Personal go terminology

[DrStraw]

I'm not sure if this is a side attack on RJ, but in any case this is incredibly false, unless "for the most part" is just an English-centric view of the world. I can only vouch for computer science and mathematics terms (since it is where I have most knowledge), but Catalan translates ALL technical terms into Catalan, each year a commission decides what goes in, and how. It adds to the language corpus in a normalised manner. I'm not 100% sure about frequency in Castilian Spanish, but likewise, all technical terms in use eventually get a proper Spanish word to go with it. Icelandic to preserve its language integrity turns all foreign words into Icelandic-similar words. Since these three (aside from English and German) are the languages I'm most familiar with, I can't go on with more examples, but I'd bet French doesn't just take the English word, it wouldn't suit their style. But I guess having Spanish defeats the "for the most part" affirmation.

I certainly was not attacking RJ. I wasn't even thinking of German being his nationality. And I don't think Catalan and Icelandic are mainstream technology languages. I guess I should have been a little clearer but I was thinking of the mainstream languages like English, French, Russian and German for starters, and a few others as well. I know of few others than German which, for example, do not use a variant of the original Greek or Latin word. Russian does to some extent, but it still uses a lot of classical roots.

[leichtloeslich]

In the world of science,

That's a pretty big world! Anything specific you were thinking of?

for the most part only the Germans translate technical terms into their own language.

So there are technical terms in some language (not German) and these are the "true" terms, which (for the most part) only Germans bother to translate?

Maybe you could give a few concrete examples?

I know of few others than German which, for example, do not use a variant of the original Greek or Latin word.

Could you give actual examples?

[jts]

He's talking about things like oxygen versus Sauerstoff, television versus Fernseher, economics versus Wirtschaftwissenschaft... in a large number of cases other European languages opted to simply adopted an international standard with classical roots to their own phonetics, while the Germans often translate the root directly.

[Boidhre]

He's talking about things like oxygen versus Sauerstoff, television versus Fernseher, economics versus Wirtschaftwissenschaft... in a large number of cases other European languages opted to simply adopted an international standard with classical roots to their own phonetics, while the Germans often translate the root directly.

It's not quite that simple, it's not classical roots with their own phonetics but classical roots transformed into a borrowed word in the normal way for the two languages involved, radiation in English is radaíocht in Irish, which if you know both languages look like they come from the same Latin root but are far from just adopted to their own phonetics. Radiation amusingly isn't even English, it's French just with English phonetics, eh, ok so sometimes yeah it does happen...

[RobertJasiek]

Languages can have had their own terms before imports become an option. E.g., German had had "Vorhand" and "Nachhand" before any Germans heard of "sente" and "gote". Nowadays, both are used about equally frequently. (Science: until WW II, there was a greater fraction of German science, so German kept a good percentage of its own terms. German terms are sometimes adopted in English: Eigenwert -> eigenvalue.)

[daal]

In some cases, the Germans have two parallel words, such as Computer/Rechner, Electrizität/Strom for example. What seems relevant to a go terms discussion is that the germanized words have the advantage that their meaning is easily intuited by a native speaker.

[oren]

Japanese terminology has also adopted English words. That's why we have Mini Chugoku (Chinese) and Small Chinese fuseki.

Modern books also use a lot of borrowed English words for nonterms like "space" to make as large an area as possible.

[Cassandra]

Languages can have had their own terms before imports become an option. E.g., German had had "Vorhand" and "Nachhand" before any Germans heard of "sente" and "gote". Nowadays, both are used about equally frequently.

"Vorhand" / "Sente", as well as "Nachhand" / "Gote" do have the same meaning, so using any of these is just a matter of style, or preference. However, this very special (board-) game vacabulary seems to have German roots.

I have found no Go book in English yet that would have used the term "forehand" (which seems to be limited to tennis).

So it was only natural that "Sente" and "Gote" were imported into the English language-area.
In the German language-area, however, there already existed technical terms, which entirely covered the meaning of the Japanese terms.

[Kanin]

Megalife (alt. Mega Life, Mega-Life) - Life that cannot be undone even with the opponent playing two moves in a row (i.e. you ignored one move).

This is a great tool for finding killing moves in life and death problems.

Conjecture: "If you can find a move that secures megalife for the opponent this must be played as a first move to kill."

I challenge you to come up with an example to disprove this!

[RBerenguel]

Megalife (alt. Mega Life, Mega-Life) - Life that cannot be undone even with the opponent playing two moves in a row (i.e. you ignored one move).

This is a great tool for finding killing moves in life and death problems.

Conjecture: "If you can find a move that secures megalife for the opponent this must be played as a first move to kill."

I challenge you to come up with an example to disprove this!

I was explained this method by a Finnish 2d last July, and even though it is very useful, for some corner situations it's essentially not *that* useful, because sometimes there's no way to figure out continuations in the same way (sometimes you can think of moving twice again for the opponent, but sometimes can't)

[SmoothOper]

I wonder why there aren't more Russian phonetics for satellites and space craft, in English. They were obviously the first to coin those terms.

[Boidhre]

I wonder why there aren't more Russian phonetics for satellites and space craft, in English. They were obviously the first to coin those terms.

As a word, satellite is rather old and not Russian.

[Bill Spight]

"Vorhand" / "Sente", as well as "Nachhand" / "Gote" do have the same meaning, so using any of these is just a matter of style, or preference. However, this very special (board-) game vacabulary seems to have German roots.

I have found no Go book in English yet that would have used the term "forehand" (which seems to be limited to tennis).

So it was only natural that "Sente" and "Gote" were imported into the English language-area.

The translators of Korschelt rendered Vorhand as Upperhand (capitalized. too).

Ah! I have an idea. Foreplay!

[SmoothOper]

I wonder why there aren't more Russian phonetics for satellites and space craft, in English. They were obviously the first to coin those terms.

As a word, satellite is rather old and not Russian.

How do you know the Russian word for satellite wasn't older, or the German word for automobile etc. I'm just not buying the hypothesis that English don't retranslate the scientific terminology, take Newton for example, he was just doing the best he could to use Leibniz's notation.

[Bill Spight]

I wonder why there aren't more Russian phonetics for satellites and space craft, in English. They were obviously the first to coin those terms.

As a word, satellite is rather old and not Russian.

Sputnik.

But of course we had to find a different term.