Vestitor:In relation to Esperanto, there is no reason why it should need to accurately mirror the peculiarities or structures of English under the supposition that one language's seeming failure to tally with English structure signifies a lack. There are plenty of nuanced meanings and structures in other languages that are not present in English and yet all - including Esperanto - are capable of nuanced expression.

Indeed! The one-to-one equivalence of terms in different languages is a mythical idea. It is the exception, not the rule. Frequently terms stand for only partially overlapping concepts. It is a very worthwhile endeavour to define concepts and document the terms used to denote them. So if e.g. the terms numeric and numerical are not synonymous the task is to define the two distinct concepts based on the observation of actual usage That is what terminologists do -- unless they are in the enviable position to impose their own terms and concepts (my favourite apocryphal example is this definition in a statutory instrument: "For the purposes of this Act "dog" also means a cat.").

mkj1887:Yes, languages partition the semantic space in different ways.

And that is exactly the crux of the matter. Expecting terms to express one-to-one equivalences between languages would indeed boil down to a one-to-one mapping of concepts. If there is a pressing need for this, as in many scientific and technical fields, some considerable effort at terminological standardisation is usually undertaken.

For the translator the difficulty lies in deciding whether non-overlapping conceptual differences warrent additional clarification, which often requires a deep understanding of all the ramifications. Here is a pertinent little example involving the innocuous German word "unverzüglich" (which on the face of it means "without delay", "immediately"). In a particular context you would have to know that there is a legal definition attached for civil-law purposes as "ohne schuldhaftes Zögern" (and I don't even know how to render this adequately in English, it means roughly that any delay is not your fault, see also http://www.adamsdrafting.com/shall-without-undue-d...). All aspiring jurists learn this in Civil Law 101 at law school here. The upshot is that "unverzüglich" does not have to be "immediately", it could be days later if force majeure or whatever prevented you from acting straight away. So good luck to you trying to find an established term in that other language when you are translating a commercial contract! If it is of any importance you would probably have to supply some clarification in the translation rather than bet on one-to-one equivalence. (Given problems like that I am glad I do not have to earn a living in hard-core legal translation.)

Geez, I have now been rambling on all morning when I should have called my mum this Mother's Day -- not to be confused with Mothering Sunday, another conceptual trap here, also the dates vary in different countries, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother's_Day

kdl5000:

Vestitor:In relation to Esperanto, there is no reason why it should need to accurately mirror the peculiarities or structures of English under the supposition that one language's seeming failure to tally with English structure signifies a lack. There are plenty of nuanced meanings and structures in other languages that are not present in English and yet all - including Esperanto - are capable of nuanced expression.

Indeed! The one-to-one equivalence of terms in different languages is a mythical idea. It is the exception, not the rule. Frequently terms stand for only partially overlapping concepts. It is a very worthwhile endeavour to define concepts and document the terms used to denote them. So if e.g. the terms numeric and numerical are not synonymous the task is to define the two distinct concepts based on the observation of actual usage That is what terminologists do -- unless they are in the enviable position to impose their own terms and concepts (my favourite apocryphal example is this definition in a statutory instrument: "For the purposes of this Act "dog" also means a cat.").

mkj1887:Yes, languages partition the semantic space in different ways.

And that is exactly the crux of the matter. Expecting terms to express one-to-one equivalences between languages would indeed boil down to a one-to-one mapping of concepts. If there is a pressing need for this, as in many scientific and technical fields, some considerable effort at terminological standardisation is usually undertaken.

For the translator the difficulty lies in deciding whether non-overlapping conceptual differences warrent additional clarification, which often requires a deep understanding of all the ramifications. Here is a pertinent little example involving the innocuous German word "unverzüglich" (which on the face of it means "without delay", "immediately"). In a particular context you would have to know that there is a legal definition attached for civil-law purposes as "ohne schuldhaftes Zögern" (and I don't even know how to render this adequately in English, it means roughly that any delay is not your fault, see also http://www.adamsdrafting.com/shall-without-undue-d...). All aspiring jurists learn this in Civil Law 101 at law school here. The upshot is that "unverzüglich" does not have to be "immediately", it could be days later if force majeure or whatever prevented you from acting straight away. So good luck to you trying to find an established term in that other language when you are translating a commercial contract! If it is of any importance you would probably have to supply some clarification in the translation rather than bet on one-to-one equivalence. (Given problems like that I am glad I do not have to earn a living in hard-core legal translation.)

Geez, I have now been rambling on all morning when I should have called my mum this Mother's Day -- not to be confused with Mothering Sunday, another conceptual trap here, also the dates vary in different countries, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother's_Day

My father first became interested in Esperanto because the company he was working for lost a lawsuit stemming from a translation error. Researching the matter, he came across Esperanto, and the rest is history. Peter Benson dedicated his dictionary to my father.