Lets assume a scientist in the US (since I understand the english language) discovers a new gene and calls it the ‘pranzastar’ gene or something. How will this be translated into new languages? From now until eternity will people in China just say ‘pranzastar’ or will they find a chinese translation for the word? Do people just take the phonemes and translate them into their respective phonemes in their own language or do they just use the new word and keep it in its original language?
If this keeps up won’t the future be a weird mixture of Indian, English and Chinese words as these are currently and will be the main languages of countries that discover new things?
Well, if you are France, you make up your own word that means the same thing. The rest of the world usually just adopt the new word into their language. It’s not like it will be used much outside of technical applications, after all.
One of the more interesting things I’ve seen is the intro to a chapter in Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach which contained French and German translations of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”. The chapter following did touch on the difficulty of translating that work. Any decent-sized library should have a copy, so perhaps you might read that.
If the name has a logic behind it (i.e. is composed of Greek or Latin pieces) they probably use something comparable. If “pranzastar” comes from the latin “Pranzae” meaning “to prance” and the Greek “starus” meaning “star”, then they’ll probably combine the words for “prance” and “star” in their own language. Of course, in many cases, it’s just a word that happens to sound cool, and all this doesn’t apply.
There is a lot of word-stealing among languages. The French, however, are officially fighting it. A few years ago, the French ministry of Getting Huffy raised a big stink about the Anglification of the grand French language. Saying “le weekend” was strongly discouraged, and places called “le drugstore” were pressured to get a new name. As a Yank, I know our own government has done much odder things, so I can’t really condemn their desire to keep French French. I can laugh at it, but I won’t condemn it.
In Norwegian, we’ll typcially use the borrowed word unmodified at first. Over time, it will change, either from the bottom (people will begin to spell and/or pronounce the word differently), or Norsk Språkråd (the Norwegian Language Council) will recommend a new spelling, pronounciation and/or new version of the word, which may or may not take root.
Some examples:[ul]
[li]butikk = shop. Was borrowed from French boutique (sp?) a long time ago, both spelling and pronounciation has been completely Norwegianised[/li][li]web = web, as in the World Wide Web. Still spelled and pronounced like in English. The Language Council suggests “verdensveven” (the world weave), but it’s too bulky to ever become popular, IMO. “vev” might replace it in time. Or not.[/li][li]kul = cool in the “sunglasses and attitude” sense of the word. Spelled in Norwegian, pronounced similarily to English[/li][li]datamaskin = computer. A new word, assembled from (more or less) Norwegian preexisting words.[/li]nerd = nerd. Spelled like in English, pronounced according to Norwegian precedence. (The Language Council, and the Norwegian translator of Gary Larson comics, first tried to spell it “nørd”, which would fit the English pronounciation, but it didn’t take hold)[/ul]
