Language Log

This morning, I received the following interesting message from Adam C.:

Spending some time in Ireland, I hear people saying "It's a soft day" or "It's a soft day, thank God!".  Not knowing what that expression implies, I do a search and find that "A soft day is what the Irish call a very very damp fog or a mizzle, which is a cross between a mist and a drizzle." (source)  Mizzle is also the color of a shade of paint. (source)

"Soft day" is a phrase derived from Irish lá bog (lit.) ("overcast day; light drizzle/mist").

That reaction to a moist, overcast day tells you something about the Irish mindset and helps you understand Irish sentiment and humor.

I forget who it was and for what reason, but a week or two ago, someone said "Thank you" in Hakka to me.

That got me thinking about all the different ways to say "thanks" in Sinitic languages.

Here's a map of Sinitic topolectal equivalents for MSM (Modern Standard Mandarin) "xièxie 謝謝 / 谢谢" (“thank you”).  If you click on the place names in characters at the bottom of the map, pinyin romanizations will be supplied.

Bear in mind that European-style  words of etiquette such as "hello" and "thanks" did not exist in China before the 20th century.  For the impact of English on the development of such spoken Mandarin civilities, see Mary S. Erbaugh, "China expands its courtesy:  Saying 'Hello' to Strangers," The Journal of Asian Studies, 67.2 (May, 2008), 621-652.

Two colleagues noticed that the PRC government often rebukes other countries for lacking sincerity, and they asked me if Chinese had a different understanding of sincerity that permitted / encouraged them to do so.  "Sincerity" is so front and center in Chinese negotiations with other nations that one soon comes to realize, if you want smooth relations with the PRC, you must needs demonstrate to the Chinese representatives that you are utterly sincere, i.e., that you are willing to do exactly what they want you to do.  Anything less opens you to the charge of being insincere.

My colleagues asked me if there is something special about the Chinese conception of sincerity, i.e., does it have special Chinese characteristics" (jùyǒu Zhòngguó tèsè 具有中国特色)?  Just as it is an article of faith for the CCP that socialism in China comes with special characteristics (Zhōngguó tèsè shèhuì zhǔyì 中国特色社会主义).

With the changing of the guard at the State Department, the new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and his counterpart in China's Foreign Ministry, Wang Yi, must needs have a dialog, a man-to-man conversation, so to speak.  As is customary with China's wolf warriors, however, Wang Yi was up to his old habits of giving young Marco a jiàoxùn 教训 (let's just call it "a lesson", not quite a "dressing down").

Here's how the most critical part (the final portion) of Wang Yi's communication was reported in an AP article on the event:

“I hope you will act accordingly,” Wang told Rubio, according to a Foreign Ministry statement, employing a Chinese phrase typically used by a teacher or a boss warning a student or employee to behave and be responsible for their actions.

[This is a guest post by Don Keyser]

A true tale from nearly a half century ago … prompted by reading the mox nix posting to LL. 

Marco Rubio has been named Secretary of State by newly inaugurated President Donald Trump, swiftly and unanimously approved by the United States Senate, and promptly sworn in by Vice President JD Vance.  When it comes to China, our most formidable foe, however, there is a hitch — Rubio is under a travel ban by the Chinese government.

Zěnme bàn 怎么办？("What to do?")

Clearly this will not do.  Even China knows that, so their Foreign Ministry has thought of a devilishly clever way to circumvent their own ban.

Beijing changes Rubio’s Chinese name, perhaps to get around travel ban
Changes to official translations are approved at a high level, and could be a way to ease sanctions indirectly.  By Yitong Wu, Kit Sung, and Chen Zifei, rfa
2025.01.21

China's morphosyllabic script confronts the world, and itself — with unique challenges.

Beijing has changed the rendering of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s name in Chinese, sparking speculation that officials might want to get around their own travel ban, in an apparent olive branch to President Donald Trump, analysts said on Tuesday.

[I wrote this piece more than a year and a half ago, but neglected to post it because I was in the midst of a long run.  Nonetheless, it's still relevant and interesting, so I'm going ahead to post it now.  Since I was able to revise some small points and we garnered several interesting new comments, it was worth a second throw.]

"Linguists have identified a new English dialect that’s emerging in South Florida", by Phillip M. Carter in The Conversation (6/12/23)

Beginning sentences:

“We got down from the car and went inside.”

“I made the line to pay for groceries.”

“He made a party to celebrate his son’s birthday.”

These phrases might sound off to the ears of most English-speaking Americans.

In Miami, however, they’ve become part of the local parlance.

According to my recently published research, these expressions – along with a host of others – form part of a new dialect taking shape in South Florida.

This language variety came about through sustained contact between Spanish and English speakers, particularly when speakers translated directly from Spanish.

About a week ago, I was composing New Year's greetings for friends:

Akemashiteomedetō gozaimasu 明けましておめでとう御座います "Happy New Year"

Sin-nî-khuài-lo̍k 新年快樂！Xīnnián kuàilè!

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Шинэ оны мэнд хүргэе!

Felix sit annus novus!

When I got to the Latin, I was puzzled by whether I should leave "sit" in there or get rid of it.  I knew it must be some form of the verb "to be", but I wasn't sure exactly what form and what function it played..

So I put "sit" in Google Translate Latin and pushed the translate button, but forgot that I had the "into" language set on Chinese.  I was surprised / delighted / tickled when the Latin came out as Chinese "suí tā qù 隨它去" (lit., "let it go").  On the one hand, I was amazed by how colloquial it sounded, but, on the other hand, I thought it was a brilliant attempt on the part of GT to capture the grammatical sense of Latin "sit".

Big birds in the Bible.

"‘On Eagles’ Wings’: Comfort and Translation,The bird is most probably not cited in the Bible."  WSJ Opinion (1/6/25)

A dilemma.

Rosemary Roberts, of Waterbury Connecticut, writes:

Eli Federman’s op-ed “The Bald Eagle Is Heaven-Sent” (Dec. 31) brings to mind the beautiful hymn “On Eagles’ Wings,” which is often sung both at Roman Catholic funeral Masses and at many protestant church services. While most of the hymn is based on Psalm 91 from the Old Testament, the refrain is based on Exodus 19:4, when God told the Israelites, after their flight from Egypt, that He had carried them “on eagles’ wings” through their times of trial. The refrain reads:

"Will AI make translators redundant?"  By Rachel Melzi, Inquiry (3 Dec 2024)

The author is a freelance Italian to English translator of long standing, so she is well equipped to respond to the question she has raised.  Having read through her article and the companion piece on AI in general (e.g., ChatGPT and other LLMs) in the German magazine Wildcat (featuring Cybertruck [10/21/23]) (the article is available in English translation [11/10/23]), I respond to the title question with a resounding "No!".  My reasons for saying so will be given throughout this post, but particularly at the very end.

The author asks:

How good is AI translation?

Already in 2020, two thirds of professional translators used “Computer-assisted translation” or CAT (CSA Research, 2020). Whereas “machine translation” translates whole documents, and thus is meant to replace human translation, CAT supports it: the computer makes suggestions on how to translate words and phrases as the user proceeds through the original text. The software can also remind users how they have translated a particular word or phrase in the past, or can be trained in a specific technical language, for instance, by feeding it legal or medical texts. CAT software is currently based on Neural Machine Translation (NMT) models, which are trained through bilingual text data to recognise patterns across different languages. This differs from Large Language Models (LLM), such as ChatGTP, which are trained using a broader database of all kinds of text data from across the internet. As a result of their different databases, NMTs are more accurate at translation and LLMs are better at generating new text.

"Oh, you've never read The Odyssey???"

Your timing is perfect. Emily Wilson's translation is the best one in literally ages, has that sweet iambic pentameter to give it a "bouncy" feel, & makes dudebros cry that the classic has "gone woke". pic.twitter.com/zN5uSPTJSY

— Librarian Mama (@hyuumanatees) December 26, 2024