[HN Gopher] Untranslatable
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Untranslatable
Author : hk__2
Score : 172 points
Date : 2024-01-26 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (untranslatable.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (untranslatable.co)
| space_ghost wrote:
| I like the idea, but the "see what people have added" button on
| the landing page links to the new-entry page instead of the
| explore page.
| yorwba wrote:
| The explore page is here:
| https://untranslatable.co/pages/explore
| phito wrote:
| Oh I assumed I had miss clicked
| muhammadusman wrote:
| happened to me as well, might just be linked incorrectly.
| not-my-account wrote:
| 'tis <div class="col-xl-auto py-2
| justify-content-end"> <a class="bttn btn-
| main-light align-self-end"
| href="https://untranslatable.co/submissions/new">see what
| people have added</a> </div> <div
| class="col-xl-auto py-2 justify-content-start">
| <a class="bttn btn-main-dark align-self-start"
| href="https://untranslatable.co/submissions/new">add
| something</a> </div>
| denysvitali wrote:
| This is probably a translation mistake :-)
| davidw wrote:
| The Italian ones are real, but a bit less 'urban dictionary' than
| phrases that have been around for a while. Probably just needs
| more contributors though.
| bvanderveen wrote:
| A mechanism for filtering by language or searching by keyword
| would be nice.
| alexwhb wrote:
| Love the idea of this. Hope it takes off
| rob74 wrote:
| Cool idea, but definitely needs some more content - the "explore"
| page shows 103 pages with 20 entries each = ~2060 entries, which
| is a good start, but not really comprehensive I would say. Seems
| to have had a flurry of activity in 2020, then nothing, then a
| single new expression added this month?
| input_sh wrote:
| Furthermore they don't seem to do any sort of checks to make
| sure the same entry isn't added multiple times. Didn't take me
| long to spot three entries for the same phrase:
| https://untranslatable.co/pages/explore/?q%5Btitle_or_langua...
| blondin wrote:
| saw the expression "que sopa?" and thought about all the verlan
| french rappers brought into the french language. most of them
| will never make it into the french dictionary.
| stcredzero wrote:
| During my last trip to Fujian China, I became fascinated by the
| Mandarin word that sounds like, "schma." My wife was born there,
| and she had told me it meant, "what." But this time, I was really
| listening to how the word was being used, and it occurred to me,
| it was being used somewhat like "donc" in French. (Which my
| French teacher in high school told me was untranslatable.)
|
| When I realized, that, my reaction was, "What!?"
|
| After our trip, I became obsessed with the word for receipt:
| "fapiao." I thought my inability to tell the difference in the
| tones was hilarious, but now she refuses to say the word in front
| of me at all! This is also hard for me to understand. As far as
| I'm concerned, she's pretty much just saying, "ma" to me 4 times
| in a row! There's a difference, but it's very difficult! Why is
| my befuddlement and amusement at that so annoying? There's this
| Taiwanese comedienne who was talking about being annoyed at her
| western boyfriend not being able to tell, so apparently that's a
| thing.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| This is curious to me. As a Westerner and speaker of a non-
| tonal language that started learning Chinese already being an
| adult, I never had any difficulty telling the difference
| between the tones. I did have difficulty with other sounds of
| the language (e.g. telling "x" from "sh" or "q" from "ch") -
| hell, I even have difficulty with English sounds, for example,
| to this day I need to pay an inordinate amount of attention to
| tell "eyes" from "ice" and there's no way I'll successfully
| pronounce them differently in regular real-time conversation.
| But the Mandarin tones? I find the difference obvious.
|
| I wonder if being a music aficionado, having played an
| instrument, etc. helps with the tones.
| stcredzero wrote:
| _for example, to this day I need to pay an inordinate amount
| of attention to tell "eyes" from "ice"_
|
| I just find that obvious. Wherever I've been in the US,
| "eyes" is drawn out, but "ice" is short. (Think of imitating
| a southern accent for "eyes.") The only people I've ever
| heard saying "eyes" so it sounds like "ice" are native German
| speakers and other Europeans. (My wife learned German for her
| Chinese/German comparative lit degree, so the way she says
| certain things in English sounds menacing to me like how a
| WWII German movie character says, "We have ways of making you
| talk!" In particular, when she says, "Your
| handwriting...looks like WORMS!")
|
| _I wonder if being a music aficionado, having played an
| instrument, etc. helps with the tones._
|
| I've been playing traditional music for almost 40 years, and
| I even qualified to compete at what's basically the world
| competition once. I think it matters most what one got used
| to as a child.
| yorwba wrote:
| > The only people I've ever heard saying "eyes" so it
| sounds like "ice" are native German speakers and other
| Europeans
|
| In German, many syllable-final consonants (in particular,
| "s") are always voiceless, but the English plural "-s" is
| voicet (which strangely enough none of my English teachers
| ever botheret to mention) so if you apply German
| phonological rules to "eyes" you get something that sounts
| identical to "ice". But Germans hafe no problem pronouncing
| "eyes" if the "s" is not syllable-final, e.g. in "Eisen"
| ("eyesn", iron).
|
| To learn to speak a languache like a natife, you neet to
| break habits of thought you didn't even know you hat.
| retrac wrote:
| No, you're not alone. Approaching Mandarin I expected tones
| to be some sort of big hurdle. They're not. They're largely
| obvious. It's a part of the vowel, basically. Linguistically
| speaking, there's very little distinction between a vowel and
| a tone - it's part of how you make the vowel. And tone and
| vowel quality interact in a complex way, which means you're
| hearing changes in the vowel, along with the pitches
| involved. As you mentioned, at the start I was more likely to
| mix up x and sh than I am to mishear a tone.
|
| Other languages use tone, of course, they just don't use it
| lexically to distinguish words. I also have played an
| instrument, etc. but I don't know if that's a factor or not.
|
| Now, pronouncing the tones is a whole other question. My own
| Mandarin has like 2.5 tones instead of 4, and I struggle to
| apply tone contours to long phrases without messing up
| everything involved. Both English and Mandarin have tone
| contours (and a lot of them are even the same, for example,
| slowly rising with a sharp rise over the last few syllables =
| question) but the tone contours of Mandarin interact with the
| lexical tones of a word. Something we don't have to worry
| about in English. I doubt I'll ever get enough practice to
| make that automatic.
| stcredzero wrote:
| _Approaching Mandarin I expected tones to be some sort of
| big hurdle. They 're not. They're largely obvious. It's a
| part of the vowel, basically. Linguistically speaking,
| there's very little distinction between a vowel and a tone
| - it's part of how you make the vowel._
|
| Both a Korean teacher of mine and an old housemate (who was
| a native Russian speaker and had a degree in French)
| pointed out to me that Americans are "lazy" (that is the
| technical term, I gathered) about how they use vowels. We
| get dipthongs confused with pure vowels. Unless it's
| pointed out to us, we don't think of how we say "oh" as
| containing an element of "w" at the end.
|
| _And tone and vowel quality interact in a complex way,
| which means you 're hearing changes in the vowel, along
| with the pitches involved._
|
| Ah ha! I think you just helped me! I hadn't been thinking
| of these two together!
|
| _the tone contours of Mandarin interact with the lexical
| tones of a word. Something we don 't have to worry about in
| English._
|
| Tone of voice is diabolically subtle, the way British and
| American speakers use it. About half the time, we're using
| it to indicate the opposite or almost opposite meanings of
| words. My wife from Fujian doesn't think of speech in quite
| the same way. We got into an argument, because she kept
| shouting, "BE CAREFUL!" every time someone cut me off in
| downtown SF traffic. It took me awhile to understand that
| she was just frightened and was telling me to be careful.
| ("HOW COULD YOU TWIST SUCH A TENDER EXPRESSION OF CARE!?"
| -- Which she said in that tone of voice.)
|
| Tones don't occupy the same part of my brain as parts of
| vowels. It's more like a musical soundtrack accompanying
| the dialog.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| "donc" is "therefore" (though shorter and less pompous).
| stcredzero wrote:
| Except, a French speaker could well just reply, "Donc"
| without anything else in contexts where an English speaker
| would never say, "Therefore."
|
| In those contexts, "Donc" is more like, "Word!" or "Right
| on." I would translate those to mean, "Agreed."
|
| Or is that just French that French teachers and textbooks
| talk about to students in America?
| atnnn wrote:
| I would say "donc" is used where some might say "so" in
| English (aka shorter and less pompous "therefore").
|
| I think the meaning of "Agreed" or "Right on" is rare and
| more implicit. Like saying "therefore" might mean "I accept
| the premise".
|
| As a question, "donc?", like "so?", can mean "and then?",
| "then what?", "meaning what?", "what next?" or "so what?"
|
| As an interjection or at the beginning of a sentence,
| "donc", like "so", can mean "now then", "that said",
| "moving on" or "without further ado".
| stcredzero wrote:
| _Like saying "therefore" might mean "I accept the
| premise"._
|
| I basically never hear that as a standalone reply in
| English!
|
| _As an interjection or at the beginning of a sentence,
| "donc", like "so", can mean "now then", "that said",
| "moving on" or "without further ado"._
|
| I'm not sure, but I think sometimes when my wife is
| saying, "schma" it's somewhat like "donc" you describe
| above. But sometimes, I think she expressing agreement
| with a person that a third party was a bit mistaken or
| off the mark, so it's expressing a kind of disagreement.
| Not sure.
| nojs wrote:
| > During my last trip to Fujian China, I became fascinated by
| the Mandarin word that sounds like, "schma." My wife was born
| there, and she had told me it meant, "what."
|
| That would be Shi Mo shen me, pronounced exactly as you
| described
| dgunay wrote:
| Do you have trouble understanding intonated sentences in
| English too? You can change the meaning of this question pretty
| significantly by placing a rising intonation on each word:
|
| You stole his pen?
|
| _You_ stole his pen? -> It was you who stole his pen?
|
| You _stole_ his pen? -> You in fact stole his pen, it was not
| given willingly?
|
| You stole _his_ pen? -> You stole his pen, and not someone
| else's?
|
| You stole his _pen_? -> You stole his pen, and not something
| else of his?
| stcredzero wrote:
| _Do you have trouble understanding intonated sentences in
| English too? You can change the meaning of this question
| pretty significantly by placing a rising intonation on each
| word_
|
| Read my other comments. You'll find I'm already talking about
| this!
|
| Ok, so it's totally not a rising intonation to me! Wherever
| you have the _x_, it's _emphasis_. "Rising" is about the
| most confusing way to describe it, from my point of view as a
| layperson.
|
| Also, as I point out elsewhere, the way you are talking about
| "intonated" sentences is more akin to an accompanying
| soundtrack, where there's a "stinger" played at the moment
| something significant is said. It's not a part of the
| _vowel!_
|
| EDIT: Okay, I've been working this out saying it to my self.
| There's _nothing_ "rising" in "you" when I say "_You_ stole
| the pen?" The volume doesn't rise through the word. The pitch
| doesn't rise through the word. The only thing that rises in
| the whole sentence is the pitch approaching the last part of
| the sentence to indicate a question.
|
| If "rising" is the actual terminology, then that's the most
| misleading terminology I can think of!
| aamargulies wrote:
| My Japanese teacher said that, for her, the English words "ear"
| and "year" are indistinguishable.
|
| I see how that could be, the words are very close, the 'y'
| sound is very brief, but it helped me understand how something
| that is so clear for a native speaker could be very difficult
| for a foreigner to hear.
| karaterobot wrote:
| This is pretty neat. I expected it to immediately have descended
| into the same hell as Urban Dictionary, but it actually seems
| useful. I appreciate that it tells me who uses a term and where,
| and I especially like being able to click on those labels to
| explore more terms in the same category--I wish there were a way
| to see all those categories and choose between them (if there is,
| it isn't obvious to me).
| cobertos wrote:
| Very interesting they were funded partially from Kickstarter! 292
| backers at 10kEUR. I assumed you needed quite the following for
| Kickstarter to work...
|
| And it looks like they do. 49k followers on Facebook and 16k on
| Instagram. Not sure how far back these go, but looks like very
| "shareable" content, where they would take I translatable words
| and make little funny pictures or memes or other intriguing
| things and post them. Lots of interaction comments/reaction-wise
|
| Timeline-wise this was backed on Kickstarter in 2020. Site
| launched in summer 2020. The creator was very active on
| Kickstarter working on communicating and updating the community
| with what was going on (until the end there).
|
| Also seems to have a Patreon, and worked itself into other places
| like https://github.com/theimpossibleastronaut/awesome-
| linguistic...
| tasuki wrote:
| There's only 2000 entries so this isn't very useful right now.
| With the kickstarter at 10kEUR that's 5EUR per entry - quite
| expensive.
|
| Otoh the creator learned to program specifically to create this
| website, so I guess well done her!
| wrboyce wrote:
| Yeah, well done for crowdfunding some education for herself
| hah. Fools and their money.
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| How can we choose the language? The UI is not friendly...
| ugjka wrote:
| The UI is totally broken
| RedNifre wrote:
| You click on one of the languages on a random post, then change
| the language in the URL to the one you like.
| fivre wrote:
| i particularly like that hacking the URL query parameters is
| apparently the only option for navigating the country and
| language categories, but those query parameters are at the
| end of the URL, usually past the edge of the URL bar field
|
| they're past the end because the first parameter is a giant
| "authenticity token" base64 blob. you'd think this is maybe
| important, but removing it doesn't appear to affect the
| request at all
| Biganon wrote:
| When I go to https://untranslatable.co/pages/stats#countries
| (which is weirdly hidden at the bottom of the page), I cannot
| open the "Languages", "Countries" or "Latest entries" sections.
|
| Therefore, I have no idea how to see slang from one specific
| country.
| Hamuko wrote:
| The "see what people have added" button on the front page is
| also broken. Doesn't seem like a particularly well made site.
| emaro wrote:
| Three are some quite obviuous errors, but the creator writes
| she has "learned to program from scratch in order to create
| this website". I think it's a good start.
| tim-- wrote:
| Seems like that just needs to link to the same "Explore" link
| on the homepage, very simple fix.
| LaurenSerino wrote:
| Bad UX, great idea. Cursing in other languages is my prime
| influence for learning them.
| KolmogorovComp wrote:
| What is difference/upside compared to urbandictionary that has
| fit its role quite well up to now?
|
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/
| emmanueloga_ wrote:
| I think the main difference is that it's multilingual
| Freak_NL wrote:
| For any digital crowdsourced dictionary to be useful and viable,
| step one is to have an open license to prevent contributors from
| being turned off by the thought of contributing their efforts to
| what might eventually just end up as commercial as Urban
| Dictionary. This project makes no mentioning of licensing at all
| though. That shouldn't be an afterthought.
| Aachen wrote:
| I was already looking for a bug tracker to fix the swallowed
| newlines and blank lines after submitting... I'm so used to
| open source now, it somehow surprises me not to be able to find
| at least a public bug tracker even if I can't directly submit a
| simple fix.
|
| One can share "feedback" via Google Docs, though :') yeah, no
| thanks
|
| Now that you point out the data license, yeah, this project
| will definitely be dead within two years. No sustainable
| license and not interesting enough to revisit daily like
| Mastodon, so it will neither build a community nor a
| sustainable dataset. It's simple enough that part time support
| will let it survive in the background for a while, but colour
| me surprised if the author hasn't fully moved on come 2026
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| >For any digital crowdsourced dictionary to be useful and
| viable
|
| I'm pro open licenses, but you're overstating things. The sheer
| usefulness and viability of Urban Dictionary attests to the
| fact that most people don't actually care about licenses.
| lucideer wrote:
| > _The sheer usefulness and viability of Urban Dictionary
| attests to the fact that most people don 't actually care
| about licenses._
|
| Urban Dictionary is indeed extremely useful, but I think
| making this out to be evidence that people don't care is
| oversimplifying things. As useful as it is, it's still pretty
| clear that the licensing (along with a few other lacks, open
| moderation, etc.) severely holds it back from being as
| comprehensive & accurate a source as it could be. It achieves
| usefulness through sheer volume: the vast majority of entries
| on it are nonsense, there's just so many that there are
| diamonds to be found in the rough.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| I only claimed that _most_ people don 't care (which is
| indeed borne out by UD's success) as direct evidence
| contradicting the claim I quoted.
|
| I certainly agree that UD could be even better, including
| through better licensing.
| vendiddy wrote:
| I agree with you. The thought of licensing won't cross
| the mind of the vast majority of people.
|
| But yeah better licensing would still be nice.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| That would make it harder to make money with this project if it
| becomes successful in the future.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Hacker News doesn't have an open license either, which doesn't
| seem to turn you off from contributing.
| SamBam wrote:
| So this is international, but is the aim for it to be used by an
| international audience? e.g. if a Brazilian were lamenting the
| fact that UrbanDictionary is in English, is this site for them?
|
| Because right now when I explore the entries, all the definitions
| are in English. Is this the intent? So it's for English people to
| find out what international slang words are?
|
| I feel like it would be good to be really clear about your
| audience.
|
| Maybe one option would be to allow the writing of definitions in
| multiple languages. Then a user could look up a word, and see all
| the definitions and find the definition in their language.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| This project and landing page succeeded in provoking interest.
| And when I visited, the "explore" link worked :) guess it was
| fixed recently.
|
| Would love for this to grow!
| MarcScott wrote:
| Spotted this one:
|
| "Not here to fuck spiders"
|
| Asked an Ausie mate if it was real, and he confirmed he uses it
| often, as in:
|
| "Look mate, we're not here to fuck spiders, might as well just
| crack on."
| wrboyce wrote:
| Love the idea but the UX needs some serious attention.
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(page generated 2024-01-26 23:00 UTC)