The Schleirmacher reading was slightly challenging to read and I'm not sure if I understood all of it, but it seems like he focuses a lot on some ideas we have been facing in this class, such as finding the balance between preservation of the original and readability in the target language and translating cultural differences and nuances. He makes a good point highlighting that it is important to consider how much the reader might know about the culture of a country when translating to ensure that deeper nuances are properly conveyed. His thoughts about language being influenced by history were interesting to me. I haven't really thought about translators having to translate scientific works, but I can imagine how difficult it would be. I agree with his point that "just as language is a historical entity, so too is it impossible to appreciate it rightly without an appreciation of its history". I think this shows how translators have to be well rounded, knowing the language, history, culture, and the topic that they are translating.
In the article by Deutscher, it was kind of strange that Whorf thought the language that you speak dictates the thoughts we can have or the concepts we can understand. I agree with Deutscher that this isn't true, but it is cool when you learn a really good way to describe a specific concept or feeling in a language that you're learning, so I would believe the languages we know restrict us in how accurately we can portray something in words. It is interesting to think about how certain languages reveal more than others, like how French or German would reveal the gender of a person, and in some languages like Japanese or Korean, you would be able to tell the difference in status between people having a conversation. It was also interesting to read about the experiments about seeing how genders on objects shape how people who speak certain languages feel about those objects.
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