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hwold comments on Open Thread, Jun. 8 - Jun. 14, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I’m trying to translate some material from LessWrong for a friend (interested with various subjects aborded here, but can’t read english…), and I’m struggling to find the best translation for “evidence”. I have many candidates, but every one of them is a little bit off relative to the connotation of "evidence". Since it’s a so central term in all the writings here, I figured out that it could not be bad to spend a little time finding a really good translation, rather than a just-okayish one.
English readers : - Could you find a few different sentences that would cover all (slighty differenrt) usages of evidence ? The objective is, if my translation fit well in all those propositions, there is good chances that it will fit well in everything i may want to translate. For example, from wiki : “Evidence for a given theory is the observation of an event that is more likely to occur if the theory is true than if it is false” “Generalization from fictional evidence” “Conservation of expected evidence”. I except that finding a translation that will cover equally well those three usages will basically cover any usage, but can you think of a 4th usage that may prove problematic even for a term that fit well for the 3 others ? - What would be the less bad synonym of “evidence” : clue, proof, observation, sign (that’s basically my best candidates, translated back in english). I dislike all of them, but that’s the best candidates I found, translated back in english. (substitute evidence in all the test sentences abole, and you will understand my problem. “Clue for a given theory…” is somewhat good, but “conservation of expected clue” less so…)
French readers, if any :
J’ai comme candidats : « preuve », « indice », « signe », « observation ». D’autres propositions ? Laquelle vous semble la meilleure ?
Thanks for your cooperation.
(and don’t get me started on “entangled with”, I think I will lose much hair trying to find an acceptable translation for that one. French sucks.)
What did Laplace call it? He invented a lot of this stuff, and presumably wrote in French.
Great suggestion, I’ll look into that.
Aren't there existing French Bayesian textbooks? What words do they use?
In the Bayesian framework "evidence" basically means "relevant information" -- data which will (or could) affect the probabilities you're considering.
Can't help you with French, but I would rather go more generic ("information"), than more specific with wrong connotations ("clue", "proof", "sign"). Actually, "proof" is explicitly wrong.
Ah, but "preuve" and "proof" do not retain the same meaning, even though they are as words direct translations.
In Italian there's the same problem: "evidenza" doesn't quite cover it, and "prova" has a better connotation, in my opinion.
OK, but even if preuve/prova do not carry the same meaning of "solved, we known this" as "proof" in English, wouldn't they still have the strong connotation of an argument in favour of a theory?
The interesting thing about the Bayesian evidence is that it can support your hypothesis, but it can also make it less likely.
Bonjour! Translation can be frustrating, but it's almost never because one of the languages sucks. From my experience, there is probably an equal number of concepts that are hard to translate the other way around.
Here are my attempts:
“Evidence for a given theory is the observation of an event that is more likely to occur if the theory is true than if it is false”
Une donnée en faveur d’une théorie consiste en l’observation d’un évènement plus probable si la théorie est vraie que si la théorie est fausse.
or
Une indication en faveur d’une théorie consiste en l’observation d’un évènement plus probable si la théorie est vraie que si la théorie est fausse.
or
Un élément de preuve en faveur d’une théorie consiste en l’observation d’un évènement plus probable si la théorie est vraie que si la théorie est fausse.
“Generalization from fictional evidence”
Généralisation depuis des données fictionelles.
Of the words you mentioned, phrases involving "preuve" probably get closest, such as "ensemble de preuves" for "body of evidence". But I would also look into using the word "faits" (facts) in some situations, and "constat de faits".
Here are some links to definitions at the Word Reference translation dictionary site:
http://www.wordreference.com/enfr/facts http://www.wordreference.com/fren/constat%20de%20faits http://www.wordreference.com/enfr/evidence
Of those four, I like "clue" the most. As Lumifer says, the word "proof" in English arguably connotes evidence supporting something; "sign" might have a similar problem; and "observation" feels a bit too vague to me, since an observation may be irrelevant to a hypothesis and hence not evidence at all.
The singular "clue" doesn't read well to me in the phrase "conservation of expected clue", but I think pluralizing it may help ("conservation of expected clues"). It might be feasible to invent a new word meaning something like "clueness", which might align better with the technical meaning of "evidence".
That said, if I examine how "preuve" is actually translated from French to English in official documents, the French "preuve" does sometimes seem to mean "evidence" in pretty much the English sense. So maybe "preuve" doesn't have the potential connotation (of evidence in support of a hypothesis) that Lumifer worries about.
Perhaps "intriqué avec"?
(It occurred to me that French quantum physicists must have had to deal with the phrase "entangled with" for a long time, so one could simply borrow whatever French translation those physicists use.
I went to English Wikipedia's "Quantum entanglement" entry to look at the sidebar's list of alternative languages. It links to the French entry "Intrication quantique", though that title isn't the answer, because "intrication" is a noun, not an adjectival phrase. However, the entry's second sentence mentions (in bold, helpfully) "état intriqué", which certainly looks like "entangled state", and when I Google the phrase "entangled with" along with "intrication" & "quantique", I see snippets of French like "intriqués avec" and "états quantiques intriqués". Googling "intriqué avec" confirms that the phrase is used in French discussions of quantum mechanics in contexts where it seems to mean "entangled with".)
Yes, "intrication" is the standard translation of "entanglement" in QM. But nobody else uses it, and therefore I fear there is an obvious failure mode where someone Googles it and start shouting "WTF is that?"
Anything wrong with l'évidence?
Yes, that means « obvious »/« self-evident »
Maybe you're thinking of évident the adjective, not évidence the noun.
"évidence" the noun is just a shorthand for "obvious thing" (most typical usage is « C’est l’évidence même » = “It’s obvious”. « Ce n’est pas la peine d’asséner de telles évidences » = “Such obvious things are not worth stating”).
So, it doesn't look like "obvious" & "self-evident" work as idiomatic English translations of "évidence", but I think hwold's correct to indicate that "évidence" doesn't mean "evidence".
It feels a bit odd to offer that judgement because I'm not French and I suspect hwold is (or is at least a native Francophone), so they probably know this stuff better than I. But I can use dictionaries as well as anyone can: Wiktionary says "évidence" is a noun meaning "obviousness" or "clearness", and Linguee translates it as "obviousness" or "blatancy". Coming at it from the other angle, my old French dictionary suggests "preuve(s)", "témoignage" & "signes" as possible translations of "evidence", depending on the context, but not "évidence". (The same dictionary doesn't even offer a translation of "évidence", consistent with it having a more obscure meaning than simply "evidence".)