In my teens I used to occasionally feel guilty about not doing my bit. In my 20s I got all Darwinist about it and decided languages that couldn’t keep up with the winners (English, Spanish, Chinese?) with tech-modern high culture + demographics on their side deserved extinction.
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A lot of the value of existence of institutionalized high culture layers in languages is: cultural globalization. When high culture dies, books stop being translated into other languages as the translation gap between self-published and traditionally published demonstrates.
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Web content is somewhere in between. It benefits from improving machine translation capabilities (I don’t know how much that relies on traditional dictionaries etc), but as Breaking Smart demonstrates, there is a limit to how much indie publishers can access quality translation.
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Most stuff is barely worth reading for native speakers in the language, but the best stuff is not only worth translating globally for maximum reach, it might even be valuable enough to inspire non-native speakers to learn the language.
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It’s telling that I was unable to find a good translation resource for breaking smart —> Hindi. Then I started doing it myself but then gave up as not worth the effort. Didn’t even bother looking in Tamil or Kannada (where doing it myself is not an option)
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Inference: speakers of any language it’s worthwhile translating material like breaking smart into are already likely to speak English. It’s like it’s easiest to get a loan if you can prove you don’t need one. It’s easiest to get translations to languages that don’t need them.
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Ironic endnote: this thread was inspired by OP profile of a Kannada lexicographer who spent 54 years writing a dictionary. Kannada is native language of Bangalore, perhaps the best-known non-western city associated with software eating world. E(P(software saves Kannada))=0.05.
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End of conversation
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Would be good if you promoted your book in your Twitter bio. I was just aware of it again when you mentioned it again.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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