{"id":8726,"date":"2013-06-07T05:00:19","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T05:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/06\/07\/a-good-translator\/"},"modified":"2013-06-07T05:00:19","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T05:00:19","slug":"a-good-translator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/06\/07\/a-good-translator\/","title":{"rendered":"A Good Translator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">A good translator must not only know the language from which he is translating, but also the subject matter.&#0160; Indeed, expertise in the latter is the more important of the two.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">I have been re-reading Jean Piaget&#39;s <em>Psychology and Epistemology: Toward a Theory of Knowledge<\/em> (Viking, 1971, tr. Arnold Rosin).&#0160; As a marginalium of mine &#0160;from the autumn of 1972 indicates, the following sentence involves a mis-translation: &quot;In the&#0160;case of <em>a priori<\/em> forms, the analysis of facts is more delicate, for it is not enought to analyze the subjects&#39; <em>consciences<\/em> but also their previous conditions.&quot; (p. 5, emphasis added)<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">In some languages, French being one of them, the word for conscience and the word for consciousness is the same: <em>conscience<\/em> (in French)&#0160; Someone versed in philosophy or psychology would know from the context that Piaget is talking about consciousness, not conscience.&#0160; A competent translator translates the sense, not the word.&#0160; The sense, however, depends on the context: first the sentence, then the wider contexts (paragraph, etc.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Translation requires understanding.&#0160; The notion that translating machines understand anything is preposterous.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A good translator must not only know the language from which he is translating, but also the subject matter.&#0160; Indeed, expertise in the latter is the more important of the two. I have been re-reading Jean Piaget&#39;s Psychology and Epistemology: Toward a Theory of Knowledge (Viking, 1971, tr. Arnold Rosin).&#0160; As a marginalium of mine &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/06\/07\/a-good-translator\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A Good Translator&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}