Whose sense?

On 2002-11-28 11:34, ironlady wrote:

I really have no idea of what point you are trying to make. I\'m definitely having problems following your ideas. Perhaps you could explain to me why using Google as a tool is wrong? And why repeating a sentence has anything vaguely to do with this topic or with sanity in general?



BTW, I have taken the opportunity, out of curiousity, to ask several native English speakers fluent in Chinese if they got a connotation of \"sexual desire\" from \"internal heat\". Sorry to say, none of them did. Perhaps the \"veil\" is not on my eyes on this one.





1. Did I say using Google is wrong? What I wanted to say is that googling is only for reference, and that it doesn\'t judge or sense, or who need all you high-brow language \"professionals\" at all? Any native moron would be able to learn a few clicks and collect enough references for an item, I guess.



2. It\'s from a fable by the famous Danish philosopher Kierkegaard whose basic plot is this: an insane person escaped from an asylum and wanted to demonstrate his sanity, so he decided to say something absolutely correct repeatedly on the way to the market of the town. So with each step he walks he shouts \"the earth is round\". Question: can he prove his sanity by shouting something everybody knows?



Bill

[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-12-03 10:51 ] ▲ Collapse

On 2002-11-28 11:37, ironlady wrote:

The point with this particular question is that I was **not** the first to translate this term. There is a generally accepted term in widespread use. In such situations, I believe that the responsible thing to do is to use that term.



Sources that can confirm to us that terms are in widespread use today include dictionaries and the Internet. \"Googling\" terms is widespread even among people doing monolingual work, to determine which variant is more common. Kind of like using the \"ask the audience\" option on that \"Who wants to be a millionaire\" show or something, except you can also note how many sources are not from a particular country or language by appropriately limiting your search. In this way, Google becomes a very valuable tool to the language professional.



As for your insistence that native speakers don\'t possess a certain \"sense\" that non-natives don\'t have -- I\'m afraid we\'ll have to agree to disagree on that one. To me it\'s as obvious as gravity.





Again, did I ever say native speakers don\'t possess a sense that non-natives don\'t have? The generalization here is something beyond the argument, i.e, as I said, it\'s similar to the proposition \"the earth is round\", which is too true to be doubted. But, as a sensible \"professional\", do you need to conjure up generalizations like that to defend your judgement on a specific question? It\'s certainly true the earth IS round, but does it mean it is as round as a crystal ball? Certainly native speakers have more sense of their own language than non native speakers, does it mean you definitely have more sense on a particular word than all non native speakers?



Perhaps it\'s not as obvious as gravity, perhaps your sense is as heavy and inertial as gravity so it never has the experience of soaring into the space of intellectual liberty.



Bill





[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-12-03 11:01 ] ▲ Collapse

On 2002-11-28 01:52, Y_Bill wrote:

Look at where we came in, suppose you are the first to translate the Chinese term “上火”as a language professional, how would you translate the term without Google resources? Whose sense would you resort to in the first place? The native Chinese or the native English? And now you have a choice between internal fever, internal heat or internal fire, which would you choose? How would you use you native sense here? Don\'t tell me there are no unwanted associations for internal heat too readily, because you have to imagine a situation where there\'s no such a set expression as \"internal heat\" yet in English.







Good point, Bill.



Linda

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On 2002-11-30 07:58, ironlady wrote:

There\'s no reason to even think about \"what if we didn\'t have... becasue we DO have these resources. It makes about as much sense to me as saying \"What if we didn\'t have novocaine and all had to have our teeth pulled without anesthetic?\" No one would opt to do that because it\'s not the most efficient and, well, painless way to do so.



If there exists a well-established, set translation for a technical term, I see NO reason not to use it, and every reason not to get poetic and make up new terms.

As a language professional, you must be able to re-invent the wheel though you may not need to make it. \"知其然而不知其所以然\" (Only know what things are and don\'t know why or how they are) should only valid to lay persons, but not to \"professionals\".



I asked a native speaker of English (from Nebraska, and with earrings, 100 percent native) about \"internal heat\". He told me two things come to mind upon hearing the term: one, about central heating, the other, sexual desire. He said \"internal flame\" might be better for the meaning implied here.



Bill



[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-12-03 10:52 ] ▲ Collapse