Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 December 11

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December 11

What is it called when a character has multiple readings depending on context?

Take this sign. + It can be read as “plus” and “and”. & can be read as “ampersand” and “and”. / can be read as “slash” and “divide by” and “or”. What is this called? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 15:28, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

See Homograph. You may also find Number sign useful. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:50, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I previously thought it was “polyphone”. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 16:24, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Polyphony seems to be a music term. It's not at all unusual for entities to have multiple names. If you look at a green-yellow-red thing at a roadway intersection, is that a traffic signal or a stop light? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:45, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

No, that’s different. You’re using two entirely different terms with different spellings. The concept of homograph is the exact same word/character with different pronunciation based on context. Sow is a homograph. Minute is another. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 18:17, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

I think you're somewhat confusing naming and usage (as suggested below). The symbol "&" is called an ampersand, but you don't read "A & B" as "A ampersand B", you read it as "A and B". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:31, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

• All I see above is the use-mention distinction. The name of the symbol & is "ampersand" in English and in German it can be pronounced as if it were spelt you-enn-dee. μηδείς (talk)

How does one translate these sentences into Spanish?

• I do not like the cold.
• The cold does not please me.
• I hate the cold.
• I avoid the cold.
• The cold disagrees with me.
• The cold avoids me.
• I am afraid of the cold.
• I protect myself from the cold.

140.254.70.33 (talk) 19:19, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

• No se enseña el español en Ohio State? μηδείς (talk) 19:27, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

The main point is to see whether unusual sentence formations still mean something in Spanish. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 19:58, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

You'll know of course that the first two sentences will normally come across with gustar as identical, although one could use amar and placer, especially if one wanted to get across to a Spanish speaker how we express those senses in English. I am not sure what you mean in English (I am a native English speaker) by "the cold avoids me." So I will not offer a translation. All the rest have pretty basic idiomatic translations.

The only one that seems at all problematic is "The cold disgrees with me" which one might translate as Para mí, el frío es desagradable. But I would go with "No me encanta el frío," which sounds more natural, and which is obvious enough in its meaning, even though it is very much a matter of translator's license. μηδείς (talk) 20:16, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

In the meantime I plugged those sentences into Google Translate and they all come up fine except for the two I pointed out:

El frío no está de acuerdo conmigo literally means "The cold is not in agreement with me" -- so wrong idiomatically; and

El frío me evita. is perfectly grammatical, but makes no more sense than it would in English.

The rest is all Greek 101. μηδείς (talk) 02:17, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Oh, and what you have called unusual sentence formations are formally called idiomatic expressions. They sometimes do translate across language boundaries, but in most cases cannot be translated literally unless the languages are closely related or in heavy contact. μηδείς (talk) 02:20, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

---

How? By using your brain and a dictionary or an automatic translator.--MarshalN20 ^✉🕊 21:33, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

As long as it isn't Google Translate. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:23, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Google Translate is one of the best automatic translators around. mgSH 22:57, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Tell that to the complainants on the ref desk talk page. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:02, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

The "complainants on the ref desk talk page" never said Google Translate wasn't one of the best automatic translators around, they merely said that blindly punching something into it, when you don't understand the source or target language is not sufficient for a reference desk. Pointing out that Google Translate exists is fine too, but, for pure translations of text, it should only be applied here at the language desk if the respondent actually understands both languages and is able to correct the errors Google Translate might make without recognizing them. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:08, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Adam Bishop, who initiated the complaint, called Google Translate "useless". Do you disagree with that assessment? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:39, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

If you gave me text in Swahili and asked me, a non-Swahili speaker, to translate it into English and I plugged it into Google Translate and I gave you whatever it churned out, then yes, that would be useless. Machine translations have to be tempered by the judgment of someone who knows a sufficient amount of both source and target languages. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:00, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Wrong. Adam Bishop said that "someone used [Google Translate] for the question about the Catalan poem, with equally useless results". I do agree with that assessment. Moreover, the complaint is not new. I myself initiated the exact same complaint/suggestion over six years ago. ---Sluzzelin talk 00:03, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Bishop's opening comment was "Can we formally establish a rule that says Google Translate should not be used as a source for translations on the Language Desk?" By implication, questioners here should not be directed to Google Translate, nor any other automated translations, given the assertion that Google Translate is "one of the best". If the "best" is useless, then it's all useless. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:40, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

I've used Google Translate for translations between English, Spanish, French, and Italian, and the translations are always good enough to be useful. It's certainly not on the same level as a human translator proficient in the languages, but I wouldn't call it useless at least for the Romance languages (and English). That said, I would not feel comfortable using it to translate between totally or largely unrelated language families.--MarshalN20 ^✉🕊 01:47, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

• Carson Wentz's Knee, fer Gosh Sakes! Now youse guys have made me curse. Listen, you all know my reputation, and I even challenged 140 on his geolocation; but the truth is, if we assume good faith, as clarified, the question does very much make sense in the context of basic/intermediate Spanish. It's a good, if a bit demanding question; the way he posed the question does show that he is at least aware of a real issue. So I answered the "stuck point" part, and IP 140 can ask for clarification or do the rest on his own with assurances that there aren't any other pitfalls he might not suspect. Almost all of those sentences could be solved using google translate, but not all, and it is clear to me that the IP actually figured that out on his own by the specific nature of the examples he chose. So---not in front of the children! μηδείς (talk) 02:06, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

---

This does not appear to be a homework question, so here are the translations (they're actually Portuguese, but the Spanish won't be much different):

• Não gosto do frio
• O frio não me agradece
• Odio o frio
• Evito o frio
• (as (2) above)
• O frio evita-me (as meaningless in Portuguese as it is in English)
• Temo o frio
• Protejo-me do frio — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.13.208.70 (talk) 11:30, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Your use of the Portuguese, IP 82, is bizarre and misleading. First, gustar means "to please", not "To like" in Spanish, so No gusto el frío would mean "I don't please the cold" and do (Sp. del) would give the utterly wrong No gusto del frío or "I don't please of the cold."

Second, agradar is available in Spanish to mean "to please", but agradecer means "to thank". So calquing your Portuguese O frio não me agredece would give "The cold doesn't thank me"--again, utterly wrong.

And, of course, equating "the cold doesn't agree with me" to "the cold doesn't thank me" instead of the clunky but acceptable 'the cold is disagreeable to me' is perhaps worse than the Google Translate, which simply implies that you and the cold have a difference of opinion. μηδείς (talk) 17:04, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

In Portuguese the verb agradecer with the dative means "is pleasing to", as here:[1]. 82.13.208.70 (talk) 17:58, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

But that's the point. In Portuguese it does, but in Spanish it does not. The Spanish agradar means "to please" and agradecer means "to thank". So you are misleading the OP if he doesn't consult a further reference that shows Spanish agradecer ≠ agradecer in Portuguese. See false friend. μηδείς (talk) 18:46, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Medeis, you say Spanish is not your native language. My Collins Spanish dictionary (3rd edition 1992, ISBN 84-253-2401-7) says:

gustar...

(d) ~ de algo to like sth, enjoy sth; ~de + infin to like to

So an example of idioms at work, then. 86.171.242.205 (talk) 11:46, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes, Me gusto de leer would mean I please myself by reading. This takes an infinitive as its argument. I also ran the Portuguese and English as well as Google Translate Spanish phrases by a native Spanish speaker from outside the EEUU whose English is at an advanced high level by the Oral Proficiency Interview standard, and my informant found the Portuguese I objected to odd if not inscrutable, even though they understood the individual words. My informant was also surprised to find "The cold disagrees with me" was idiomatic in English, but again, the normal unmarked translation in Spanish is not mapped onto the Portuguese. μηδείς (talk) 02:25, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Looking at the acronym again, I think you are referring to the U S (Estados Unidos), rather than the European Union, Estados Unidos Mexicanos or the former Estados Unidos do Brasil. In Portuguese, gostar doesn't take the dative. Gostar de Mim (Liking Me) is the Brazilian version of the Bryan Adams composition "Never Going That Way Again". The literal translation of gosto de... is probably "I have a taste for..." I am not surprised that your Spanish correspondent (wherever (s)he is), finds Portuguese inscrutable. There is a reason for this, as was explained here:

Medeis ... is a fluent Spanish speaker with a gift for languages. Most people, Spanish or not, find Portuguese very difficult to understand because speakers drop endings and run the words together. Conservatism is a feature of isolated languages. The native speech of Sardinia is very close to Latin. That of Iceland shows very little change from Old Norse. The Portuguese were cut off by the mountains. As a mother has more in common genetically with her children than her children do with each other so the speakers of daughter languages which are closer to the original have greater understanding of sibling languages than the other way round. Norwegian is closer to old Norse than Danish or Swedish. It is thus inevitable that Danes and Swedes will have greater comprehension of Norwegian than of each other's languages. The claim that Castilian Spanish is closer to Latin than Portuguese is simply untrue. Portuguese vowels preserve the original pronunciation without the diphthongisation seen in other Romance tongues. For example Latin nova, "new", is exactly the same in Portuguese. In Spanish it is nueva, in Italian nuova (?) and in French neuve (?). A fiance(e) in both Portuguese and Spanish is noivo(a). I am guessing that they come from the same root.

- 31.52 10 November 2017 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.13.208.70 (talk) 13:23, 14 December 2017 (UTC)