Translatory

Translatory Translatory Translatory By Maeve Maddox This reader’s question relates to the word translatory. Before writing, he looked it up:    Merriam-Webster definition: â€Å"of, relating to, or involving uniform motion in one direction.† Nothing about its clear parallel, translate. The Free Dictionary lists â€Å"translatory as an adjective under its entry for translation. Oxford does not appear to list it as a word at all – at least via online search. Translational is likely the correct adjective to use when discussing a translation, although translatory has been used to mean translational (e.g., ‘the translatory pen of William Tyndale’).    Ah, the ongoing battle of the dictionaries. The Merriam-Webster Unabridged I pay for has an entry for translatory, but no definition, just a link to translational. The OED I use via subscription does have an entry for translatory: â€Å"of or pertaining to physical translation† and offers this example from 1849: â€Å"The negative tension of an insulated metal is sensibly augmented by giving a translatory motion to the gas which attacks its surface.† M-W has a separate entry for â€Å"translatory motion†: â€Å"motion in which all points of a moving body move uniformly in the same line or direction.† No example of usage is offered. The short answer to the reader’s question is that some speakers may use translatory in reference to translating languages, but translational is the more common adjective in that context. A cursory search of the Web brought up two uses of translatory in reference to the translation of language, both from non-native English-speaking sources: The  master’s programmeprovides in-depth knowledge of (foreign) languages and translatory skills acquired in the bachelor’s programme.- University of Graz (Austria). [Some translators] failing to see the larger context or the  translatory  action at work.- Literary Translation in Modern Iran: A sociological study, by Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam. A search for â€Å"translatory† on Google brings up the admonitory message: â€Å"Did you mean translator?† and Word flags the word translatory with a squiggly red line. The words translate, translator and translation have different meanings in different contexts. For me, a translation is a text written in a language other than the original, and a translator is someone who renders a work written in one language into another. In another context, a translator is a transmitter that rebroadcasts the signals of a distant TV station to rural areas: In 1973, the construction of a network of transmitters and translators connected by microwave relay was approved by the state legislature. Another meaning of translate is â€Å"To change in form, appearance, or substance.† Peter Quince uses the word with this meaning in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when, like Snount, he reacts to the sight of Bottom with an ass’s head: SNOUT: O Bottom, thou art changed! What do I see on thee? BOTTOM: What do you see? You see an ass head of your own, do you? QUINCE: Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee. Thou art translated. Translatory has its uses, but it is not the conventional choice in the context of language translation. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:100 Exquisite AdjectivesDeck the HallsHow to Style Legislative Terms

Definition and Examples of Linguistic Prestige

Definition and Examples of Linguistic Prestige In sociolinguistics, linguistic prestige is the degree of esteem and social value attached by members of a speech community to certain languages, dialects, or features of a language variety. Social and linguistic prestige is interrelated, notes Michael Pearce. The language of powerful social groups usually carries linguistic prestige; and social prestige is often granted to speakers of prestige languages and varieties (Routledge Dictionary of English Language Studies, 2007). Linguists draw important distinctions between overt prestige and covert prestige: In the case of overt prestige, the social valuation lies in a unified, widely accepted set of social norms, whereas with covert prestige the positive social significance lies in the local culture of social relations. It is, therefore, possible for a socially stigmatized variant in one setting to have covert prestige in another (Walt Wolfram, Social Varieties of American English, 2004). Examples and Observations: Linguistic prestige is directly associated with power. As [Thomas Paul] Bonfiglio (2002:23) puts it, There is nothing in the particular language itself that determines its worth: it is the connection of the language in question to the phenomena of power that determines the value of that language and that contributes to the standardization process.(Gerard Van Herk, What Is Sociolinguistics? Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) Old English certainly had words for language and female and face, and we could perfectly well have carried on using them [after the Norman invasion], but the much greater prestige of French induced many English-speakers to introduce French words into their speech in the hope of sounding more elegant. This attitude is always with us: French no longer enjoys quite the prestige it once had, but you may perhaps know someone who cannot resist spattering his English speech or writing with such French words and phrases as au contraire, joie de vivre, au naturel, fin de sià ¨cle and derrià ¨re. (R.L. Trask, Language: The Basics, 2nd ed. Routledge, 1999) Prestige in Grammar In grammar, most prestige forms are related to prescriptive norms of standardness or even literary norms. For example, the use of whom in Whom did you see? or the placement of never at the front of the sentence Never have I seen a more gruesome sight might be considered prestige variants in some social contexts. Apart from these somewhat special cases, it is difficult to find clear-cut cases of prestige variants on the grammatical level of language, particularly in the grammar of ordinary informal conversation...For present-day American English, it is clear that the vast majority of socially diagnostic structures exist on the axis of stigmatization rather than the axis of prestige.(Walt Wolfram, Social Varieties of American English. Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-First Century, ed. by Edward Finegan and John R. Rickford. Cambridge University Press, 2004) Overt and Covert Prestige A standard dialect speaker of English who intentionally switches to use of social markers such as aint and he dont is said to seek covert prestige. Such prestige is covert because its elicitation will often not, if successful, be consciously noted.Deliberate (as opposed to instinctive) use of taboo words such as fuck and shit, usage which tends to characterize male more than female speech, may also seek covert prestige, but the strength of these as social markers makes this more difficult to achieve. In a contrasting register, one uses unusually formal non-vernacular forms in vernacular contexts. For example, one will ordinarily say Its me to the question Who is it? asked by a familiar interlocutor, but, when asked the same question by one from whom one seeks prestige, the same speaker may say It is I. Similarly, except after prepositions Americans ordinarily say who in preference to whom: Who did you ask?, not Whom did you ask?  but in some circumstances, the latter may be substituted. Such usage is said to seek overt prestige because the often dubious prestige one gets from such usage is ordinarily consciously noted, hence overt. One may use jargon similarly seeking overt prestige, saying, for example, semantics when nothing more than ordinary meaning is intended.(Grover Hudson, Essential Introductory Linguistics. Blackwell, 2000) Labov on Prestige and Gender [American linguist William Labov developed] three principles regarding the linguistic behavior of men and women: 1. For stable sociolinguistic variants, women show a slower rate of stigmatized variants and a higher rate of prestige variants than men (Labov 2001: 266)2. In linguistic change from above, women adopt prestige forms at a higher rate than men (Labov 2001: 274)3. In linguistic change from below, women use higher frequencies of innovative forms than men do (Labov 2001: 292) Ultimately, Labov formulates the corresponding Gender Paradox: Women conform more closely than men to sociolinguistic norms that are overtly prescribed, but conform less than men when they are not.(Labov 2001: 293) All these principles and the Gender Paradox itself appear to be fairly robust findings with almost universal applicability in contemporary sociolinguistics...[E]very language period and every language community must be investigated independently and in its own right (pace Jardin 2000). The actual concepts and functions of class, gender, networks, and, most importantly, norms, standards, and prestige, differ radically in different communities.(Alexander Bergs, The Uniformitarian Principle and the Risk of Anachronisms in Language and Social History. The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, ed. by Juan M. Hernndez-Campoy and Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) Prestige, Status, and Function What do we mean by status and function? The two terms are often confused with one another and also with another term, prestige. Basically, the essential difference between prestige, function, and status is the difference between past, present, and future. The prestige of a language depends on its record, or what people think its record to have been. The function of a language is what people actually do with it. The status of a language depends on what people can do with it, its potential. Status, therefore, is the sum total of what you can do with a languagelegally, culturally, economically, politically and, of course, demographically. This is not necessarily the same as what you do with the language, although the two notions are obviously related, and indeed interdependent. They can also be connected with the prestige of a language. Let us illustrate the differences. Classical Latin has had a lot of prestige but it has few functions. Swahili has a lot of functions, but little presti ge. Irish Gaelic has status, official status, but few exclusive functions.(William F. Mackey, Determining the Status and Function of Languages in Multinational Societies. Status and Function of Languages and Language Varieties, ed. by Ulrich Ammo. Walter de Gruyter, 1989)