construct" means "relate" or "tell."
The quote comes from Kipling's poem In the Neolithic Age, which tells - more or less - the story of an ancient bard who is very sensitive to criticism, feeling that his work is "right" and that of his critics is "wrong."
So strong are his feelings that he axes one of his critics with a tomahawk and leaves his views on art, "tanged and barbed, beneath the heart" of another.
The wise old man of the tribe, upon learning of this, relates the quote to the poet, who comes to learn the truth of what it says.
Cheers...
Re: Thanks Alex...
Date: 2001-09-08 06:34 pm (UTC)buddhism might suggest that, in fact, there are no rules.
Unfortunately, I know very little about Buddhism, so I am wondering if you might be able to comment on that assertion.
Cheers...
P.S. Understand that I'm not trying to elicit information in order to "prove" anything or support a particular point of view, but to understand more fully.
Hi ...
Date: 2001-09-25 07:37 am (UTC)"...buddhism might suggest that, in fact, there are no rules."
Don't remember reading anything like that from Buddah's teaching ... but, well ... gotta think a bit more about this...