Open problems in translation: Difference between revisions

Open problems in translation (view source)

Revision as of 07:26, 3 October 2021

1,255 bytes added , 07:26, 3 October 2021

Fleshing some stuff out especially in the "I know the names of many things" section

Hoaqgio

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 The following is a list of English sentences for which there is no widely accepted Toaq translation. The list is broken into three sections: sentences for which no translation is known at all, sentences for which translations are known but are impractically long or unacceptable for some other reason, and sentences which used to appear on this list but for which acceptable translations have since been found. Each unsolved sentence is accompanied by some discussion of the difficulty, possibly including some incomplete or not popularly accepted solutions.
-The existence or nonexistence of a solution is determined relative to official grammatical features of Toaq (unofficial predicates are allowed).
+The existence or nonexistence of a solution is determined relative to official grammatical features of Toaq (unofficial predicates are allowed, but sufficiently technical utility predicates should be considered grammatical features in spirit).
 ==Sentences that have not been translated==
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 ==="I know the names of many things."===
-Attempts:
+This sentence is difficult to translate because the desired semantics are "There are many single X's for which I know the name of X", but "many single X's" is difficult to express in Toaq. There are basically two families of proposed solution: those which attempt to express these semantics precisely, and those which only approximate them and leave the details to context.
+Precise translations:
+* {{T|Sa puı tu shı mëa púı bı, dua jí chûa hı shí da.}} This is a direct translation of the above semantics. It is much longer than the English and requires a fair bit of forethought.
+* {{T|Sa puı bı, dua jí mû chua tu shı mea púı hı da.}} This is basically the same as the previous sentence, except that it allows {{T|tu}} to scope over {{T|hı}} in order to move the phrase {{T|tu shı mea púı}} inside the subordinate clause.
+* {{T|Puy shı bı, dua jí chûa hı shí da.}} This is also a direct translation of the above semantics, but it relies on an unofficial quantifier {{T|puy}} meaning "many X's" to make the sentence much more succinct.
+* {{T|Dua mu chua jí puy shı sa da.}} This is basically the same as the previous sentence except it uses a slightly different expression of the indirect question part of the sentence to make things even simpler.
+* {{T|Shıjeo sa puı dûa chua jí sa ja da.}} This example uses a utility predicate {{T|shıjeo}} meaning "every individual among X satisfies Y" to avoid having to depart too far from "natural" plural logic usage.
+* {{T|Chuadua jí sa puı da.}} This example uses the predicate {{T|chuadua}} to route around the distributivity issue. It is not clear how this would generalize to other similar examples (such as "I know the ages of many people").
+* {{T|Dua jí tôıtuq chua hı sa puı da.}} should work, but requires an unnaturalistic turn of phrase.
+Imprecise translations:
-* {{T|Sa puı tu shı mëa púı bı, dua jí chûa hı shí da.}} works, but is quite long.
-* {{T|Sa puı bı, dua jí mû chua tu shı mea púı hı da.}} works if you allow {{T|tu}} to scope over {{T|hı}}, but it's also long.
 * {{T|Hıdua chua jí sa puı da.}} almost works if you make {{T|chua}} nondistributive, except that even the modified version of the predicate can't say which names go to which things.
-* {{T|Puy shı bı, dua chua sa shí da.}} works if you allow {{T|puy}} to be {{T|puı}} in SA.
-* {{T|Chuadua jí sa puı da.}} works but it isn't clear how this would generalize to other cases.
-* {{T|Shıjeo sa puı dûa chua jí sa ja da.}} works with {{T|shıjeo}} meaning "every individual among X satisfies Y" but seems like an unnecessarily complex phrasing.
-* {{T|Dua jí tôıtuq chua hı sa puı da.}} should work, but requires an unnaturalistic turn of phrase.
 ==Solved sentences==
 No open problems have been solved since the creation of this page.