A good translator needs to listen to the perspective of the author, instead of forcing his own viewpoint on the piece.Recap wrote:As I said, I'm working as an English translator at the moment and these "pedantic squabbles" do actually help me.
Well said.matt wrote:The horse is dead already, man. Give it up!
As a native speaker of English (and no, I'm not American so stop saying that), I understood GaijinPunch's translation with crystal clarity and thought it was very well done. I think his choice of the word "shooter" was perfect.
You are not a native speaker of English, so perhaps you should stop telling us how to speak our own language.
Thanks.freddiebamboo wrote:
OFF TOPIC;
Ord, nice review of Ketsui!
Indeed. And I will add, the next time I see someone work hard on a translation or other type of contributution to the forum, I do not want to see a petty semantic argument (which some like to spark) tear it down.matt wrote:A good translator needs to listen to the perspective of the author, instead of forcing his own viewpoint on the piece.Recap wrote:As I said, I'm working as an English translator at the moment and these "pedantic squabbles" do actually help me.
It's a good rule for communication in general, too.
Just my 2c
They don't help us enjoy threads like these. Do not derail a thread like this again.Recap wrote:As I said, I'm working as an English translator at the moment and these "pedantic squabbles" do actually help me.jiji wrote: Recap... you're excellent at sniffing out news, but pedantic squabbles like this don't help anybody. Please remove the cork and worry about more important things, like having fun.
I don't know who originally wrote this because I couldn't find the original post, so I assume it was deleted by the author. Anyway, as a linguist by profession (not a translator, but a linguist--meaning I study and analyse human languages) I just had to comment on how absurd it is to term a word "linguistically poor". It's perhaps poor from your subjective viewpoint (=your opinion), but certainly not on a linguistic level. Once a word gains acceptance by a community of native speakers, no matter how small the community, it has entered into the lexicon of that community and is a word just like any other, on the linguistic level. There are only poor words on a subjective (opinion-based) level, not a linguistic one.GaijinPunch wrote:Not really. For a non-American that word sounds a bit lame. Linguistically poor, if you ask me.
Right. But going even further as I'm sure you know most of the kanji compounds are also Japanese words, just not in origin (their origin being mostly Sinitic (Chinese)). It's just a matter of time-depth. Well over half of the Japanese lexicon (probably closer to 70-80%) is of foreign (i.e. non-Japonic) origin. Even some words usually considered Japanese have now been demonstrated to probably be early loanwords (which were mainly from Korean). Some were from Austroasiatic languages (the most well-known being Vietnamese), such as Modern Japanese /me/ 'eye', which was /ma/ in Old Japanese (preserved today in historical compounds such as /manako/ 'eyeball'), looking to be from Austroasiatic *mat 'eye', and Modern Japanese /ko/ 'basket', also probably borrowed from Austroasiatic *kuot 'basket'.GaijinPunch wrote:All of these katakana words in the Japanese language, are in fact Japanese words... just not in origin. Takes a lot of people years to finally jump that subtle hurdle.
). 
Well it's not for everyone I guess but I love it. If you're genuinely interested in it, I don't think it requires any more patience than anything else (I'm rather impatient myself), just like any other science. But I can see it being problematic if one doesn't like to read lots of analytical texts and whatnot. Not everyone's cup o' tea I know. Anyway, I'm working on my PhD in Linguistics at UH Manoa. I'll be teaching Linguistics 102 there this Fall.GaijinPunch wrote:
Indeed. The only thing more shocking to me than linguistics itself are the people with the patience to study it.
Dylan1CC wrote: They don't help us enjoy threads like these. Do not derail a thread like this again.
Well, nope. The fact of being accepted by a community of speakers don't make a word "liguistically rich", lexically well-formed, if you prefer. The -er suffix implies a subject who does the action. If a shooting game is "a shooter", then the game itself is "shooting", it's it the one which "shoots" and not the player. So, from a linguistic point of view, it is poor and even wrong. The point was, anyways, that we're speaking about a translation here, where accuracy and orthodox words are important, in my opinion.Anyway, as a linguist by profession (not a translator, but a linguist--meaning I study and analyse human languages) I just had to comment on how absurd it is to term a word "linguistically poor". It's perhaps poor from your subjective viewpoint (=your opinion), but certainly not on a linguistic level. Once a word gains acceptance by a community of native speakers, no matter how small the community, it has entered into the lexicon of that community and is a word just like any other, on the linguistic level. There are only poor words on a subjective (opinion-based) level, not a linguistic one.
Yes it does. Language changes, and if speakers accept a form, then it's just as good as any other, linguistically. And we weren't talking about 'linguistically rich', we were talking about 'linguistically poor', though each are equally absurd terms.Recap wrote:
Well, nope. The fact of being accepted by a community of speakers don't make a word "liguistically rich", lexically well-formed, if you prefer.Anyway, as a linguist by profession (not a translator, but a linguist--meaning I study and analyse human languages) I just had to comment on how absurd it is to term a word "linguistically poor". It's perhaps poor from your subjective viewpoint (=your opinion), but certainly not on a linguistic level. Once a word gains acceptance by a community of native speakers, no matter how small the community, it has entered into the lexicon of that community and is a word just like any other, on the linguistic level. There are only poor words on a subjective (opinion-based) level, not a linguistic one.
You're right about the -er suffix, that is its primary meaning in noun derivations, but you're wrong about 'shooter' being wrong and poor.The -er suffix implies a subject who does the action. If a shooting game is "a shooter", then the game itself is "shooting", it's it the one which "shoots" and not the player. So, from a linguistic point of view, it is poor and even wrong.
twe wrote:
You're right about the -er suffix, that is its primary meaning in noun derivations, but you're wrong about 'shooter' being wrong and poor.The -er suffix implies a subject who does the action. If a shooting game is "a shooter", then the game itself is "shooting", it's it the one which "shoots" and not the player. So, from a linguistic point of view, it is poor and even wrong.
It isn't wrong if native speakers accept and use it. It has simply become grammaticalized into a noun which designates a specific genre of video game (one in which the action is to shoot, a game used for shooting). Furthermore, in regards to the -er suffix, you fail to realise the same thing happened with the noun 'shaker', with the meaning "a container used for shaking", used in terms like 'salt shaker'. Would you claim that wrong or poor? It's just as wrong and poor as 'shooter' in your view, but no native speaker would even for a second consider 'salt shaker' ungrammatical (in fact they would laugh at you at the suggestion it is ungrammatical). This parallels the use of the -er suffix in 'shooter', in the sense it means "a game used for shooting". You obviously don't know or understand the full functional and semantic range of the English -er suffix, or what grammaticalization is, so I recommend you read up on the topics before you post here again, otherwise you'll just keep embarassing yourself.
You're right about its primary usage, but wrong because you fail to recognize secondary usages such as in 'shaker'. Affixes have a semantic range. This is something you, for reasons unknown, refuse to recognize.Recap wrote:
If I'm right about the -er suffix, there's no question about the inconsistence of the word "shooter" refering to a video-game, much like "shaker" when you're refering to something which doesn't "shake" by itself. I think it's pretty obvious.
True.So it doesn't matter if the community has accepted the term (and I don't think "shooter" has been, since you can't find it in any dictionary) to define how it is etymologically.
No it isn't, and the fact you cannot see why it isn't reflects only on your own ignorance and egotism (the fact you think you can dictate what is linguistically poor or rich among forms deemed grammatical by native speakers!). It's using the -er suffix in one of its alternate usages instead of the primary usage, there's nothing 'poor' about it. It's both morphologically and semantically grammatical. Once again, reference 'salt shaker', a perfect English compound.And the term is "linguistically poor" if we attend to its morphology and semantic.
Yes, I get the fact you don't know what you're talking about. Re-read my previous post, you obviously didn't understand what I wrote.Hope you get it now.
One thing is a semantic range, another thing is stretching the meaning to almost hide its true nature. -er, as I said, implies a subject who/which does the action by itself. If this is not present, other uses are just ignoring the etymology and true meaning for not having a better resource. "Linguistically poor" to me.twe wrote: You're right about its primary usage, but wrong because you fail to recognize secondary usages such as in 'shaker'. Affixes have a semantic range. This is something you, for reasons unknown, refuse to recognize.
Those "alternate usages" are not etymologically correct, as I explained. Your line of reasoning would bring us to accept as linguistically/morphologically/semantically correct any form which is used by a certain community. I don't believe that you can use "shooter" with ANY native speaker and be perfectly understood. Use "shooting game" and you probably will.No it isn't, and the fact you cannot see why it isn't reflects only on your own ignorance and egotism (the fact you think you can dictate what is linguistically poor or rich among forms deemed grammatical by native speakers!). It's using the -er suffix in one of its alternate usages instead of the primary usage, there's nothing 'poor' about it. It's both morphologically and semantically grammatical. Once again, reference 'salt shaker', a perfect English compound.And the term is "linguistically poor" if we attend to its morphology and semantic.
You can also tell native English speakers you are playing a video game and say "it's a shooter", and they will accept it just fine. Hence it is morphologically and semantically grammatical (if it wasn't, native speakers wouldn't accept it).
It's as productive as linguistically poor, and that's exactly what I tried to notify.Many video game genres now end in -er, so this seems to be a productive process. I often hear fighting games referred to as 'a fighter', and even RPGs called 'a role-player'. The fact these forms can be produced, and are immediately accepted by native speakers, shows this is perfectly grammatical.
I find that I've understood you quite right and also I've given arguments for every asseveration I've made. Or was this just another one of your discrediting attempts?Yes, I get the fact you don't know what you're talking about. Re-read my previous post, you obviously didn't understand what I wrote.Hope you get it now.
Ah, I see. You don't understand that -er has different, distinct usages. One is an agentive function, marking the actor, as you state. Another is that used in "shaker" and "shooter", a passivizing function marking something or someone which undergoes or is capable of undergoing an action. Both usages are noted in dictionaries, see:Recap wrote: One thing is a semantic range, another thing is stretching the meaning to almost hide its true nature. -er, as I said, implies a subject who/which does the action by itself. If this is not present, other uses are just ignoring the etymology and true meaning for not having a better resource. "Linguistically poor" to me.
I knew you'd finally take the dictionary and write here some appropriate definitions. As a "linguist", I thought you could understand the point, though. I'm speaking about etymology, not modern usages, as I've explained a few times now. Hence the use of "poor".twe wrote:Ah, I see. You don't understand that -er has different, distinct usages. One is an agentive function, marking the actor, as you state. Another is that used in "shaker" and "shooter", a passivizing function marking something or someone which undergoes or is capable of undergoing an action. Both usages are noted in dictionaries, see:Recap wrote: One thing is a semantic range, another thing is stretching the meaning to almost hide its true nature. -er, as I said, implies a subject who/which does the action by itself. If this is not present, other uses are just ignoring the etymology and true meaning for not having a better resource. "Linguistically poor" to me.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=-er
And here you make the common mistake of many non-linguists, confounding a diachronic(=historical) analysis with a synchronic (=active, modern) analysis. We are talking about the modern language when we speak of things such as translation (if we are using modern language forms, and in this thread we are). Thus, the history of an affix is irrelevant and has no bearing on things such as 'poor' and 'rich' usage. Take a linguistics 101 course at a local college, I really think you need it if this is how you approach languages.Recap wrote:
I knew you'd finally take the dictionary and write here some appropriate definitions. As a "linguist", I thought you could understand the point, though. I'm speaking about etymology, not modern usages, as I've explained a few times now. Hence the use of "poor".
But now you're on it, let me know the dictionary definitions for "shooter". If one of them speaks about "shooting games", the "story" will be "ended".
