sudanglo:
Anyway, the interesting point, is not whether you are personally familiar with the expression, but the fact that German uses for this idiom a verb cognate with Esperanto's rabi rather than stehlen cognate with Esperanto's ŝteli.

+1

~ darkweasel, who is also not familiar with that expression - but does anyone care about my familiarity with it? No.

sudanglo:
The Duden link you gave, Qwertz, quotes er raubte ihr einen Kuss
.

Well, that's correct. And most big German newspaper rolled back lot of recommendations of Neue Deutsche Rechtschreibung, which were pushed by Der Duden. So, it seems to be well proven, that even the most official instance at that issues = Der Duden - only can give recommendations.

F.A.Z. paßt Rechtschreibung an | Noch nicht einmal der Duden hält sich an den Duden .

Der Duden also contains Austrian and Swiss German vocabulary.

sudanglo:
But in any case, you don't seem to upto speed with modern lexicology.

Well, you're right, I don't claim myself to be an linguistic scientist. I only have some information science background, which of course doesn't count much at current ongoing scientific lernu.net-forums disscussions.

sudanglo:
I remember from years back claims made by Collins about the corpus-based nature of their dictionaries. Such corpuses are built form a wide variety of spoken and written sources.

Same like Der Duden does. Everybody tries to make the job most best they can. Hopefully.

sudanglo:
Anyway, the interesting point, is not whether you are personally familiar with the expression, but the fact that German uses for this idiom a verb cognate with Esperanto's rabi rather than stehlen cognate with Esperanto's ŝteli.

Okay, I see. Sailing the boat in the middle of the lake, that seems to be best idea, that everybody interested can see, what outstanding matters are going on.

darkweasel:

sudanglo:
Anyway, the interesting point, is not whether you are personally familiar with the expression, but the fact that German uses for this idiom a verb cognate with Esperanto's rabi rather than stehlen cognate with Esperanto's ŝteli.

+1

~ darkweasel, who is also not familiar with that expression - but does anyone care about my familiarity with it? No.

I care.

I also find it fascinating that two languages have the same concept but a literal translation from one language to the other does not convey that concept.

That is what makes language so interesting.

Bemused:
I also find it fascinating that two languages have the same concept but a literal translation from one language to the other does not convey that concept.

English-German dictionaries by Langenscheidt publisher often contain hints to "false friends" means similar written or spoken German and English words which has an completely differerent meaning or usage. Langenscheidt also published Right or Wrong? Raps. Englische Stolpersteine which wrapped by (dilettantish ) Rap music tries some correction of wrong grabbed English vocabulary.

I'm not quite sure I get the point you are making, Bemused.

However a significant difference between Esperanto and the national languages is that the latter are replete with fixed expressions that you have to learn.

So that it would be incorrect in English to say anything other than 'steal a kiss', whereas for Esperanto 'rabi de iu kison' and ŝteli de iu kison' are both possible translations and it is difficult to say that one is incorrect.

Having found that both Spanish and German use cognates of 'rabi', and suspecting that other languages might also do so, I am tempted to prefer that verb for the translation.

Additionally, 'ŝteli' has in Esperanto associations of furtiveness, or hidden-ness, whereas rabi's connotations are of against somebody's will, without their permission - the victim has no control.

Looking into the future, you would have to say that if Esperanto were to adopt specific variants of the many fixed expressions of the national languages, then this would make Esperanto much more difficult to master, and rob it of one of its principal virtues (ie the much vaunted 'facileco').

To spell out the point in my previous post, let's take the expression 'to have eyes in the back of ones head'.

Various possibilities occcur to me for rendering this into Esperanto, and I wouldn't know which would be THE translation.

On the other hand, I would be very confident that the national languages have evolved their own set of corresponding expressions, which one would find in any good dictionary, and it would be that fixed form which I would have to learn as a student of the language in question.

In Esperanto, it would rather be a question of style, or elegance, or of recognizability, that one would lead one to prefer one translation of the idiom over another.

Edit: to faciltate the rapid production of translations into Esperanto of speeches, novels, commentaries, etc., it would be very useful to have a translator's dictionary with good solutions for the translations of fixed expressions.

But such translations could not, I think, acquire the status of being the only correct translations, since this would lead to a undesirable fossilization of the language.

There was a writer - I forget completely which one - who said that to write well, to really write outstanding literature, you should be able to speak languages from at least two different families to a good proficiency (say, Romance and Slavic). The idea is that when you have a better awareness of the range of possibilities for expression, you can use this knowledge to write in clear and beautiful language - Esperanto, in this case.

I'm sure I'm getting many details wrong but that's the sum of it. I wonder if this rings a bell for anyone, if they can tell me the writer who said this, and if they can recall the details.

erinja:There was a writer - I forget completely which one - who said that to write well, to really write outstanding literature, you should be able to speak languages from at least two different families to a good proficiency (say, Romance and Slavic). The idea is that when you have a better awareness of the range of possibilities for expression, you can use this knowledge to write in clear and beautiful language - Esperanto, in this case.

I'm sure I'm getting many details wrong but that's the sum of it. I wonder if this rings a bell for anyone, if they can tell me the writer who said this, and if they can recall the details.

I bet on Göthe: "Wie viele Sprachen du sprichst, sooftmal bist du Mensch.“

I think it was more specific than that Goethe quote, I recall that it specifically said at least [however many] languages from different families.

Interesting idea Erinja.

Would that mean that being able to speak Esperanto and English, I can write better English?

That's seems to me unlikely.

Also, I suspect that some of the best authors in English have been famously monolingual.

I think it more likely that when one is fluent in more than one language, one is prone to suffer from interference effects.

However I could imagine as plausible that one might be more sensitive to ambiguities in one's mother tongue through knowledge of another language.

The potential ambiguities of English one might learn from being required to translate from English into Esperanto.

Writing unambiguously is not quite the same as writing well in a literary sense.

If it were, then contract lawyers should have the greatest literary talents.