I don’t really know how to ask the question without sounding like a doof. I am wondering how they teach Diff Eq or Comm Systems in foreign languages that don’t resemble english in any way.
Like Chinese for instance. Do they have a different word that means “Integration” or “Diode”? Or do they just use english when speaking about those things? Do they have a word that means “convolution” or do they use the english word to speak or write about it?
I am not only talking about Chinese here, it is just the easiest to ask about since it is about as far removed from english as you can get.
Are there concepts that just cannot be taught in Arabic or Chinese due to very specialized vocabularies?
Im pretty sure that most mathematic symbols etc are using standard roman conventions but most of the common words would be derived from chinese the same way the english words are derived.
Of course, most scholars at a higher academic level NEED to have a workable english level at least for their area of specialty.
When you start learning foreign languages, especially those that are far from your own, you soon realize that a lot, if not most concepts can’t be accurately translated. Semantic areas overlap for sure, but they rarely fit spot on.
As it turns out, the area of language that tends to have the greatest amount of easily translatable concepts is technical or scientific language. Whereas we might argue endlessly about what intelligent means, and whether atama ga ii, kashikoi, zuruior rikou is the best translation in Japanese, there’s not much argument about what words like integration mean - at least not of the same kind.
The question, though, is how do various languages deal with the flow of neologisms? I guess it depends on the language. For instance, Japanese likes to borrow from other languages. Roughly 45% of the vocabulary is of Chinese origins, while words that came from English and to a lesser extent other European languages account for 10 to 15%. The more technical the language becomes, the more Chinese words become proeminent.
Though in Japanese most new technical terms are still formed by combining Chinese characters (kanji), often usage will force the English word instead.
I’ve got a book on acoustics and a book on vectors and matrices on my desk right now… Matrix is translated as gyouretsu, but vector stays the same. (Pronounced bekutoru, though…) My acoustics manual has something a lot more interesting though. The concepts of node and anti-node are introduced as setsu and hara respectively, with the English words given in parentheses, in roman characters. The text then completely drops the Japanese words and sticks to the roman character English words.
Since you asked, “integral” is sekibun, which makes “integration” sekibunhou; diode is the same as in English, but written phonetically; “convolution” is very often used as is with roman characters, though there is a proper Japanese term, tatamikomihou.
Most technical terms in Japanese are literal translations or transliterations of the English (or German, etc) word. “Integration” in Japanese is “sekibun,” which means to accumulate or to integrate. “Diode” is “dai o-do,” which is as close as you can get to the English pronunciation using Japanese sounds. Compound words and terms can usually be translated literally. For example the Japanese term for “magnetohydrodynamics” is “jiki ryuutai rikigaku”, made up of Japanese terms for “magnetic,” “fluid” and “mechanics.”
Once you get into research level sciences, new terms don’t always have widely accepted translations. In those cases we just use the English term. It’s not much trouble using English nouns in the middle of Japanese sentences.
So when a word is coined in English, like “Hemoglobin”, do they try to make up thier own word for that or do they just stick with the english one? And if they stick with the english word do they write it in english or do they make up a Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, etc…, symbol for it? How would they create a Chinese script for “Hemoglobin” or some word that is very specialized.
(Replace Hemoglobin with any other special word. It may be more common than I think it is but you get the point)
Most of the earlier posters have discussed the Japanese. I work around MANY chinese graduate students and have watched them tackle some thorny solid state physics courses. The answer is that the mathematics has transferred over very well. Chinese numbers do not translate extremely well for large calculations, algebra, and calculus. They use western notation. Their books are usually copies of western books (from the PRC this generally means illegal copies).
The terms are usually home grown terms, rather than transliterations, which don’t really work too well in chinese. Interestingly, the use of characters means that frequently, you will be able to tell something about the word, for instance, I can recognize most of the noble gases from the characters.
To answer stinkpalm’s question (and add to sc4’s answer), Japanese medical loan word terms are German or occassionally Dutch. Most science majors and all medical majors (Japanese med schools are quite different from US, wrom what little I know) learn German at university (in addition to English). Also, most MDs I’ve visited take their notes in German.
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