Neocities.org

blog post: https://sorbier.neocities.org/blog/translation

I feel like the main utility of a "literal" translation would be attempting to explain the grammatical structure of a language to someone trying to learn. The sentence that emerges is usually complete nonsense in the target language, but reveals the way that the words and particles fit together in the original.

However, a "literal" translation that is just the dictionary definition of each word one after the other (like in the example you linked) is quite unhelpful, and I think you're right to say that it exoticizes the language. It makes it seem like people who read/speak Chinese do so in some utterly alien way, when in reality they parse sentences as naturally and fluidly as someone would in English.

I've seen non-chinese-speakers talk this way before about the two meanings of 想, but even in English, think also has (at least) two very different usages: (1) to think/contemplate about something, and (2) to think/believe something is true. the second usage isn't at all a logical necessity -- chinese doesn't really use 想 that way, you'd typically use 认为 or 觉得 to express it

so one could easily take an english sentence like "I think this is beautiful" and translate it word by word into Chinese to make all sorts of weird conjectures about the English-speakers' psychology

essay: https://sorbier.neocities.org/essays/abs

really, it's a new blog post (https://sorbier.neocities.org/blog/emotions) nothing else has been changed

new essay: https://sorbier.neocities.org/essays/webcurating.html

This touched on something I have also grown tired of, the public-facing aspect of online friendship, which has become a kind of performance. Great essay.