"surge" - more palatable! Monday, January 22, 2007
"surge" (referring to a large, but brief, increase in troop strength) is also in the running for word of the year.
The Washington Post by Paul Farhi: "surge is one of those words that's suddenly become the go-to phrase to describe a contemporary phenomenon ... its very vagueness might make it the politically perfect word for a controversial policy."
According to the article, "surge" conjures up " the rush of the ocean, or what a young person feels upon the first blush of love"; it is a perfect word to present an imagery of "a sharp but passing event" for a controversial policy, and makes it more "palatable".
In producing a piece of translation, one must go beyond focusing on the level of information-content and finding its equivalence, but to take the task to other levels such as shade of meaning, degree of forcefulness/vagueness, as well as any attached implicatures of the source language text - the above mentioned word is a typical example to which a professional translator must play close attention.
Paul's article also reminded me of an article I read many months ago by Glenn Kessier of Washington Post:
Two giants searching for a meaningful relationship
Upon a White House visit by Chinese premier Hu Jintao, the contrasting ideas about the modern US-China realtionship were reflected in the language the two leaders used. While Bush used terms such as "important relationship" , "stakeholders in the international system" to refer to China, avoiding terms to signal their relationship is on an equal footing, Hu framed it differently to place China on an equal level by saying that "...not only stakeholders, but they should also be constructive partners." This is yet another example of the choice of word and its attached implicature which we need to be very mindful of inorder to produce an accurate version of a source text.
'The society defined "to pluto" as "to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet." '
Winners of other catagories include: Most unnecessary category-"Surikat"; Most outrageous category-"Cambodian accessory; Most euphemistic category-"Waterboarding". If these catch your fancy, you can visit the links.
Culture is directly related to the way we perceive our world to which meaning shared by members of society have been attached. The attached meaning/value-attribute of word evolves with the constantly changing socio-political landscape of a given culture. As The American Dialect Society pointed out, "winning words or phrases don't have to be brand new; what's important is that they gained new prominence in the past year".
Macquarie dictionary (Australia) are also conducting an on-line survey, it would be interesting to compare the different values of the two cultural communities when the result comes out. The link between culture and language.
Each language articulates or organises the
world differently because different cultures take on different
emotions and attitudes when they conceptualise their experiences
or ideas and these are transmitted through their languages.
We must be equipped with an intercultural awareness besides
the language itself because target readers’ expectations
differ by their linguistic conventions as well as their cultural
norms... read more about this blog
