http://www.ou.edu/cas/psc/booksocrates.htm

http://books.google.com/books?id=6NoPabBYcgAC&dq=four+texts+on+socrates&pg=PP1&ots=ALym2s58-v&sig=VOse4SZV4LvvMXdmFO4JG8aNFUU&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dfour%2Btexts%2Bon%2Bsocrates&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1#PPA7,M1

More literalist nonsense:

"If the translator tries to capture the particular shade of meaning
intended on each occasion a given word appears, the reader remains
ignorant that the word recurs at all."

Why should the reader have to know that "the word recurs"? Who is
behind such nonsense? A translation destroys, and SHOUILD destroy, any
1:1 correspondence between the original and the target language. I
should like to know who is responsible for spreading such nonsense,
which seems to pervade much current academic (cough, spit) translation.

The idiocy goes even further when you read the translation itself:

"Unlearned too, by Zeus, for you've kicked the door so unponderingly
that you've made a thought I had discovered miscarry." (page 121,
translation of Aristophenes' "Clouds")

"Unponderingly"? "UNPONDERINGLY"? A word that does not even occur in
Webster's New International, Second Edition?

You're shittin' me, Mr.
and Mrs. West. Go crawl into a hole, where you belong, because surely
you have no business making translations or writing or even thinking
about translation. You are fools and idiots. You have made a mockery of
the English language. You know NOTHING about translation whatsoever.

Another example is found in Gary Hatfield's translation of Kant's
Prolegomena:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0521575427/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-0905488-2600126#reader-link

Kant writes:

"Allein das der Metaphysik von jeher ungünstige Schicksal wollte, daß
er von keinem verstanden würde. Man kann es, ohne eine gewisse Pein zu
empfinden, nicht ansehen, wie so ganz und gar seine Gegner REID,
OSWALD, BEATTlE, und zuletzt noch PRIESTLEY, den Punkt seiner Aufgabe
verfehlten, und indem sie immer das als zugestanden annahmen, was er
eben bezweifelte, dagegen aber mit Heftigkeit und mehrenteils mit
großer Unbescheidenheit dasjenige bewiesen, was ihm niemals zu
bezweifeln in den Sinn gekommen war, seinen Wink zur Verbesserung so
verkannten, daß alles in dem alten Zustande blieb, als ob nichts
geschehen wäre."

Hatfield has:

"...proving with vehemence and more often than not great insolence..."

What's wrong with:

"adduced...in sharp words and often with overweening vanity and
presumption..."*

First of all, I have never heard anyone 'prove' anything with
'vehemence'.

I cannot even imagine what that could mean.

UC wrote:
http://www.ou.edu/cas/psc/booksocrates.htm

http://books.google.com/books?id=6NoPabBYcgAC&dq=four+texts+on+socrates&pg=PP1&ots=ALym2s58-v&sig=VOse4SZV4LvvMXdmFO4JG8aNFUU&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dfour%2Btexts%2Bon%2Bsocrates&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1#PPA7,M1

More literalist nonsense:

"If the translator tries to capture the particular shade of meaning
intended on each occasion a given word appears, the reader remains
ignorant that the word recurs at all."

Why should the reader have to know that "the word recurs"? Who is
behind such nonsense? A translation destroys, and SHOUILD destroy, any
1:1 correspondence between the original and the target language. I
should like to know who is responsible for spreading such nonsense,
which seems to pervade much current academic (cough, spit) translation.

It isn't nonsense at all. If the writer consistently used a single term
to identify some thing or express some concept, that consistency may be
quite significant, and in any event the translator would be hard pressed
to justify hauling out the thesaurus to replace the uniformity of the
original with variety.

When the translator diverges from the literal, it
must be to capture the intent. Translating the same word in different
ways just for the sake of it doesn't do that.

The idiocy goes even further when you read the translation itself:

"Unlearned too, by Zeus, for you've kicked the door so unponderingly
that you've made a thought I had discovered miscarry." (page 121,
translation of Aristophenes' "Clouds")

"Unponderingly"? "UNPONDERINGLY"? A word that does not even occur in
Webster's New International, Second Edition?

That's hardly the only criterion for whether a word can be used or
reasonably derived.

As for this particular word: by any chance, might
the original have been an equally novel derivation?

If you were to
translate Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky", would you restrict yourself to
words found in the target language's counterpart to Webster's New
International, Second Edition?

You're shittin' me, Mr.
and Mrs. West. Go crawl into a hole, where you belong, because surely
you have no business making translations or writing or even thinking
about translation. You are fools and idiots. You have made a mockery of
the English language. You know NOTHING about translation whatsoever.

How would you translate James Joyce's "Dubliners" into another language?

Another example is found in Gary Hatfield's translation of Kant's
Prolegomena:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0521575427/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-0905488-2600126#reader-link

Kant writes:

"Allein das der Metaphysik von jeher ungünstige Schicksal wollte, daß
er von keinem verstanden würde. Man kann es, ohne eine gewisse Pein zu
empfinden, nicht ansehen, wie so ganz und gar seine Gegner REID,
OSWALD, BEATTlE, und zuletzt noch PRIESTLEY, den Punkt seiner Aufgabe
verfehlten, und indem sie immer das als zugestanden annahmen, was er
eben bezweifelte, dagegen aber mit Heftigkeit und mehrenteils mit
großer Unbescheidenheit dasjenige bewiesen, was ihm niemals zu
bezweifeln in den Sinn gekommen war, seinen Wink zur Verbesserung so
verkannten, daß alles in dem alten Zustande blieb, als ob nichts
geschehen wäre."

Hatfield has:

"...proving with vehemence and more often than not great insolence..."

What's wrong with:

"adduced...in sharp words and often with overweening vanity and
presumption..."*

First of all, I have never heard anyone 'prove' anything with
'vehemence'.

Perhaps the average German had never heard of anyone "bewiesen" anything
with "Heftigkeit". If the use of unusual wording in the original is
significant, it calls for the same in the translation.

I cannot even imagine what that could mean.

I can. I don't know if that was the intent of the original, but I can
imagine, for example, the guy who studied the activity of H. pylori in
the stomach proving with vehemence that that microbe, not hyperacidity,
really is the cause of many peptic ulcers.

I bet you're glad you got that off your chest!

Harlan Messinger wrote:

UC wrote:

"Unponderingly"? "UNPONDERINGLY"? A word that does not even occur in
Webster's New International, Second Edition?

That's hardly the only criterion for whether a word can be used or
reasonably derived.

Oh, really? One of the most comprehensive dictionaries ever published
is not a good guide for responsible usage? Remember, this is a book
intended for college students! If it is not in WNISE, it sure as hell
is not in a collegiate dictionary!

Harlan Messinger wrote:
UC wrote:
http://www.ou.edu/cas/psc/booksocrates.htm

http://books.google.com/books?id=6NoPabBYcgAC&dq=four+texts+on+socrates&pg=PP1&ots=ALym2s58-v&sig=VOse4SZV4LvvMXdmFO4JG8aNFUU&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dfour%2Btexts%2Bon%2Bsocrates&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1#PPA7,M1

More literalist nonsense:

"If the translator tries to capture the particular shade of meaning
intended on each occasion a given word appears, the reader remains
ignorant that the word recurs at all."

Why should the reader have to know that "the word recurs"? Who is
behind such nonsense? A translation destroys, and SHOUILD destroy, any
1:1 correspondence between the original and the target language. I
should like to know who is responsible for spreading such nonsense,
which seems to pervade much current academic (cough, spit) translation.
It isn't nonsense at all. If the writer consistently used a single term
to identify some thing or express some concept, that consistency may be
quite significant, and in any event the translator would be hard pressed
to justify hauling out the thesaurus to replace the uniformity of the
original with variety.

All words can take on different meanings depending on the context.

Translation is not the matching of words in a source language with
words in the target language, but interpreting the contextualized
meaning of the source text and re-creating it in the target language.
It is this which makes machine translation so difficult. In Kant,
'Erkenntniss' can mean 'science', 'knowledge', 'proposition', etc.

When the translator diverges from the literal, it
must be to capture the intent. Translating the same word in different
ways just for the sake of it doesn't do that.

There is no such thing as a 'literal' meaning independent of context.
What does 'Anlage' or 'Sinn' or 'set' mean, if I may ask?
The idiocy goes even further when you read the translation itself:

"Unlearned too, by Zeus, for you've kicked the door so unponderingly
that you've made a thought I had discovered miscarry." (page 121,
translation of Aristophenes' "Clouds")

"Unponderingly"? "UNPONDERINGLY"? A word that does not even occur in
Webster's New International, Second Edition?
That's hardly the only criterion for whether a word can be used or
reasonably derived.

Oh, really? One of the most comprehensive dictionaries ever published
is not a good guide for responsible usage?

If the word 'unponderingly' is to be found in ANY dictionary, it
will be most likely in the 2nd; but IT ISN'T THERE. The adjective
'unpondering' is indeed in the 2nd, at the bottom of the page, to
which are relegated unusually rare or obsolete words and spellings. If
it's not in THIS dictionary, I say, it is so rare that to use it in a
college text is nothing short of absurd.

UC wrote:

Harlan Messinger wrote:


UC wrote:


[ ... ]


"Unponderingly"? "UNPONDERINGLY"? A word that does not even occur in
Webster's New International, Second Edition?

That's hardly the only criterion for whether a word can be used or
reasonably derived.

Oh, really? One of the most comprehensive dictionaries ever published
is not a good guide for responsible usage? Remember, this is a book
intended for college students! If it is not in WNISE, it sure as hell
is not in a collegiate dictionary!

WNISE was superseded (or at least replaced) by the third edition in
1961, almost half a century ago.

Robert Lieblich wrote:
UC wrote:
Harlan Messinger wrote:
UC wrote:



[ ... ]


"Unponderingly"? "UNPONDERINGLY"? A word that does not even occur in
Webster's New International, Second Edition?


That's hardly the only criterion for whether a word can be used or
reasonably derived.


Oh, really? One of the most comprehensive dictionaries ever published
is not a good guide for responsible usage? Remember, this is a book
intended for college students! If it is not in WNISE, it sure as hell
is not in a collegiate dictionary!


WNISE was superseded (or at least replaced) by the third edition in
1961, almost half a century ago.


www.onelook.com returns no results for "unponderingly," is that up to
date enough for you? But I don't see why a dictionary should have to
list every possible combination of prefixes and suffixes for every root
word in it in order to qualify the word with appendages as a word. Are
not "ponder[ing]," "un-," and "-ly" defined in any of those tomes?

UC wrote, after listing the dictionaries he owns (should we be
impressed? Many of us in AUE have collections that dwarf his):

If the word 'unponderingly' is to be found in ANY dictionary, it
will be most likely in the 2nd; but IT ISN'T THERE. The adjective
'unpondering' is indeed in the 2nd, at the bottom of the page, to
which are relegated unusually rare or obsolete words and spellings. If
it's not in THIS dictionary, I say, it is so rare that to use it in a
college text is nothing short of absurd.

[and so on]
This shows just how little UC understands dictionaries and their use.
"Unponderingly" is made by straight-forward application of normal rules
of word-formation in English.

It is common, even in "unabridged"
dictionaries not to attempt listing all such words. When a list
appears, it is of examples of words so formed. English is a living
language with living word-formation methods, no matter how much UC rants
(as he has) that only 18th and early 19th century English should count.

Robert Lieblich wrote:

WNISE was superseded (or at least replaced) by the third edition in
1961, almost half a century ago.

www.onelook.com returns no results for "unponderingly," is that up to
date enough for you? But I don't see why a dictionary should have to
list every possible combination of prefixes and suffixes for every root
word in it in order to qualify the word with appendages as a word. Are
not "ponder[ing]," "un-," and "-ly" defined in any of those tomes?

Robert Lieblich wrote:

UC wrote:

Harlan Messinger wrote:


UC wrote:


[ ... ]


"Unponderingly"? "UNPONDERINGLY"? A word that does not even occur in
Webster's New International, Second Edition?

That's hardly the only criterion for whether a word can be used or
reasonably derived.

Oh, really? One of the most comprehensive dictionaries ever published
is not a good guide for responsible usage? Remember, this is a book
intended for college students! If it is not in WNISE, it sure as hell
is not in a collegiate dictionary!

WNISE was superseded (or at least replaced) by the third edition in
1961, almost half a century ago.

www.onelook.com returns no results for "unponderingly," is that up to
date enough for you? But I don't see why a dictionary should have to
list every possible combination of prefixes and suffixes for every root
word in it in order to qualify the word with appendages as a word.

Are
not "ponder[ing]," "un-," and "-ly" defined in any of those tomes?

Jeffrey Turner wrote:

Robert Lieblich wrote:

[ ... ]

WNISE was superseded (or at least replaced) by the third edition in
1961, almost half a century ago.

www.onelook.com returns no results for "unponderingly," is that up to
date enough for you? But I don't see why a dictionary should have to
list every possible combination of prefixes and suffixes for every root
word in it in order to qualify the word with appendages as a word. Are
not "ponder[ing]," "un-," and "-ly" defined in any of those tomes?

I was not discussing whether "unponderingly" is or is not an English
word. Brother Martin has covered that point, and done a fine job of
it. (I infer that you, like him and me, think that it is.) I was
commenting on UC's ludicrous general practice (if you believe him) of
using of Webster's Second International, half a century old, as
arbiter of whether something is or is not a word.

He's tried to
defend himself in a rescent post, and I'll deal with that in its
place.

I make enough real mistakes that there's no need to take me to task
for mistakes I haven't made.

--
Bob Lieblich
And I will no doubt make more

The point is that the word is inappropriate!