interestingasfuck

This Japanese interpreter did a TEDx talk about her work. She mentions a few issues with going between Japanese and English, like how subjects in Japanese are often dropped from sentences, so she once made the assumption to give a CEO a male pronoun only to find out that the CEO was female when she walked in the room shortly after.

The interpreter also says that you can't wait to have all the information about a sentence to start translating, so she likens it to "watching a thriller" because you don't know whether the verb at the end is "going to negate the whole sentence".

https://youtu.be/P-ggxpMY9q0?t=143

Seems so bad now, Yoda's fucked up language pattern does not.

One of my favorite passages from Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language":

There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech -- not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary -- six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam -- that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each inclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses which reinclose three or four of the minor parentheses, making pens within pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it -- after which comes the VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb -- merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out -- the writer shovels in "haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden sein," or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man's signature -- not necessary, but pretty. German books are easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your head -- so as to reverse the construction -- but I think that to learn to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner.

Haha, you could also read this as someone speaking in a way where he constantly interrupts himself--like a really excited little kid.

"I--the hotel is across the street from this store, and in there, I saw this suit I want to try on!"

Japanese is a really fun language, I thoroughly enjoyed the classes I took before my depression swallowed me up for a bit. Absolutely reccomend, it's only about half as scary as it looks--the syllabary is not difficult to remember, and Japanese is a decently structured, ordered language. The main challenge is expanding your vocabulary, and keeping track of Kanji.

I too have the same problem with German. After 3 years of continuous learning have I still not get the problem, when prefix of verbs comes at the end, over with. When the prefix comes at the end of the sentence, have I always the verb forgotten.

The hotel's neighbor across had a suit I wanted to try on.

You can find less complicated constructions that parallel their order.

我从酒店街对面的店里面看到了一套西装我想试 (I think this is gramatically correct?)

I, from hotel, across the street, store, saw, a suit, I want to try.

Lol, reminds me of my mother saying "I today" for 我今天

Like she always say "I today went to the mall"

Lol try slavic languages and hungarian where the word order is extremely flexible. Ive always had a hard time translating between hungarian and english even tho im basically native in both of them. For example "A kutya kergeti a macskat", "A macskat kergeti a kutya", "Kergeti a macskat a kutya", "Kergeti a kutya a macskat", "A macskat a kutya kergeti" and "A kutya a macskat kergeti" are all valid and mean the same thing but the emphasis is on a different part of the sentence. Kinda insane from the perspective of english where "The dog is chasing the cat" and "The cat is being chased by the dog" are the only valid orders and even that is cheating as i would translate the second one a bit different into hungarian because once again the focus changes. Also there are a lot of things in common speach that i dont know how a translator would translate. In hungarian for example we have a ridiculous amount of curse words and combinations that are simply lost when translating. "A ménkű csapjon bele a jó dagadt gecis faszszopó román kurva anyádba" is something(or idk it was similar to this) i have actually heard from a real person in a real conversation. I wont translate it becauase its extremely vulgar but you get the point. The other thing is, returning to japanese for example, there are a few things that can be represented in one language but not in another one like honorifics for example. Last thing is when translating without context pronouns probably get completly lost. How would an ai looking only at the text know who the "you" was aimed at. Especially when translating to languages where even you has different forms depending on gender for example. All things thatll have to be solved i guess.

Is it odd that I want a whole website of these charts where I can compare the way many many different languages translate the same sentence and see the lines between the meaning components in them?

Having been a relay operator for a few years, this is true even in English. You might be able to guess what someone is saying (and the floor managers always encouraged trying to) but you'll never have 100% accuracy and it's far less confusing to the person getting the "translation" if you don't have to make any corrections by actually waiting for the person to finish their sentence.

If i were to real time translate, it would be something like: I went to a shop across the hotel, I saw a suit there, and I wanted to try it on.

I've often wanted a direct literal translation in the subtitles.

Like, I want my subtitles to read

I hotel from the street across that's a shop I saw a suit on try want to.

Because then at least I can learn to understand "Watashi" is self-reference, and match up the phonetics with the words.

Trying to parse that in that backwards order makes my brain hurt.

Ah the joy of learning Japanese as an English speaker. Oh you learned all the hiragana? Bro there’s katakana and kanji. Oh you don’t know the kanji!? BRO. Have fun learning how to look those bad boys up using radicals!

А странного что такого? Слов порядок тут обычный.

Translation(order preserved): And wierd what's here? Of words the order here is common.

What are the last two characters?

Japanese particles.

I had thought about learning some Japanese but after seeing this, I'm doubting I could.

Maybe for an ideal translation, but I think even real-time transliteration would be awesome... and might even start blending grammar patterns across borders.