Editing 2168: Reading in the Original
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
− | Many academics and aficionados argue that studying texts in the original language is more valuable than reading translations. The argument is that translations are rarely able to fully capture all of the nuances, linguistic subtleties and intent of the original author, and may even alter the meaning in some way due to the translator's interpretation and word choices. The drawback to this is that it requires the reader to be sufficiently fluent in whatever language the text is written. Critically, a reader of the original source also needs to understand the cultural and historical context of the original work, something a professional translator might deal with much better. This can even happen when working with archaic texts in the same language, as certain references and phrases may have had a significance which was lost over time. | + | {{incomplete|Created by a HAWAIIAN-GREEK HYBRID. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} |
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+ | Many academics and aficionados argue that studying texts in the original language is more valuable than reading translations. The argument is that translations are rarely able to fully capture all of the nuances, linguistic subtleties and intent of the original author, and may even alter the meaning in some way due to the translator's interpretation and word choices. | ||
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+ | The drawback to this is that it requires the reader to be sufficiently fluent in whatever language the text is written. Critically, a reader of the original source also needs to understand the cultural and historical context of the original work, something a professional translator might deal with much better. This can even happen when working with archaic texts in the same language, as certain references and phrases may have had a significance which was lost over time. | ||
Cueball's commenting that he read works "in the original Greek" implies a high-level of literary scholarship, as this phrase is associated with scholars studying ancient Greek texts, which form a significant part of the foundational works of Western literature. | Cueball's commenting that he read works "in the original Greek" implies a high-level of literary scholarship, as this phrase is associated with scholars studying ancient Greek texts, which form a significant part of the foundational works of Western literature. | ||
− | + | The joke in this comic is that Cueball has apparently taken the time to learn Greek, so that he can read Wikipedia in that language. However he is not reading the articles in Greek, rather he is selecting Greek as the language to use to display Wikipedia's screen elements, like the tabs, the left-side menu, help screens, etc. The actual article is still in English or whatever other language is used by the particular Wikipedia the user is using, however, so making this language change would not in any way change the article itself, just the "environment" the person is reading the article within. Megan, expecting the traditional trope about reading a text in an alternate language, exclaims that "That's not how that works!" because she knows the change Cueball makes isn't actually doing what he says he's doing. | |
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+ | The trope Megan was expecting was that Cueball had gone over to the Greek-language Wikipedia (https://el.wikipedia.org) to read an article he would normally have read in English at the English Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org). (An [https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/grc Ancient Greek Wikipedia test project] also exists, but is not nearly as large as the modern Greek one.) Wikipedia has editions in about 300 languages; many articles link to equivalent articles in other languages, but they are not usually translations of each other, having been written separately by speakers of the different languages. The dedication to appearing to be a committed scholar is contrasted with the ignorance of not understanding that Greek is not the original language of every text. | ||
− | + | A similar thing happens with dubbed movies or TV series/anime, with people smugly remarking that they instead prefer to watch the original version, instead of the dubbed version. | |
− | The movie ''Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country'' has a joke concerning someone speaking of a foreign "original" language of something that actually was originally written in English: Chancellor Gorkon says, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you've read it in the | + | The movie ''Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country'' has a joke concerning someone speaking of a foreign "original" language of something that actually was originally written in English: Chancellor Gorkon says, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you've read it in the original Klingon." (In reality, Shakespeare lived in England, and wrote in English, not Klingon.){{Citation needed}} |
− | The title | + | The title text is an etymology joke, since "Wikipedia" was coined from two parts, "[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wiki#English wiki]", from Hawaiian, and "[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-pedia pedia]", from Greek. However, words having roots in different languages is common and does not signify any link between the separate languages; for example, while the word "Wikipedia" does have etymological roots in Hawaiian and Greek, it is not true that the site was originally composed of texts written in Hawaiian and Greek. |
==Transcript== | ==Transcript== |