Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 May 28

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May 28

"Family" as a slang term

This question came up to me when I was looking at the Finnish article about Remu Aaltonen. Remu is quoted talking about his family in his youth. Only he uses a slang term for the word "family" instead of the standard Finnish word perhe, and that slang term happens to be exactly the English word family. If I were to translate this part of the article into English, how should it be marked that Aaltonen was using the slang term, when in English the slang term family and the normal word for "family" are completely indistinguishable? JIP | Talk 22:12, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Possibly family in Italics, and a side note? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:20, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Is he referring to blood relatives, or to the slangy use of "family" to mean close friends or colleagues? --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:07, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

He is referring to blood relatives. Not just his immediate family but also more distant relatives such as his grandparents. But no, he is not referring to friends or colleagues. JIP | Talk 00:16, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Is it just another word for the same thing? Like we typically say "family" in English, but "kin" also means blood relatives. --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:50, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

No, the issue is that while Aaltonen was talking in Finnish, the Finnish word he used for "family" was not perhe ("family" in Finnish), but the literal word family, which is a slang word for "family" in Finnish. JIP | Talk 02:47, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I see. It's called a Loanword. And if it were me, I would translate it as "family". If it's a slang term they use for family, then so be it. We were watching some Japanese discussion of figure skating online, and they used the word "figure skate" within all the Japanese verbiage. That's a loanword, and if translating into English, you would use "figure skate" as it is. --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:06, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

A similar dilemma for the person who translated the science-fiction short story "The Lady Who Sailed the Soul" by Cordwainer Smith into German. Smith uses an exotic (in English) German word "spieltier" to refer to a kind of animal-imitating robot for children, and the editor J.J. Pierce briefly explained it in his introduction. In the German translation of the book ("The Best of Cordwainer Smith"), the translator didn't include the Pierce explanation, and just left spieltier unaltered in the German text, even though it would give a very different impression to German-speaking readers than its use in the original gave to most English-speaking readers... AnonMoos (talk) 02:01, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps a similar problem is translating the concept of angst to German, as in German, the word "Angst" literally means "fear" and not an existential anxiety? JIP | Talk 02:53, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

If the meaning of a loanword is different from its usage in the original language, translating it back into a more appropriate term could be necessary. --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:08, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

In a good translation, the translator should create the same "feel" in the target language as in the original. E.g. if use of the loanword is perceived as pretentious by average readers of the original text, ideally it would be translated by a word with the same meaning and a similar degree of pretentiousness. In many cases, this is rather difficult to achieve. (The case of angst is probably not that difficult because of the shift of meaning.) When translating from non-English A to non-English B, anglicisms can be often retained without altering the effect; so when translating the Remu Aaltonen quote e.g. into German, family would probably evoke similar connotations for readers in both Finnish and German. –Austronesier (talk) 10:56, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I guess the Latin term "familia" would be widely understood, although the semantic connotations for an English speaker might be different. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:18, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

You could start off with a note: Remu refers to his family using the Finnish slang term family instead of the usual Finnish word. Thereafter, keep it in italics: he said that there are about as many Roma among his family ... which would show that it's a special word.  Card Zero  (talk) 13:57, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

I'd suggest that English has a slang term for family in folks, but that seems a little too cosy for the purpose, with its overtones of ordinariness, when I consider what the Finnish article says: He has stated that his “family” formed their “own camp” outside the Roma and other Finns. So really it wants a term for "family" which also implies separation from the wider population. I wonder about maybe clan.  Card Zero  (talk) 21:20, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Those sound like good ideas, as did Bugs’s suggestion. Another option is to keep “family” with the Finnish inflection to mark it as a word used in a special way. More slang words for family: “fam”, “peeps”. All of these convey slightly different feels to an English-speaker. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 14:28, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Hän on sanonut vuonna 1984 julkaistussa kirjassa Poika varjoiselta kujalta, että hänen ”familyssaan” – eli lapsuudenperheessään tai suvussaan – on suunnilleen yhtä paljon romaneita kuin pääväestöön kuuluvia.

…he said that there are about as many Roma among his kin —that is, in his childhood family or lineage (makes it sound like a specialised term)

…he said that there are about as many Roma in his clan —that is, in his childhood family or lineage (makes it sound like a specialised term)

…he said that there are about as many Roma in his familyssaan —that is, in his childhood family or lineage (makes it sound like a Finnish-specific term)

…he said that there are about as many Roma among his “folks” —that is, in his childhood family or lineage (makes it sound like a quote)

…he said that there are about as many Roma in his “fam” —that is, in his childhood family or lineage (makes it sound like a quote and slang)

…he said that there are about as many Roma among his “peeps” —that is, in his childhood family or lineage (makes it sound like a quote and slang)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.67.193.176 (talk) 14:28, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

In the "Finnish-specific" approach, the Finnish "slang term" is family; the rest is locative case endings. So this doesn't work well.  --Lambiam 08:04, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Locative, as in, he's inside his family. Or totally covered in it, according to Wiktionary.  Card Zero  (talk) 11:31, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

What about "he said that there are about as many Roma in his familia —that is, in his childhood family or lineage"? Too Latino, or would it cause connotations of the Italian mafia? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I have to agree, that would be a distractingly strange choice (Nuntii Latini notwithstanding).  Card Zero  (talk) 13:48, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

The version with "folks" shouldn't have quotation marks around the word. This isn't what I would call a slang usage, it's the standard usage in many regional dialects. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:56, 31 May 2022 (UTC)