On being right...

There 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...

More on understanding...

Fellow LJer vuzh asked, in a comment to my previous post:

if you state something which is grammatically and / or definitively incorrect, and you're understood, then where's the error?

A very good question, and one that needs answering.

I think an apt analogy has to do with listening to someone speaking on the radio as you drive cross-country.

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. This can be likened to people communicating using grammatically correct sentences.

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 people who use poorly formed sentences.

As you move ever 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. At this point, communication breaks down. The listener's ability to capture the content of the message has been exceeded by the distortion introduced into the message by either distance or poor grammar.

But all this really doesn't answer the question, does it? If the message gets through, what's the beef?

Well, I think the "error" with poor grammar and structure lies in the lack of respect it signals toward one's correspondent, all other things being equal. But that, I feel, is a diatribe all on its own...

* * *
vuzh is right when he notes that 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 every." So now, check out the following definition, taken from Merriam-Webster OnLine 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 : FORTNIGHTLY

Contrary to what is often "taught" in school, the numerical order of the definitions has nothing to do with which is more correct, though the ordering may reflect what the dictionary editorial board feels are the prevailing priorities of usage. In any event, I've never met anyone who predicates his or her usage of a word on the basis of where, numerically, the intended meaning appears in the word's dictionary entry.

Getting back to the point, 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, beyond the fact that it's a periodical and that it is published more than once a month (and maybe up to 8 times in one month)? They should tell me "every two weeks" or "twice a week" and forget they ever knew how to spell "biweekly."

One may as well order a small memorial that reads:

Biweekly
1832-19??
Requiescat in Pace
Anyway... got to get to work. I have about 5 pages of the translation left, and all day "tomorrow" in which to read it over, check spelling, etc.

Cheers...

I love rock 'n roll music, but hate illegible faxes!

Man, those last several pages were a drag, but...!

The first draft of the piece is finished. I've got a printout to look at during the slow moments of the upcoming shift, and I'll be making changes to the file after the shift is completed.

With any luck, I ought to be able to send this thing off by noon or so tomorrow.

Which is good, because I was awakened again today by a phone call... my cell phone this time... with a client on the other end asking if I could do some work. They didn't seem to mind that I could not devote myself 100% to their project (more like 3-4 hours a day on top of my 8-plus hour shift here, since 12 hours of work is about my limit, especially with no days off).

Gotta go get coffee... shift starts in about 15 minutes or so.

Cheers...