Latin and Mandarin Chinese/Lexical selection
Contents
lat → zho
Our examples for one-to-many mappings from Latin to Chinese from last assignment were (1) the many different classifiers that can go with different nouns and (2) the sentence-ending particle 呢, often marking a rhetorical question (which, in Latin, would probably not be formally different from a genuine question). However, we later realized that these aren't exactly lexical selection problems. Instead, we decided to address the words tempestas and soror.
tempestas
The Latin word tempestas can mean "weather" or "storm". In contrast, Chinese has 天气 "weather" and 风暴 "storm". One way we can distinguish between these two senses is by looking at the adjectives that are associated with tempestas. For example, if the tempestas is turbulenta "turbulent," it's probably talking about a "storm."
tempestas ferox "fierce storm" → 风暴
tempestas atrox "terrible storm" → 风暴
tempestas "" → 风暴
tempestas "" → 风暴
tempestas "" → 风暴
tempestas "" → 风暴
tempestas "" → 风暴
Since "The ship was wrecked because of the weather" is a bit more understandable as to what is going on than "If the storm tomorrow is nice, I may go for a walk," we will have 天气 as the default translation.
Example Sentences
Tempestas pulchra est → 天气很好。
"The weather is beautiful."
Tempestas turbulenta est. → 风暴很汹涌。
"The storm is turbulent."
soror
Latin has just one word for "sister", soror. Chinese has 姐姐 "older sister" and 妹妹 "younger sister". This is pretty hard to select for in most cases, but at least we can tell if the Latin happens to pair soror with the adjective "big" or "small" (the Latin way of saying "older" and "younger") or some other clear indicator of age.
soror major "older sister" → 姐姐
soror minor "younger sister" → 妹妹
soror infans "infant sister" → 妹妹
Example Sentences
Puella parva soror minor sua est. → 小女孩是他的妹妹。
"The little girl is his younger sister."
(Latin) → 我认识她的姐姐。
"I know her older sister."
zho → lat
Our examples for one-to-many mappings from Chinese to Latin were (1) the preposition 在, which can express many different locative relationships for which Latin has distinct prepositions and (2) the fact that Latin pronouns have many different forms depending on case etc., while Chinese only has one form for each pronoun. The former would be a good option if it were not for the fact that Latin often uses the locative case rather than prepositions anyway, and the latter is actually more of a grammatical issue than a lexical selection problem, so we decided to work on 开 and 头.
开
开 kai is a verb with a lot of meanings. It can mean, among other things, "to open", "to drive", "to bloom", "to hold/run/convene (e.g. a meeting)", and "to start/establish (e.g. an organization)" (see Wang 1995). Unsurprisingly, Latin has separate words for many of these concepts. For this assignment, we will focus on selecting between 开 in the sense of "to open" and 开 in the sense of "to hold/run", since 开 in the sense of "to drive" seems mostly to be used with motorized vehicles, which Latin oddly doesn't have a lot of words for. The Latin word for "to open" is aperiō (whence Apertium "open-source software for machine translation"). One Latin word for "to hold/run/convene" is convenio. We can select between these words by looking at the object of the verb:
开门 "to open a door" → aperiō
开盒子 "to open a box" → aperiō
开窗口 "to open a window" → aperiō
开抽屉 "to open a drawer" → aperiō
开会 "to hold a meeting" → convenio
开课 "to hold a class" → convenio
Example Sentences
老师让学生开门。→ (Latin)
"The teacher asked the student to open the door."
我们每天开会。→ (Latin)
"We hold a meeting every day."
头
头 tou "head" can also refer to hair in some situations (see Lv 2014), which is not the case in Latin. In Latin, "head" is caput and "hair" is capillum. One way to select between these two senses is to look at the verbs and adjectives that go with tou. Some verbs and adjectives would probably only be seen with tou in the sense of "hair."
梳头 "to comb hair" → capillum
剃头 "to shave hair" → capillum
洗头 "to wash hair" → capillum
平头 → "flat hair/crewcut" → capillum
潮头 → "fashionable hair" → capillum
You might think "long hair," "curly hair," etc. might be good choices, but I think Chinese uses a different word for hair in these phrases. Since the primary meaning of 头 is "head," we will have caput as the default translation.
Example Sentences
他的妈妈不愿意给他梳头。→ (Latin)
"His mother isn't willing to comb his hair."
点头就表示 “是”。→ (Latin)
"Nodding your head means 'yes.' "