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Translating 'cope' and 'manage' : preliminary enquiry

od Miland, 18. decembra 2008

Príspevky: 44

Jazyk: English

ceigered (Zobraziť profil) 19. decembra 2008 1:08:46

I found after some extensive dictionary searching and experimenting that 対処す (taishosu) seems to mean 'to cope/deal ' in Japanese, e.g.
私は対処します。 - Watashi-wa taishoshimasu. - I am coping.
Sentences with more examples:
[url=http://jisho.org/sentences?jap=対処]http://jisho.org/sentences?jap=対処[/url]

There are similar words (using identical kanji) which seem to translate as 'to execute' or 'to sentence' which I don't feel conveys the meaning of what you are trying to say.

Hopefully someone fluent in Japanese will confirm what I've said lango.gif

According to the wiktionary, 'kestää' means 'to cope, to tolerate' etc.
You can find more about it here:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kestää

If I wanted to say 'I am coping' I guess you would say 'Minä kestän/Mä kestän'. (mæ 'kEstæn)

I would have reccomended looking on the wiktionary for more versions of 'to cope' from other langauges, but the only one I could find was the finnish translations (there are 3 of them, two selectable).

Anyway hope this helps you investigation!

ceigered (Zobraziť profil) 19. decembra 2008 1:19:46

I should add that '対処' is a 'suru' verb which means it has 'する' shoved on the end.

Suru (する) is a special nifty little verb which means 'to do', so technically you are saying 対処 する (taisho suru) which more or less means 'to do coping'.

Technically then you could turn '対処' into an Esperanto substantivo by making it 'tajŝo' and then turn it into a verb by adding an -i (tajŝi).

Mi tajsxas - I am coping.

But japanese might not be the best candidate, especially with a word like alfronti exists.
I'm not sure how to make words meanings more general in Esperanto, but could you say 'alfronteri'?

Anyway, my laptop's battery has done its job for this morning so I'll be off.

erinja (Zobraziť profil) 19. decembra 2008 2:56:36

I am still not sure what the point is. Every language has words that have a whole range of meanings; these words would have to be translated with a whole variety of translations, in foreign languages. I don't see this as a problem. No foreign word will exactly capture every meaning of "cope" in English. What's the point in trying to import this, when Esperanto is already well capable of expressing this idea?

English has no good analogue for the verb "kabei". Well, not without saying a whole phrase. Does that mean that the language has a serious lack, and that we should now spend lots of time trying to find a foreign word with this meaning, so that we may import it?

Polaris (Zobraziť profil) 19. decembra 2008 5:08:48

I tend to agree with Erin on this. As long as a phrase exists in a foreign language that can fairly express the same idea (using "to cope", for example: manage the situation, overcome the trauma, handle the stress, etc.), then coining a new word may actually complicate rather than clarify.

English is a remarkably rich language. Many words in English express sublte nuances or evoke feelings or impressions that are hard for non-natives to entirely grasp. But when a particular word can mean several different things (depending on context), we may be better off translating it by a phrase that tells exactly what we mean by it.

ceigered (Zobraziť profil) 19. decembra 2008 9:26:38

erinja:I am still not sure what the point is.
Miland:I suggest that we get a number of suggestions from different languages, and then and see whether any prove noticeably more popular. A poll thread could then be set up with the most favoured candidates.
It never hurts to have a larger vocabulary, it's not like its that hard to learn new words once you have the hang on the language anyway.

erinja:English has no good analogue for the verb "kabei". Well, not without saying a whole phrase. Does that mean that the language has a serious lack, and that we should now spend lots of time trying to find a foreign word with this meaning, so that we may import it?
Well, we already do that. Thats why a 'torte' and 'cake' have different meanings (let alone different origins) in English. And then we have words like 'Ushanka' and 'Cosmonaut' and 'Taikonaut'. It's also what helps prevent English from becoming repetitive, without putting too much strain on the writer's head.

That's one reason to love a language, a richness of vocabulary. And it's not so hard to learn these words once you are fluent in the language anyway. I only read 'Taikonaut' in the paper once in my life and I've remembered it years on (actually, 2 years, but still the same system applies to Esperanto).

BTW Erinja, what does 'kabei' mean/where's it from?

mnlg (Zobraziť profil) 19. decembra 2008 10:12:28

ceigered:That's one reason to love a language, a richness of vocabulary.
To be perhaps excessively pedantic, in the case of English the richness of vocabulary comes mostly through unmediated and uncontrolled assimilation of foreign words, and this diminishes its value, at least to me. It is richness through stealing and not through creation okulumo.gif If Italian, Korean or Inuktitut were to instantly adopt every single English word into their vocabulary, they would end up being much richer than English itself (obviously), but I for one would not exactly marvel or praise them for that.

Miland (Zobraziť profil) 19. decembra 2008 10:57:07

'Cope' is a useful word, and therefore I am enquiring about how it is used in different languages. Please keep the contributions relevant. People who wish instead to talk about why we shouldn't have such a word in Esperanto should feel free to start their own thread.

ceigered (Zobraziť profil) 19. decembra 2008 11:26:43

@ mnlg: English is creative, we mutilate words so they no longer sound the same ridulo.gif Many languages already steal English words anyway but they don't sound or look like them (スーパーマン - guess what English word this is?). And plus creative word roots and auxiliary languages don't work well, otherwise lernu would be teaching klingon.

@ Miland: So whats your verdict so far? Any possible candidate for a new word in Esperanto regarding coping?
I would have a problem with converting 'cope' into an Esperanto word (is this a neologismo?) by going 'kopi' as it already resembles kopii if one was to do so. However, 'koŭpi' (e.g. the same 'oŭ' in 'poŭpi') is 'free' per se. Is this of help?

Also on a side note, when you're 'managing' something you're basically over control of or directing it, so maybe direkti could be used in an abstract sense? Managxi is supposedly in the vortaro, but the meaning is as clear as mud (managxi only appears in the EN - EO section but not EO - EN or EO - EO sections).

And sorry for kinda breaking that rule there Miland...

mnlg (Zobraziť profil) 19. decembra 2008 12:10:18

ceigered:Many languages already steal English words anyway but they don't sound or look like them
Why, do you think the words that English has taken from other languages sound and look like they did in their previous forms? okulumo.gif
(スーパーマン - guess what English word this is?)
Superman.

My point is that a rich vocabulary is IMHO an impressive feature of a language when it comes out of the creativity of the community of speakers. When it is the result of massive, unregulated mutuation from other languages, it does not wake my interest that much. As I said, if any language were to import en masse every English word, it would necessarily become much richer than English itself, but would its "rich vocabulary" grant praises to the language, at that point?

Just to name an example, how is English richer by the existence of "speed" and "velocity"? They come from different languages and mean basically the same. This is redundancy, not richness, to me.

I want to make it clear that I am not degrading English, nor I am singling it out (every language has imported words from other languages at one moment or another, with different shades of adaptation, both in writing and in pronunciation). I just do not agree on praising its vocabulary as a necessarily positive characteristic, due to the way it has taken its shape.

Miland (Zobraziť profil) 19. decembra 2008 14:08:31

ceigered:@ Miland: So whats your verdict so far? ..sorry for kinda breaking that rule there Miland...
Possibly I put it a bit strongly. I just added 'feel free to'..

It's rather early days for a verdict, but in response to the question on an Esperanto forum, I got a Russian word that is idiomatically used: prav so with the South African tweaking you spoke of previ may be a possibility. Mind you, Australian tweaking might make it prajvi, does that sound fair dinkum?

But I liked the two Japanese possibilities you came up with, suri and tajŝi, and these would be a step towards internationalising the vocabulary as well.

Also it would be good to know if there are any possibilities in Germanic languages apart from English, or more unusual languages like Finnish (kesti sounds a bit too much like the way to dispose of a murder victim).

Nahor