Languages ( was : Yiddish translation of Gita

[Lars Martin Fosse]

At 20:37 21.01.98 -0200, you wrote:
>> Language corresponds to culture and is able to express the feelings and
>attitudes you find in a
>given culture at any given time.
>
>
>> Yet I would claim that a modern Norwegian
>>could communicate without serious linguistic problems with a >Norwegian
>>living 100 years ago (in terms of being understood semantically) in spite
>of
>>the fact that values and attitudes have changed tremendously since 1898.
>
>>>Well some 100 years would more or less bring us back to time >>of Ibsen's
>Ett Dukkehjem. The transformations which took >>place are not that
>tremendous, are they?

The change in Norway (and Scandinavia) has been tremendous. Nora was a
revolutionary. Today, 80% of all women have work outside the home. In many
respects, the change in Scandinavia has been more dramatic than in other
European countries, that tend to be more conservative in outlook.

>>>I'm not using the word value in a moral sense, but rather closed >>to that
>of Bedeutungsträger.

When you introduce the word Bedeutungsträger, I feel far more comfortable
with your point of view. 

>
>>This is definitely a different problem. I would claim that you >could
>>translate correctly from Chinese if you have concepts available >to match
>the Chinese...
>
>>> That's the point. "If you have..." But you cannot have it just because
>you found this or that word for matching. You've got to have also the
>underlying cultural experience in order to have resonance. That was always
>the problem with the purists. Victor Rydberg translated Goethe's Faust in a
>quite ancient Swedish, full of words from Viking's times. It was a fiasko.


> >A number of texts that were incorrectly translated before, can
>>now be translated correctly because ethics and atttitudes have changed.
>They
>>could have been translated correctly 50 or 100 years ago, too, but this was
>>impossible for cultural reasons. The language was there, but not the
>>tolerance for what the texts actually had to say.
>>
>>> Not only the tolerance, but also the cultural predisposition and
>possibility for that.

That is of course true. But my point was that it would have been
linguistically *possible*. All the words and concepts needed to translate
oscenities, for instance, were present in English a 100 years ago. They just
weren't used in print. The fact that it wasn't done, had to do with
non-linguistic values, but with moral concepts (Bowdlerization of
Shakespear, for instance). 

When I consider our discussion, I have a sneaky feeling that our
disagreement is slightly artificial. I seem to be discussing something
closer to "la langue", whereas you seem to be discussing something closer to
"la parole" (to use Saussure's expressions). I see language as a flexible
and changeable system that can be manipulated to express any given concept
*over time* while still being the same language in linguistic terms, whereas
you pounce upon language as it is used at a given moment in time. A
practical example: The manipulation of language performed by Communists and
Faschists in this century. 

Best regards,

Lars Martin


Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse
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