¿Un FMS requiere un lenguaje espec

[Devil's Advocate]

Using Google Translate the title of this topic is, "A FMS requires a specific language?"  I ask because a Free Market Society with today's technology seems to have overcome the necessity of using a specific language to transact business.  Earlier today while browsing on my other cyberspace hangout, Facebook, a friend posted the following:
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"Overheard at a grocery store by someone waiting in line behind a woman speaking on her cellphone in another language.  Ahead of her was a white man.  After the woman hangs up, he speaks up.

Man: "I didn't want to say anything while you were on the phone, but you're in America now.  You need to speak English."

Woman: "Excuse me?"

Man: *very slow* "If you want to speak Mexican, go back to Mexico.  In America, we speak English."

Woman: "Sir, I was speaking Navajo.  If you want to speak English, go back to England."

Source: Slapdash Mama
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After LMAO, I began to reconsider my previous position about the necessity of requiring a specific language, e.g. English, in a nation with a virtually open border policy that allows domestic employers to hire multinational employees at will.  After doing some preliminary research, I came to understand Ayn Rand's view as being that an official language is required for the sake of maintaining clear communications, and that multiple languages could be spoken so long as they weren't forced on a population whose majority spoke a particular language.  I welcome corrections if I've misrepresented her view.

What I'm really interested in is if today's technology is approaching the point where clarity of communication still requires a specific language, particularily in a FMS.  I don't see this as particularily lengthy subject, so I'll appreciate whatever feedback is generated in consideration of it.  To add an element of fun, and as a practical demonstration of whether a multilingual FMS is possible, I encourage respondants to use Google Translate to offer short portions of their response in something other than English.

Le sol est ouvert à la discussion

 

Edit: After posting I noticed the topic title choked in presenting what was intended to read as:

¿Un FMS requiere un lenguaje específico?

 

I expect some similar glitches, but hopefully you'll get the purpose of my attempt to integrate some tests of the reliability of technical transations of our spoken language, and whatever limitations they present.

Edited January 19, 2014 by Devil's Advocate

[tadmjones]

I would think that governmental and legalistic documentation should be in one language on an official basis to thwart ambiguity.

 

 

quod proprie est rei quam significat

[softwareNerd]

Ayn Rand's view as being that an official language is required for the sake of maintaining clear communications, and that multiple languages could be spoken so long as they weren't forced on a population whose majority spoke a particular language.  I welcome corrections if I've misrepresented her view.

Do you have a reference? Perhaps it was a Q&A somewhere?

Anyhow, basically the government has no business telling people what language to speak. There are two places where the government would have to decide on one -- or a few -- languages:

Government operations: It would be ineffective for a platoon commander to be giving orders in Mandarin to troops who can only understand Telugu . Organizations often have a single official language to be used for internal communication. For instance, even multi-nationals from non-English-speaking countries sometimes use English as their internal lingua franca. In some usages, an organization can go beyond a single language. It might make sense to have certain signs in a second language as well.

 

Statutes: Some countries (e.g. India) enact laws in two languages. I've always wondered how a court would resolve any minor various in meaning between the two. My preference would be to have statutes in a single language. if large segments of the population spoke some other language, there could be official translations of statutes, with the understanding that the one in the "main" language would stand and any differences in the translated versions would be assumed to be mistakes in translation, and with no other legal impact.

[Ninth Doctor]

Do you have a reference? Perhaps it was a Q&A somewhere?

I think she addressed the question in the Ford Hall Forum talk called Global Balkanization.

[Devil's Advocate]

@ tadmjones, softwareNerd, Ninth Doctor,

Σας ευχαριστούμε για τη βοήθειά μου για να πάρει την μπάλα τροχαίο
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You are correct Ninth Doctor, the source of my understanding of Ayn Rand's view came from a talk she gave at the Ford Hall about Global Balkanization.  I found it in, The Voice of Reason, Essays in Objectivist Thought, and the particular paragraph that caught my attention was:

"The proclaimed deisre to preserve one's language and/or its literary works, if any, is a cover up.  In a free, or even semi-free country, no one is forbidden to speak any language he chooses with those who wish to speak it.  But he cannot force it on others.  A country has to have only one official language if men are to understand one another - and it makes no difference which language it is, since men live by meaning, not the sound, of words.  It is eminantly fair that a country's official language should be the language of the majority.  As to literary works, their survival does not depend on political enforcement." ~ from Global Balkanization, delivered at the Ford Hall on April 10, 1977
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softwareNerd, I agree with your identification of two areas within government where a specific language would be more desirable for legal clarity and to avoid real time difficulties of communication as on a battle field.  I believe that within any particular government or business, there would be a primary language of convenience, if not necessity.  At Interpol there are 4 official languages used.  And it's likely that such organizations would also have a communications officer to deal with difficulties of alternate language uses arising from interaction with outside sources.

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tadmjones, your sample language posed a real challenge for me to decipher.  Plugging your initial response into Google Translate, I got:

quod proprie est rei quam significat - Italian detected, and translated as:
rei quam quod its east significat

I was offered an alternate selection choice, Did you mean:

quod proprie est rei quam significato, translated as:
east rei quam quod its meaning

 

Removing the words in English, I plugged in:

rei quam quod - latin detected, and translated as:
of that

Giving me, "east of that its meaning" ???  Is this an example of a communication error, or were you messing with me?

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Edit:  Bear in mind I'm relying on technology at hand, e.g. translation apps, readily available now and with future enhancements.  Being raised on Star Trek, I'm thinking along the lines of the kind of universal translator used in this series.  Don't judge me because I'm a Trekker

Edited January 19, 2014 by Devil's Advocate

[tadmjones]

Devil's Advocate

heh , well not sure exactly the phrasing I used , and I can not reconstruct it. But I used Google Translate english-->latin with what I think was "meaning, is the proper part" or some such

[Devil's Advocate]

Devil's Advocate

heh , well not sure exactly the phrasing I used , and I can not reconstruct it. But I used Google Translate english-->latin with what I think was "meaning, is the proper part" or some such

 

"quod est partis" is what I got by plugging in "meaning, is the proper part" for an english-->latin translation.  Back checking latin-->english I got, "That is part of the".  So there are evidently some technical challenges remaining to overcome.  Various dialects further complicate the process, along with multiple meanings for the same word, e.g., scale (on fish vs size of fish), windy (weather vs shape of road).

 

I recall an episode of Monty Python where the use of a foreign language guide book produced some awkward (hilarious) translations between a foreign customer and a British shop owner.  Still I wonder, given the likelihood that translation devices will eventually become more reliable, how necessary a "common language" is to a FMS.  Wouldn't the preference of language be similar to a preference for units of exchange in terms of a necessary freedom?  Even using a common language produces variances of meaning.

 

Det verkar sammanhang är den styrande faktorn.

Edited January 19, 2014 by Devil's Advocate

[tadmjones]

A single recognized legal language is at least appropriate , if not necessary. Cultural aspects of different languages , I don't really see as a problem especially given technology, instead of Chinatowns, perhaps they will just be referred to as the place with all the Chinese food.

 

On the other hand, some say for want of a common tongue we could have had a space ladder, like a real long time ago.

[Devil's Advocate]

Speaking to the consequences of using translation technology, Franz Och, a machine translation expert observed, “The end effect could be that everyone gets to know, understand and like each other better, and I get the Nobel Prize. But don't forget that in Douglas Adams' book, people who used the Babel Fish ended up understanding how much they hated each other."

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120306-lost-in-machine-translation/4

 

The above link points to the last of a 4 page article produced by the BBC.  It's worth a read if you're interested in the current state and projected future of machine translators as used by Google, Yahoo et al.  Included are several examples of application and limitations.  The article starts with an amusing example of how the Malaysian Ministry of Defence jumped the gun to their embarrassment.  Also included is an example of how the US military is currently using this technology.