MONDAY: Lost In Translation – For centuries, translators and interpreters have employed their linguistic skills to help dissolve language barriers. As a result, philosophies, religions, political ideologies and countless other texts and ideas have been able to spread throughout the international community. But is some meaning always lost when a language is translated? Will online translation services like Google Translate be able to one day replace human translators entirely? Four experts will join us to talk all about the role of translation in the past, present and future.
TUESDAY: Cheating In Sports – After eight badminton players were disqualified from the Olympics for trying to lose in order to face easier opponents later, we wanted to take a longer look at cheating in sports. Why is there always a doping scandal at the Tour de France, and fixes in boxing? What’s the future of cheating, and how are tactics changing to keep ahead of the cheating curve?
WEDNESDAY: Travel Etiquette – Is it ever OK to make eye contact with someone on a bus? When flying, what’s the best way to deal with the baby kicking the back of your chair? We’ll talk to etiquette experts and a former flight attendant about the ins and outs of how you should behave when you’re on mass transit.
THURSDAY: Live From A Hiking Trail – Colin heads out to broadcast live from a trail at the Connecticut Forest and Parks Association in Rockfall. Topics include: the emerald ash borer’s scary arrival in Connecticut and an update from state archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni, who recently discovered an old Indian burial site in Connecticut’s forests. We’ll also speak with one man who hiked every mile of trail in Connecticut.
FRIDAY: The Nose takes a look at the news of the week and pokes fun at it.
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4 Responses to Next week on the CMS
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Merriam-Webster’s adds something like 100 words a year. Then there’s slang, malapropisms, tech jargon, re-definitions, new usages, etc.
It would be a full time job just to annotate terms like Romneycare and Obamacare and the possible nuance of meanings in an article and the evolution of the usages before and after Romney entered the 2012 Presidential Race to denounce Romneycare re-packaged under the name of Obamacare.
I agree with Richard. The difficulty of translation is in nuance, idiomatic usage, and subtleties. In college, I had an Iranian roommate who once told me he was going to command a pizza. The semantic difference between “order” and “command” left him quite puzzled.
The definitive treatise on the difficulties of translation might be Willard Van Orman Quine’s “Word and Object”:
http://www.amazon.com/Object-Studies-Communication-Willard-Orman/dp/0262670011/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344169376&sr=1-1&keywords=word+and+object
It’s a grueling read I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But it does explicate the difficulties of comprehensive translation with logical precision.
A classic Star Trek TNG episode covers some of the bases. In “Darmok” the Tamarians speak in an incomprehensible language the computer can’t translate. It’s a seeming random assemblage of words. As the story unfolds, it’s discovered the Tamarains communicate in cultural mythos, sign, symbol, allegory and metaphor. These signifyng phrases when looked at as mere words are nonsensical. It’s only in their mythical context that meaning is derived.
There’s some pretty good scenes with the computer/translator riffing on possible meanings and usages of certain Tamarian key words in search results and the verbal interaction of the crew when storing and noting search responses is relevant to today’s verbal interaction with search and control agents like Apple’s iOS speech assistant Siri.
Re: Thursday’s show: will you post a picture of your new walking stick?