Laura:
About a possible relation between the Translation Problem and the Aymara I would
like to do the following quotation from "The Search for a Perfect Language"
(Blackwell Pub. 1995), pp 346-347, by the renowmed italian writter Umberto
Eco.
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In many of the most notable projects for mechanical translation,
there exists a notion of a parameter language, which does share many
of the characteristics of the a priori languages. There must, it is
argued, exist a tertium comparationis which might allow us to shift
from an expression in language A to an expression in language B by
deciding that both are equivalent to an expression of a metalaguage C.
If such a tertium really existed, it would be a perfect language.
The only alternative would be to discover a natural language which is
so "perfect" (so flexible and powerful) to serve as tertium
comparationis. In 1603, the Jesuit Ludovico Bertonio (Arte de la
lengua Aymara) described the Aymara language (still partially
spoken by Indians living between Bolivia and Peru) as endowed with an
immense flexibility and capability of accommodating neologisms,
particularly adapted to the expression of abstract concepts, so much
so as to raise a suspicion that it was an artificial invention. Later this
language was described as the language of Adam, founded upon
necessary and immutable ideas", a philosophical language if ever there
were, and obviously somebody discovered that it had Semitic roots.
Recent studies have established Aymara is not based on an Aristotelian
two-valued logic (either True or False), but on a three-valued logic it
is, therefore, capable of expressing modal subtleties which other
languages can only capture through complex circumlocutions. Thus
there have been proposals to use Aymara to resolve all problems of
computer translation. Unfortunately, it has been demonstrated that
the Aymara would greatly facilitate the translation of any other
idiom into its own terms, but not the other way around. Thus, because
of its perfection, Aymara can render every thought expressed in other
mutually untranslatable languages, but the price to pay for it is that
(once the perfect language has resolved these thoughts into its own
terms), they cannot be translated back into our natural native idioms.
Aymara is a Black Hole.
One way out of this dilemma is to assume, as certain authors have recently
done, that translation is a matter to be resolved entirely within the
destination(or target) language, according to the context.
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The above ideas of Eco are based on the work of Guzman de Rojas. But as it is
known for some members of this list, the main critics to the work of Guzman is
its lack of a serious peer review. Since the Guzman's work use
results of both mathematical and linguistical branches, in this case, who can be
considered a valid peer?
Jorge
