Concepts in multilingual situations

[ryanakca]

To quote Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, page 177:

Prof. B: I want to get clearer on the distinction between a concept and what you call a "qualified instance" of a concept. How would you classify "stationery supplies" in that regard?

AR: That is a qualified instance of a concept; it is used as if it were a concept, but it is a compound concept.

Prof. B: What would turn it into a concept?

AR: If we had a special word for it.

Prof. B: Just as the phrase "Conceptual Common Denominator" became a concept by reducing it to "CCD"?

AR.:: Yes, that's right.

Prof. B: If the phrase "stationery supplies" became, in effect, one unit—if you hyphenated it, so to speak, then it would become a concept?

AR: That's right.

How does this apply to people who speak multiple languages, and where there is a unit, a concept in one language (language A), but only a "qualified instance" of a concept in the other (language ? Would the person who speaks language A have access to a concept that the person who speaks B never would (or wouldn't until a new term was coined for the qualified instance)? And the person who speaks both would have access to both the concept and the qualified instance of a concept.

A concrete example: I speak both French and English. Take the English word "lobbyist" which, according to the "Robert & Collins Dictionnaire Français-Anglais / Anglais-Français" translates to:

lobbyist [iPA-pronunciation] n: (Pol) membre m d'un groupe de pression (for en faveur de); V lobby.

Therefore, since I speak English, I have access to the concept "lobbyist", a concept that other, unilingual, Francophones do not have access to? (The French translation is "membre d'un groupe de pression", and since it isn't "membre-d'un-groupe-de-pression", it doesn't qualify as a concept... in fact, the concept "lobby" (as in pressure group) doesn't have a French equivalent concept either, only "Groupe de pression", which is a qualified instance of the concept group/"groupe").

[DavidOdden]

Therefore, since I speak English, I have access to the concept "lobbyist", a concept that other, unilingual, Francophones do not have access to?

Yes, and you don't need to be fully bilingual. I have access to the concept čoarvvuš "antlers and skullcap of a reindeer" from Saami, even though I don't really speak the language. The limit is that I can't use that concept in talking to (most) other people. However, you can probably use "lobbyist" with monolingual French speakers, who will eventually figure out what you mean and will import the word into French. That's how we got "milieu", for example.

[Grames]

Lobbyiste is french for lobbyist says the igoogle translator gadget.

[D'kian]

There are plenty of concepts in any language which have no one concept translation to another. The word "airlock" needs a phrase to be translated to Spanish, for example.

It really doesn't matter, since any term can be accurately translated into any language. And, as has been pointed out, sometimes the original concept gets adopted into other languages.

Of course you'll always run accross purists who want their Mother Tongue™ uncotaminated with other languages (ridiculous, since all languages have already been influenced by other tongues to some degree). There's a football comentator in Mexico who insists on using translations for common football teerms. When he's done with it, touchdown becomes score, fumble becomes loose ball and safety becomes self-score, which is patently absurd.

Spain has an institution called the Real Academia de la Lengua Española (The Royal Academmy of the Spanish Tongue, literally) which fancies itself the official arbiter of the Spanish language. If you read its dictionary you won't find everyday terms used by people in Mexico, Spain, Nicaragua, etc etc. France has a similar institution. This is pointless since, slang aside, different countries use the same language in different ways. Just comapre US English to Brittish English. Even different regions in the same country use language in different ways. In Mexico, for example, the northern states have more words adapted from English than you'll find in the central part of the country.

What does help understand how concepts translate to other languages is to know more than one language. it doesn't amtter which one, but knowing two languages you have to think about how terms, words, concepts, etc translate.

[ryanakca]

Great, thanks for the answers

Ryan

[L-C]

It's interesting having access to two languages. Swedish has no word for "fewest", so instead the progression goes "few, fewer, smallest". The last word being the superlative of both size and number.

On the other hand, English as no verb for "doing" a name as in "I *verb* Leonard". Instead you have to be someone, or have a name.

There's lots of other differences. A nefarious one is the fact that there's no real equivalent to "justice" in Swedish. The word in question is a de facto synonym with "equality". To imagine it, picture the word justice replaced by fairness, as defined by egalitarianism.