status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#3840
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).
=============================== CFJ 3840 ===============================
En la declaración anterior, transferí una moneda a Agora.
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Caller: ATMunn
Judge: G.
Judgement: TRUE
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History:
Called by ATMunn: 03 Jun 2020 01:34:29
Assigned to G.: 07 Jun 2020 17:29:06
Judged TRUE by G.: 12 Jun 2020 18:27:38
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Caller's Evidence:
On 6/2/2020 6:34 PM, ATMunn via agora-business wrote:
> Yo transfiero una moneda a Agora.
>
> CFJ: En la declaración anterior, transferí una moneda a Agora.
>
> CFJ: In the above statement, I issued a Call for Judgement on whether
> I transferred a coin to Agora in the statement preceding that one.
Caller's Arguments:
[Arbitor's note: The "first CFJ" refers to this CFJ (CFJ 3840). The
"second CFJ" refers to CFJ 3841]
If the second CFJ is judged TRUE, then the first attempted CFJ is, in fact,
a CFJ. By the precedent set by the second CFJ, the first should then be
judged TRUE. The only thing preventing it from being judged TRUE if the
second one is also is the fact that when put into Google Translate, the
word "moneda," intended to mean "coin," is translated as "currency."
Because of this, I think that the outcome of this CFJ should probably be
linked to the outcome of CFJ 3838.
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Gratuitous Arguments by G.:
Since the first statement is clearly labelled statement that uses the
rules-defined term of art CFJ, I'm treating it as clearly being a CFJ
(previous foreign-language CFJ experiments included attempts to translate
the phrase "I Call for Judgement on..." into the foreign language as well,
so were different situations).
Of course (for the second cfj), whether the first cfj is a cfj on "whether
I transferred a coin..." is still an open question.
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Judge G.'s Arguments:
First, to future callers of such CFJs. There's a tension in the game
between evaluating messages sequentially versus holistically. While
multiple actions in a message are generally interpreted independently in
the order they appear, we also allow for things like notes, disclaimers,
or similar "below the action" comments to help interpret action attempts.
And what is a CFJ, if not a giant disclaimer? I would have a different
view of this case if I'd seen the action on its own, tried to translate,
and only then (in a later message) seen the CFJ. I'll attempt to judge
"as if" the message stood on its own, but future judges would be within
their rights to treat a CFJ below an action as clarifying context (thus
removing the whole point of the effort). So callers who want to do
this right should use multiple messages.
Second, part of this case is about how "understandable" Spanish might be
to the community, so as disclosure, I had two years of high school Spanish
30+ years ago, enough to understand the language's basic grammatical
constructs and some vocabulary, but certainly not enough to know, when a
Spanish word has two possible translations into English, which translation
the fluent speaker would pick or what context would be needed to resolve
ambiguity.
Finally, on linguistic prejudice. It's true that Agora has no "official"
language. However, we're a longstanding community of practice with a set
of norms, and anything outside the norms is subject to scrutiny - the
decision here is not about linguistic preference, but about applying the
scrutiny we might apply to any "unusual" English grammar or phrasing (and
boy do we scrutinize).
Now, the case. As of this writing, Google Translate has a quirk. If you
use the grammatical structure of the CFJ statement, "transferí una moneda
a Agora" becomes "I transferred a coin to Agora." Pretty darn clear, as
Judge Jason found in CFJ 3841. However, if you use the action statement
itself, "Yo transfiero una moneda a Agora" becomes "I transfer a currency
to Agora" (with no indication on the resulting page that "coin" is an
alternate word choice). Apparently there's enough tension between the two
translation options in Google Translate that a change of tenses (without
any added context) flips the results.
Now, if used in English, we would clearly accept "I transfer a coin" as a
working transfer. But I think, "default" currency status notwithstanding,
that "I transfer a currency" would fail the grammatical test, it is not
the same as saying "I transfer a unit of currency". So using Google
Translate, and no "fluent" knowledge of colloquial Spanish to better
refine the word choice, the transfer should definitely fail.
However, there's an extenuating circumstance. "Coin" is also the name of
an official currency, and subject to the same style guidelines as any
national currency. And in this context, we have a great example: the word
"pound". "Pound" is a unit of weight and the currency of the United
Kingdom. And both senses of the word translate into Spanish. So, if we
look at the specific rules of currency translation, what do we get?
After examining several online sources, one of the better sets of examples
is here: https://www.spanishdict.com/translate/british%20pounds
and this example:
"Así mismo, las ayudas en libras se han convertido a euros siguiendo la
cotización de la moneda a día 10 de febrero de 2016."
Here, "libras" appears on its own, and still is listed as a valid use,
distinguished by the unit of weight, by the context of various "money
words" in the rest of the phrase. Now, most of the examples on the page
have more clarity, using "libras británicas" or "libras esterlinas"
(esterlinas meaning sterling). And it would be much better, and indeed
completely clarifying, to use "moneda Agorana". But as evidenced by the
above example, "libras" on its own, used in a monetary context, is
sufficient. In the actual example, both "currency" and "coin" have a
monetary context, but "transfiero" is an utterly clear translation, that
most Agorans would recogize as an attempt to transfer assets.
Therefore, both the context and the style rules surrounding official
currencies gives us confidence: I find this CFJ TRUE.
This result comes with two cautions.
First, approving a single sentence does not "approve" a language for
general Agoran use - whenever a novel synonymous phrase for a rules-action
is used, it would properly face similar challenges, whether that novelty
comes from other languages or trying out different English synonyms for
rules terms.
Second, a single translation tool (e.g. Google Translate) might be
powerful, but dependence on a single tool is insufficient - for example,
CFJ 3472 found that the use of Google Translate alone did not convey the
concept of "PRESENT" or "AGAINST" for a vote. This current example only
worked due to it remaining within standards for national currencies not
captured by the standard online translator - other Agoran terms of art may
continue to be lost in translation.
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