army1987 comments on The Optimizer's Curse and How to Beat It - Less Wrong

42 Post author: lukeprog 16 September 2011 02:46AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (76)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: [deleted] 16 September 2011 06:28:36AM 1 point [-]

My comment arose from the suspicion that you reacted as if Burns had been paraphrased, as opposed to translated

I don't know what to tell you except that you're wrong. I know the original poem pretty well ("Gang aft agley" is a famous phrase in some circles). Burns isn't my specific field, but my impression, backed by a cursory Wikipedia search, is that the name of the original translator has been lost to the mists of history. If anyone can correct me and supply the original translator's name, I'll be truly grateful.

I don't see it as lowering the status of the quote

Yes, you wouldn't, and I can't prove it to you except by assembling a conclave of Ivy League-educated snooty New York poets who happen to not be here right now. I will tell you -- and you can update scantily, since you don't trust the source -- that the high-status thing to do is to provide quotes in the original language without translation. You are thereby signalling that not only do YOU read Scots Gaelic (fluently, of course), but you expect everyone you come into contact with socially to ALSO be fluent in Scots Gaelic.

The medium-status thing to do is at least to credit or somehow mark the translator, so that people think you are following standard academic rules for citation.

The reason that quoting translations without crediting them as such is low-status is that it leaves you open to charges of not understanding the original source material.

Comment author: [deleted] 22 April 2012 12:25:25AM 1 point [-]

[if you] provide quotes in the original language without translation [you are signalling that] you expect everyone you come into contact with socially to ALSO be fluent in [the language].

This was the case until about a decade ago, but nowadays it merely signals that you expect the audience to know how (and be willing to) use Google. (The favourite quotations section in my Facebook profile contains quotations in maths, Italian, English, Irish and German and none of them is translated in any other language.)