--- In [log in to unmask], Thomas Alexander <salivanto@Y...> wrote:
> Wayne quoted me and replied:
> > > So much for prime vista. "Occurrer" means
> > > "to happen, to take place".
> >
> > Are you implying it doesn't also mean "to occur"?
>
> I am stating explicitly that it only means "to occur"
> when "to occur" also means "to happen, to take place".
> This is stated explicitly in the IED.

Ah!  If you'd quoted the IED the first time:

 "occurrer  v  occur (= to happen, take place)"

then I would have understood immediately!

> > How many "standard" English dictionaries would not
> > include "to occur" as one of the early definitions
> > (synonyms even) for "to happen"?
>
> This is the opposite of what I'm saying.  I'm saying
> that the expression "to occur to me" means "to come
> to my thoughts" and not "to happen to me".  Since
> "occurrer" only means "to take place" (and not "to
> come into active thought") the the word "happen"
> should be used in this translation.  So, the English
> dictionary does list the words as you did, and, as I
> implied in my last message, so does the IED.

After this explanation I see you did imply that, though a direct quote from IED
would have been clearer sooner.

> > It makes no sense to me at all to omit the most
> > obvious--and primo-prime vista--definition, and any
> > Interlingua-English dictionary that does so is
> > defective (or perhaps assumes anyone can plainly
> > see that "to occur" is an obvious definition and is
> > trying to save space by omitting it--but that, too,
> > makes it defective).
>
> I will gladly join with you in pointing out the
> defects of Interlingua,

I'm not sure how you can construe anything I said as "pointing out the defects
of Interlingua".  I was pointing out what I saw at prime vista as a defect in
your statement, and stated that this same defect existed in any Interlingua-
English dictinary that didn't include "to occur" in the "definition"
of "occurrer".  So I was not pointing out a defect of Interlingua and, since
IED does include "to occur" in its definition, it turns out I wasn't even
criticizing the IED, let alone the language itself!

> but that needs to be done with
> some kind of connection to reality.  It seems that
> the mistranslation "occurrer a alcuno" = "to occur
> to someone (to come to mind)" is clearly justified by
> English, but the question is whether the other linguas
> fontes (or lingas fonte, if you don't follow G/B)
> justify this definition.

My intent was to help Martha understand what Kjell had written, not to discuss
why Interlingua had made the choice of confining "occurrer" to mean only "to
happen, to take place", so no particular connection to reality was required.

> > But this is not what either Kjell or I was saying.
> > And you seem to have missed my warning that this was
> > a "first-level translation",
>
> I saw it.  I just didn't understand it. To me, "first-
> level translation" meant one in which the meaning is
> clear but which has not been polished to sound fully
> natural. I did a quick Google for the term and found
> mostly discussions of low-level computer programming
> issues.

"Low-level" is in the eye of the beholder.  The term is more used in higher-
level (e.g., artificial intelligence) applications of "machine translation", to
use an older (perhaps "worn out" to you) term.

Then you missed the most usual use, which is to categorize a translation of the
simplest sort, such as could be done by a dictionary lookup of one word, and
substitution of the (first, in case there's a list) word in the other language;
i.e., a first exercise in computer translation of a natural or other language.
Chomsky, and further work based on his, are the best references.

> Limiting the search with additional search
> words like "natural language" or "french" or "spanish"
> produced few hits (and some of them were still
> discussions of low-level computer programming
> issues.")
>
> I did find one page where "fils d'un pistolet" was
> called a first-level translation of "son of a gun", so
> it seems that you are not unique in your choice of
> words, yet it seems to me that this kind of thing is
> more conventionally called a "literal" or "word-for-
> word" translation.

It is, except when you then intend to perform various other levels of
translation, such as second-level and beyond, in which case it pays to "index"
the term, in effect.

--- 8< ---

> I note that your "first-level translation" slavishly
> translates "occurrer" as "occur"

Use of the emotionally-toned word slavishly" doesn't seem to contribute
anything here, since that's what a first-level translation is and how it's
done:  "slavishly", just an any good automaton should!

> yet freely translates
> "per consequente" as "in consequence" (and even
> "consequently").

This was my mistake:  I was going to do a higher-level translation, then
decided not to but didn't undo everything.  Guilty, as charged.

> Treating these the same way as
> "occurreva a me" should have produced the literal
> translation "per consequent" or perhaps "by" or
> "through" concequent.  Please forgive me that I did
> not understand your use of the term "first-level
> translation" under these conditions.

I understand, and accept the blame because I was inconsistent.

> > So in the end it's a difficulty of translating
> > Kjell's idiomatic use of "occurrer", perhaps an
> > influence from Swedish?
>
> What Kjell meant is one thing (which only Kjell can
> answer.)  What the words mean is another.  Besides
> the typos "aoccurreva" and "nromal" I don't see
> anything odd about the text: "this dialog happend
> to me (= I took part in it)

I claim this is beyond just "what the words mean", since it corrects a mis-use
of "happened to me".  So, though you don't know what Kjell meant, you've tried
to guess.  In this simple case I would make the same guess, but in more complex
situations our guesses could well differ.  If you looked up "to happen" in the
form "something happened to someone" in a reference most here are likely to
accept, how likely are you to find one definition to be "someone took part in
something"?

Of course you wouldn't see anything odd about "this dialog happened to me" if
you immediately fix it by substituting the higher-level translation "I took
part in this dialog" (as we all do in trying to understand ambiguous or odd
statements).  Once the oddness has been removed, of course you can't see it.

And note that you've used higher than second-level translation because you've
attempted to guess what the author of the statement meant, using information
about him and his habits, or about possible (mis-) uses of "to occur" by those
thinking in English, etc. (i.e., it required correcting a semantic error rather
than just manipulating the syntax, as would have been the case it it were just
an idiomatic expression).

--- 8< ---

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> Amike salutas,
> Thomas/Tomaso ALEXANDER.
> www.NightinGael.Net
> ---Anything below this line is not from Thomas ---