From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uwm.edu!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!markh Mon Jan  6 10:30:33 EST 1992
Article 2497 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uwm.edu!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!markh
>From: markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Subject: Re: Machine Translation (was re: Searle's response to silicon brain?)
Message-ID: <1992Jan5.013406.27462@uwm.edu>
Sender: news@uwm.edu (USENET News System)
Organization: Computing Services Division, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
References: <2207@ucl-cs.uucp>
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1992 01:34:06 GMT
Lines: 22

In article <2207@ucl-cs.uucp> G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk (Gordon Joly) writes:
>In passing, and going back into the CR, I now have a suggestion to why
>it was not the "Russian Room".  CR means Chinese characters,
>pictograms. (The Japanese use that same set or characters.)  However,
>that is not important (Russian uses the Cyrillic script): the nub is
>**Chinese** **Language**. I have **three** translations of Tao Te Chin
>and they are all different in many places. For example, What is the
>meaning of the "ten thousand things"? I think all translatations use
>this phrase, and some make a comment as to what it might **mean**.
>
>There is no direct translation of the **idea** into English.

Ultimately this is like saying there is no translation of "de facto" into
English, where it already is a de facto translation of itself into itself.

English is just that kind of language.

Hofstadter once quoted the sentence: "Cette phrase n'a pas traduction en
Anglais" (which means: "'Cette phrase n'a pas traduction en Anglais' has no
translation in English") as an example supposedly illustrating the ultimate
incompatibility of languages.  Obviously the example didn't illustrate the
point either.


