Sj <2.718281828(a)gmail.com> wrote:
[Interlingua]: ministro; [Japanese]: 大臣
(だいじん, daijin);
Will users of non-Roman scripts be able to see transliterations in
their own scripts, or will they have to be stuck with Roman?
== [Dutch] ==
minister ([n.]) 1. [A person commissioned by the government for public service.]
"Zware voet jaagt minister Anciaux uit de bocht."
Hopefully there's space for a translation of this example
in the user's language.
b) content between || double bars || is stored in the
database, so
that the two lists of translations for "minister (English, n., 2)"
"minister (Dutch, n., 1)" are actually referencing the same list of
database translations [marked above by a double asterisk **]
What exactly is the translation table attaching to? The definition
number? The auto-translating definition? or the individual language's
translation of the definition? If the English definition is improved
by someone, made more specific (and hopefully it would be) nothing
stops a Dutch editor from adding translations (in several languages
even) that relate only to the older definition that was faithfully
done into his language. Also, the English editor mightn't even think
to check an added translation--does he know that the Dutch editor isn't
translating from the same definition?
* All synonymous definitions would share a single list
of
translations, so that this list need not be pasted 100 times (and
updated 100 times for each update).
Though all non-synonymous translations may have to be cut-and-pasted
as many times as necessary for whatever near-matches apply. E.g. Span. "tu"
has to be given as the translation for the definition "second person pronoun"
(Eng "you"), for the definition "second person singular pronoun" (Lat.
"tu"),
for the definition "second person singular familiar pronoun" (OldEng
"þú"),
for the definition "second person singular masculine pronoun" (Heb. attah),
for the definition "second person singular feminine pronoun" (Arab. anti),
for the definition "second person familiar masculine pronoun" etc...
Meanwhile "attah" can't go under the table for "second person singular
feminine pronoun", and so forth.
And that's just a word with concrete semantics. When it comes to
something a little more fluid, like "street", say, it might be more
difficult.
[1] There is a difficult question, which we are
ignoring for now :
just how precisely do all the translations of "minster (English, n.,
2)" have synonymous definitions? When are two different words ever
truly synonymous? But that is a discussion for another month.
A minister is a special case. Nouns that refer to specific referents
are likely to have synonymous definitions, but they're relatively
rare; most words won't have ready one-word translations so easily. Try:
walk, run, saunter, dash, sashay, hurry, skip, mosey, gallop (varying
degrees of the same kind of action); die, expire, pass away, kick the
bucket, buy the farm (varying degrees of the formality of an action);...
sludge, slush, slime, mush, slurry... (various specific referents in the
same close semantic field) -- different languages will handle them all
differently (though possibly the common European languages will share
more gracefully than others).
*Muke!
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