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"Smile" vs. "Poop!" - guy

rivalvoices.substack.com · 1,939 words · saved by 3 readers

Or, On The Art of Auto-Translation

Something I care a lot about is translation. If I want to convey something to you, and all I have are words, and you speak a different language, how can I do it? I can attempt to match my words to your words, but the way our different languages’ words carve up the world might not even have a 1-to-1 mapping! This means there might be tons of overflow: maybe one word in my language is two in yours, or is only “kinda” like this other word in yours, or maybe it’s “untranslatable” and there’s no words for it, or maybe it’s only half of a word in yours: can’t use it to say what I mean without…

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