transparency in translation

I'm aware that people see Hopi as something unique and apart -- but the language certainly has nouns and is not all that far from the Nahuatl language which the Aztecs spoke. I think there was a visit by Montezuma (or some Aztec leader) and the languages were mutually intelligible. The silent "L" at the end of many Aztec words (coatL, coyotL) is replace by "-si" in Hopi. As in Koyaanisqatsi.

I think that some of the older linguists went astray in attributing some sort of world view to a population based on the structure of their language. The craziest example may be from Otto Jesperson who felt that because the Hawaiian language was mostly composed of vowels, the people had to be effeminate and ineffectual.

"Can any one be in doubt that even if such a language sounds pleasantly and be full of music and harmony the total impression is childlike and effeminate? You do not expect much vigor or energy in a people speaking such a language; it seems adapted only to inhabitants of sunny regions where the soil requires scarcely any labour..."

I suppose whoever invented the Klingon language subscribed to the same principles.

Actually I would like to see a remix in which the Klingons all spoke Hawaiian. Do you suppose after a generation they would take off their breastplates and buy ukuleles?

Frank
 
originally posted by Steve Guattery:
originally posted by MLipton:
Unlambda! (That's for you, Steve)
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Wow, thanks, that's a great link. The outgoing links from that page led me to Brainfuck, which is pretty damn cool, too. Time to propose a new programming languages elective...

By the way, I enjoyed the bit in your earlier post about the argument for why MIT TECO is Turing equivalent.
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My unfulfilled geek side (and a lingering fondness for TECO -- I once taught a short course on it) has led me to explore the Wild West of programmable languages, culminating in a brief flirtation with Malbolge (the hunchbacked offspring of Dis). This was put to an end when a more talented geek published a "Hello World!" program in Malbolge produced using a beam search algorithm, the rat bastard. I still have a Malbolge interpreter running on one of my *nix boxen.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Frank Deis:
I'm aware that people see Hopi as something unique and apart -- but the language certainly has nouns and is not all that far from the Nahua language which the Aztecs spoke. I think there was a visit by Montezuma (or some Aztec leader) and the languages were mutually intelligible. The silent "L" at the end of many Aztec words (coatL, coyotL) is replace by "-si" in Hopi. As in Koyaanisqatsi.

I think that some of the older linguists went astray in attributing some sort of world view to a population based on the structure of their language. The craziest example may be from Otto Jesperson who felt that because the Hawaiian language was mostly composed of vowels, the people had to be effeminate and ineffectual.

"Can any one be in doubt that even if such a language sounds pleasantly and be full of music and harmony the total impression is childlike and effeminate? You do not expect much vvigor or energy in a people speaking such a language; it seems adapted only to inhabitants of sunny regions where the soil requires scarcely any labour..."

I suppose whoever invented the Klingon language subscribed to the same principles.

Actually I would like to see a remix in which the Klingons all spoke Hawaiian. Do you suppose after a generation they would take off their breastplates and buy ukuleles?

Frank
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As I said, I was reporting what I read about Hopi, and I don't assert it's correctness. I was arguing merely that even in the case of differences as large as that, to describe those differences entailed a form of translation.

I have, long ago, done some research into Aztec history, though not language. I am pretty sure that Motecuozuma never visited any Hopi or left the empire. The Aztec empire itself was very short-lived and not given to making pacific outreaches to far away civilizations since they had pressing business of imperial subjugation to attend to. I have always seen the language named Nahuatl and understood it to be a language indigenous to central Mexico. I suppose Hopi could have influenced it and I don't know of anything to the contrary. But given the sources of the civilization, one would look first to other MesoAmerican languages, I would think and not to Arizona or the Southwest.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Are you arguing that the distinctions made by one language can't even be taught to a native speaker of another.
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No. That would be the strong version of Sapir-Whorf which is pretty much undefendable.

...but a translation that obligates the reader to take a week-long language immersion class is not what everyone hopes to get from a translation, either.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Are you arguing that the distinctions made by one language can't even be taught to a native speaker of another.
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No. That would be the strong version of Sapir-Whorf which is pretty much undefendable.

...but a translation that obligates the reader to take a week-long language immersion class is not what everyone hopes to get from a translation, either.
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I think from here we could quickly work our way to complete agreement. Indeed we may already be there. Boring, isn't it?
 
originally posted by Frank Deis:
Uto-AztecanProf Loesberg, I think we are outside of your field here?

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en.wikipedia.org

F
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Indeed. As I said, I did some research many years ago on the history, but not on the language. Always happy to be corrected, if surprised. This would mean, I take it, that the Aztecs were an invading or migratory group from the North, which I did not know.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

Indeed. As I said, I did some research many years ago on the history, but not on the language. Always happy to be corrected, if surprised. This would mean, I take it, that the Aztecs were an invading or migratory group from the North, which I did not know.
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A very good deduction. The myth is that they came from the land of Aztlan which was "to the north." Some people place Aztlan in the area of Lake Powell. Personally, I suspect it may have been near Keene, NH. The migration happened around the time of the Crab Nebula explosion in 1054 AD.

There seems to be a north-south Volkserwanderung for the Amerindians in that area, because a few hundred years later the Athabascans came south from Canada and set up in that same area, becoming the Navaho tribe. This was not long before Columbus.

F
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I think from here we could quickly work our way to complete agreement. Indeed we may already be there. Boring, isn't it?
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Not entirely. I hadn't thought about John Fitz Porter Poole in many a year.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I think from here we could quickly work our way to complete agreement. Indeed we may already be there. Boring, isn't it?
Click to expand...
Not entirely. I hadn't thought about John Fitz Porter Poole in many a year.
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Fitz John Porter Poole? Or is this someone else?
 
Whoops. Quite right. Fitz first, then John.

He was an entertaining lecturer and had amazing ability to observe (and adjust) the psychological value of various cultural correspondences.
 
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