87-523: The Damsgård Tunnel ( Norwegian : Damsgårdstunnelen ) is a road tunnel in the city of Bergen in Vestland county, Norway . It consists of two tubes, each of which carries two lanes of traffic through the Damsgårdsfjellet mountain between the neighborhoods of Lyngbø and Gyldenpris and the onwards towards the city centre. The northern end of the tunnel lies adjacent to the entrance to
174-405: A bilingual document is the 1274 BCE Treaty of Kadesh between the ancient Egyptian and Hittie empires . The Babylonians were the first to establish translation as a profession. The first translations of Greek and Coptic texts into Arabic, possibly indirectly from Syriac translations, seem to have been undertaken as early as the late seventh century CE. The second Abbasid Caliph funded
261-528: A dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional varieties; some Norwegian and Swedish dialects , in particular, are very close. These Scandinavian languages, together with Faroese and Icelandic as well as some extinct languages , constitute the North Germanic languages. Faroese and Icelandic are not mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form because continental Scandinavian has diverged from them. While
348-421: A terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between translating (a written text) and interpreting (oral or signed communication between users of different languages); under this distinction, translation can begin only after the appearance of writing within a language community. A translator always risks inadvertently introducing source-language words, grammar , or syntax into
435-430: A " measure word " to say "one blossom-of roseness." Chinese verbs are tense -less: there are several ways to specify when something happened or will happen, but verb tense is not one of them. For poets, this creates the great advantage of ambiguity . According to Link, Weinberger's insight about subjectlessness—that it produces an effect "both universal and immediate"—applies to timelessness as well. Link proposes
522-637: A common etymology is sometimes misleading as a guide to current meaning in one or the other language. For example, the English actual should not be confused with the cognate French actuel ("present", "current"), the Polish aktualny ("present", "current," "topical", "timely", "feasible"), the Swedish aktuell ("topical", "presently of importance"), the Russian актуальный ("urgent", "topical") or
609-435: A distinct dialect at the level of farm clusters. Dialects are in some cases so dissimilar as to be unintelligible to unfamiliar listeners. Many linguists note a trend toward regionalization of dialects that diminishes the differences at such local levels; there is, however, a renewed interest in preserving dialects. Norwegian nouns are inflected for number (singular/plural) and for definiteness (indefinite/definite). In
696-548: A few dialects, definite nouns are also inflected for the dative case . Norwegian nouns belong to three noun classes (genders): masculine, feminine and neuter. All feminine nouns can optionally be inflected using masculine noun class morphology in Bokmål due to its Danish heritage. In comparison, the use of all three genders (including the feminine) is mandatory in Nynorsk. All Norwegian dialects have traditionally retained all
783-503: A fully adequate guide in translating. The Scottish historian Alexander Tytler , in his Essay on the Principles of Translation (1790), emphasized that assiduous reading is a more comprehensive guide to a language than are dictionaries. The same point, but also including listening to the spoken language , had earlier, in 1783, been made by the Polish poet and grammarian Onufry Kopczyński . The translator's special role in society
870-400: A high, sharply falling pitch in the first syllable and a low pitch in the beginning of the second syllable. In both accents, these pitch movements are followed by a rise of intonational nature (phrase accent)—the size (and presence) of which signals emphasis or focus, and corresponds in function to the normal accent in languages that lack lexical tone , such as English. That rise culminates in
957-656: A kind of uncertainty principle that may be applicable not only to translation from the Chinese language, but to all translation: Dilemmas about translation do not have definitive right answers (although there can be unambiguously wrong ones if misreadings of the original are involved). Any translation (except machine translation, a different case) must pass through the mind of a translator, and that mind inevitably contains its own store of perceptions, memories, and values. Weinberger [...] pushes this insight further when he writes that "every reading of every poem, regardless of language,
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#17327938346261044-501: A noun, unlike English which has a separate article, the , to indicate the same. In general, almost all nouns in Bokmål follow these patterns (like the words in the examples above): In contrast, almost all nouns in Nynorsk follow these patterns (the noun gender system is more pronounced than in Bokmål): There is in general no way to infer what grammatical gender a specific noun has, but there are some patterns of nouns where
1131-565: A poem like [the one that Eliot Weinberger discusses in 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (with More Ways) ], another untranslatable feature is that the written result, hung on a wall, presents a rectangle. Translators into languages whose word lengths vary can reproduce such an effect only at the risk of fatal awkwardness.... Another imponderable is how to imitate the 1-2, 1-2-3 rhythm in which five- syllable lines in classical Chinese poems normally are read. Chinese characters are pronounced in one syllable apiece, so producing such rhythms in Chinese
1218-421: A single language, to be called Samnorsk . A 1946 poll showed that this policy was supported by 79% of Norwegians at the time. However, opponents of the official policy still managed to create a massive protest movement against Samnorsk in the 1950s, fighting in particular the use of "radical" forms in Bokmål text books in schools. In the reform in 1959, the 1938 reform was partially reversed in Bokmål, but Nynorsk
1305-428: A single vote. The name Nynorsk , the linguistic term for modern Norwegian , was chosen to contrast with Danish and emphasise the historical connection to Old Norwegian. Today, this meaning is often lost, and it is commonly mistaken as a "new" Norwegian in contrast to the "real" Norwegian Bokmål. Bokmål and Nynorsk were made closer by a reform in 1938. This was a result of a state policy to merge Nynorsk and Bokmål into
1392-491: A subject is inserted, a "controlling individual mind of the poet" enters and destroys the effect of the Chinese line. Without a subject, he writes, "the experience becomes both universal and immediate to the reader." Another approach to the subjectlessness is to use the target language's passive voice ; but this again particularizes the experience too much. Nouns have no number in Chinese. "If," writes Link, "you want to talk in Chinese about one rose, you may, but then you use
1479-440: A text's source language are adjusted to the syntactic requirements of the target language. When a target language has lacked terms that are found in a source language, translators have borrowed those terms, thereby enriching the target language. Thanks in great measure to the exchange of calques and loanwords between languages, and to their importation from other languages, there are few concepts that are " untranslatable " among
1566-459: A translation bureau in Baghdad in the eighth century. Bayt al-Hikma, the famous library in Baghdad, was generously endowed and the collection included books in many languages, and it became a leading centre for the translation of works from antiquity into Arabic, with its own Translation Department. Translations into European languages from Arabic versions of lost Greek and Roman texts began in
1653-803: Is "a carrying across" or "a bringing across"—in this case, of a text from one language to another. Some Slavic languages and the Germanic languages (other than Dutch and Afrikaans ) have calqued their words for the concept of "translation" on translatio , substituting their respective Slavic or Germanic root words for the Latin roots. The remaining Slavic languages instead calqued their words for "translation" from an alternative Latin word, trāductiō , itself derived from trādūcō ("to lead across" or "to bring across")—from trans ("across") + dūcō , ("to lead" or "to bring"). The West and East Slavic languages (except for Russian ) adopted
1740-413: Is Bokmål will study Nynorsk as a mandatory subject throughout both elementary and high school. A 2005 poll indicates that 86.3% use primarily Bokmål as their daily written language, 5.5% use both Bokmål and Nynorsk, and 7.5% use primarily Nynorsk. Thus, 13% are frequently writing Nynorsk, though the majority speak dialects that resemble Nynorsk more closely than Bokmål. Broadly speaking, Nynorsk writing
1827-411: Is a language form based on Norwegian dialects and puristic opposition to Danish. The now-abandoned official policy to merge Bokmål and Nynorsk into one common language called Samnorsk through a series of spelling reforms has created a wide spectrum of varieties of both Bokmål and Nynorsk. The unofficial form known as Riksmål is considered more conservative than Bokmål and is far closer to Danish while
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#17327938346261914-531: Is a type of drawing after life..." Comparison of the translator with a musician or actor goes back at least to Samuel Johnson 's remark about Alexander Pope playing Homer on a flageolet , while Homer himself used a bassoon . In the 13th century, Roger Bacon wrote that if a translation is to be true, the translator must know both languages , as well as the science that he is to translate; and finding that few translators did, he wanted to do away with translation and translators altogether. The translator of
2001-736: Is an act of translation: translation into the reader's intellectual and emotional life." Then he goes still further: because a reader's mental life shifts over time, there is a sense in which "the same poem cannot be read twice." Translation of material into Arabic expanded after the creation of Arabic script in the 5th century, and gained great importance with the rise of Islam and Islamic empires. Arab translation initially focused primarily on politics, rendering Persian, Greek, even Chinese and Indic diplomatic materials into Arabic. It later focused on translating classical Greek and Persian works, as well as some Chinese and Indian texts, into Arabic for scholarly study at major Islamic learning centers, such as
2088-677: Is characterized by loose adaptation, rather than the closer translation more commonly found in Europe; and Chinese translation theory identifies various criteria and limitations in translation. In the East Asian sphere of Chinese cultural influence, more important than translation per se has been the use and reading of Chinese texts, which also had substantial influence on the Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese languages, with substantial borrowings of Chinese vocabulary and writing system. Notable
2175-552: Is described in a posthumous 1803 essay by "Poland's La Fontaine ", the Roman Catholic Primate of Poland , poet, encyclopedist , author of the first Polish novel, and translator from French and Greek, Ignacy Krasicki : [T]ranslation... is in fact an art both estimable and very difficult, and therefore is not the labor and portion of common minds; [it] should be [practiced] by those who are themselves capable of being actors, when they see greater use in translating
2262-457: Is not hard and the results are unobtrusive; but any imitation in a Western language is almost inevitably stilted and distracting. Even less translatable are the patterns of tone arrangement in classical Chinese poetry. Each syllable (character) belongs to one of two categories determined by the pitch contour in which it is read; in a classical Chinese poem the patterns of alternation of the two categories exhibit parallelism and mirroring. Once
2349-609: Is regulated by the Norwegian Academy , which determines acceptable spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. There is also an unofficial form of Nynorsk, called Høgnorsk , discarding the post-1917 reforms, and thus close to Ivar Aasen's original Landsmål. It is supported by Ivar Aasen-sambandet , but has found no widespread use. In 2010, 86.5% of the pupils in the primary and lower secondary schools in Norway receive education in Bokmål, while 13.0% receive education in Nynorsk. From
2436-542: Is the Japanese kanbun , a system for glossing Chinese texts for Japanese speakers. Though Indianized states in Southeast Asia often translated Sanskrit material into the local languages, the literate elites and scribes more commonly used Sanskrit as their primary language of culture and government. Some special aspects of translating from Chinese are illustrated in Perry Link 's discussion of translating
2523-528: Is the norm in classical Chinese poetry , and common even in modern Chinese prose, to omit subjects; the reader or listener infers a subject. The grammars of some Western languages, however, require that a subject be stated (although this is often avoided by using a passive or impersonal construction). Most of the translators cited in Eliot Weinberger's 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei supply a subject. Weinberger points out, however, that when an "I" as
2610-459: Is to write in dialect for informal use. When writing an SMS, Facebook update, or fridge note, many people, especially young ones, write approximations of the way they talk rather than using Bokmål or Nynorsk. There is general agreement that a wide range of differences makes it difficult to estimate the number of different Norwegian dialects. Variations in grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and pronunciation cut across geographical boundaries and can create
2697-587: Is today to a large extent the same language as Bokmål though somewhat closer to the Danish language. It is regulated by the unofficial Norwegian Academy , which translates the name as 'Standard Norwegian'. The other is Høgnorsk ('High Norwegian'), a more purist form of Nynorsk, which maintains the language in an original form as given by Ivar Aasen and rejects most of the reforms from the 20th century; this form has limited use. Nynorsk and Bokmål provide standards for how to write Norwegian, but not for how to speak
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2784-405: Is uvular [ ʁ ] or [ χ ] . And in the dialects of North-Western Norway, it is realized as [ r ] , much like the trilled ⟨rr⟩ of Spanish. Norwegian is a pitch-accent language with two distinct pitch patterns, like Swedish. They are used to differentiate two-syllable words with otherwise identical pronunciation. For example, in many East Norwegian dialects,
2871-496: Is widespread in western Norway, though not in major urban areas, and also in the upper parts of mountain valleys in the southern and eastern parts of Norway. Examples are Setesdal , the western part of Telemark county ( fylke ) and several municipalities in Hallingdal , Valdres , and Gudbrandsdalen . It is little used elsewhere, but 30–40 years ago, it also had strongholds in many rural parts of Trøndelag (mid-Norway) and
2958-711: The translātiō pattern, whereas Russian and the South Slavic languages adopted the trāductiō pattern. The Romance languages , deriving directly from Latin, did not need to calque their equivalent words for "translation"; instead, they simply adapted the second of the two alternative Latin words, trāductiō . The Ancient Greek term for "translation", μετάφρασις ( metaphrasis , "a speaking across"), has supplied English with " metaphrase " (a " literal ", or "word-for-word", translation)—as contrasted with " paraphrase " ("a saying in other words", from παράφρασις , paraphrasis ). "Metaphrase" corresponds, in one of
3045-529: The Al-Karaouine ( Fes , Morocco ), Al-Azhar ( Cairo , Egypt ), and the Al-Nizamiyya of Baghdad . In terms of theory, Arabic translation drew heavily on earlier Near Eastern traditions as well as more contemporary Greek and Persian traditions. Arabic translation efforts and techniques are important to Western translation traditions due to centuries of close contacts and exchanges. Especially after
3132-528: The Bible into German, Martin Luther (1483–1546), is credited with being the first European to posit that one translates satisfactorily only toward his own language. L.G. Kelly states that since Johann Gottfried Herder in the 18th century, "it has been axiomatic" that one translates only toward his own language. Compounding the demands on the translator is the fact that no dictionary or thesaurus can ever be
3219-466: The Dano-Norwegian language that replaced Middle Norwegian as the elite language after the union of Denmark–Norway in the 16th and 17th centuries and then evolved in Norway, while Nynorsk was developed based upon a collective of spoken Norwegian dialects. Norwegian is one of the two official languages in Norway, along with Sámi , a Finno-Ugric language spoken by less than one percent of
3306-532: The Germanic languages evolved, further branching off into the North Germanic languages , of which Norwegian is one. Proto-Norse is thought to have evolved as a northern dialect of Proto-Germanic during the first centuries AD in what is today Southern Sweden. It is the earliest stage of a characteristically North Germanic language, and the language attested in the Elder Futhark inscriptions,
3393-638: The Hanseatic League between 1250 and 1450 in the main Scandinavian cities brought large Middle Low German –speaking populations to Norway. The influence of their language on Scandinavian is comparable with that of French on English after the Norman conquest . In the late Middle Ages, dialects began to develop in Scandinavia because the population was rural and little travel occurred. When
3480-626: The Løvstakk Tunnel and the Puddefjord Bridge . The tunnel is one of the major arterial highways leading west from the city centre. The tube that carries eastbound traffic was opened in 1992 and it is 2,360-metre (7,740 ft) long, while the other tube opened the following year and it is slightly shorter at 2,342-metre (7,684 ft) long. The Damsgård Tunnel is part of Norwegian National Road 555 which runs from Fjell to Bergen's city centre. The average daily traffic through
3567-511: The Reformation came from Germany, Martin Luther 's High German translation of the Bible was quickly translated into Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic. Norway entered a union with Denmark in 1397 and Danish, over time, replaced Middle Norwegian as the language of the elite, the church, literature, and the law. When the union with Denmark ended in 1814, the Dano-Norwegian koiné had become
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3654-533: The Renaissance , Europeans began more intensive study of Arabic and Persian translations of classical works as well as scientific and philosophical works of Arab and oriental origins. Arabic, and to a lesser degree Persian, became important sources of material and perhaps of techniques for revitalized Western traditions, which in time would overtake the Islamic and oriental traditions. In the 19th century, after
3741-520: The context itself by reproducing the original order of sememes , and hence word order —when necessary, reinterpreting the actual grammatical structure, for example, by shifting from active to passive voice , or vice versa . The grammatical differences between "fixed-word-order" languages (e.g. English, French , German ) and "free-word-order" languages (e.g., Greek , Latin , Polish , Russian ) have been no impediment in this regard. The particular syntax (sentence-structure) characteristics of
3828-475: The 20th century, being used by large newspapers, encyclopedias, and a significant proportion of the population of the capital Oslo, surrounding areas, and other urban areas, as well as much of the literary tradition. Since the reforms of 1981 and 2003 (effective in 2005), the official Bokmål can be adapted to be almost identical with modern Riksmål. The differences between written Riksmål and Bokmål are comparable to American and British English differences . Riksmål
3915-463: The Chinese tradition. Traditions of translating material among the languages of ancient Egypt , Mesopotamia , Assyria ( Syriac language ), Anatolia , and Israel ( Hebrew language ) go back several millennia. There exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh ( c. 2000 BCE ) into Southwest Asian languages of the second millennium BCE. An early example of
4002-632: The Damsgård Tunnel was 35,127 vehicles in 2007, up from 29,336 in 2000. This Norwegian tunnel-related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Norwegian language Norwegian ( endonym : norsk [ˈnɔʂːk] ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken mainly in Norway , where it is an official language. Along with Swedish and Danish , Norwegian forms
4089-522: The Dutch actueel ("current"). The translator's role as a bridge for "carrying across" values between cultures has been discussed at least since Terence , the 2nd-century-BCE Roman adapter of Greek comedies. The translator's role is, however, by no means a passive, mechanical one, and so has also been compared to that of an artist . The main ground seems to be the concept of parallel creation found in critics such as Cicero . Dryden observed that "Translation
4176-512: The Ministry of Culture, official spelling, grammar, and vocabulary for the Norwegian language. The board's work has been subject to considerable controversy throughout the years. Both Nynorsk and Bokmål have a great variety of optional forms. The Bokmål that uses the forms that are close to Riksmål is called moderate or conservative , depending on one's viewpoint, while the Bokmål that uses
4263-695: The actual practice of translation has hardly changed since antiquity. Except for some extreme metaphrasers in the early Christian period and the Middle Ages , and adapters in various periods (especially pre-Classical Rome, and the 18th century), translators have generally shown prudent flexibility in seeking equivalents —"literal" where possible, paraphrastic where necessary—for the original meaning and other crucial "values" (e.g., style , verse form , concordance with musical accompaniment or, in films, with speech articulatory movements) as determined from context. In general, translators have sought to preserve
4350-573: The center is the letter-versus-spirit dilemma . At the literalist extreme, efforts are made to dissect every conceivable detail about the language of the original Chinese poem. "The dissection, though," writes Link, "normally does to the art of a poem approximately what the scalpel of an anatomy instructor does to the life of a frog." Chinese characters, in avoiding grammatical specificity, offer advantages to poets (and, simultaneously, challenges to poetry translators) that are associated primarily with absences of subject , number , and tense . It
4437-399: The dialects and comparing the dialects among the different regions. He examined the development of Icelandic , which had largely escaped the influences under which Norwegian had come. He called his work, which was published in several books from 1848 to 1873, Landsmål , meaning 'national language'. The name Landsmål is sometimes interpreted as 'rural language' or 'country language', but this
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#17327938346264524-596: The dialects. The retroflex consonants only appear in East Norwegian dialects as a result of sandhi , combining / ɾ / with / d / , / l / , / n / , / s / , and / t / . The realization of the rhotic / ɾ / depends on the dialect. In Eastern, Central, and Northern Norwegian dialects, it is a flap [ ɾ ] , whereas in Western and Southern Norway, and for some speakers also in Eastern Norway, it
4611-644: The eighth grade onwards, pupils are required to learn both. Out of the 431 municipalities in Norway, 161 have declared that they wish to communicate with the central authorities in Bokmål, 116 (representing 12% of the population) in Nynorsk, while 156 are neutral. Of 4,549 state publications in 2000, 8% were in Nynorsk, and 92% in Bokmål. The large national newspapers ( Aftenposten , Dagbladet , and VG ) are published in Bokmål or Riksmål. Some major regional newspapers (including Bergens Tidende and Stavanger Aftenblad ), many political journals, and many local newspapers use both Bokmål and Nynorsk. A newer trend
4698-471: The extremes in the spectrum of possible approaches to translation. Discussions of the theory and practice of translation reach back into antiquity and show remarkable continuities. The ancient Greeks distinguished between metaphrase (literal translation) and paraphrase . This distinction was adopted by English poet and translator John Dryden (1631–1700), who described translation as the judicious blending of these two modes of phrasing when selecting, in
4785-403: The final syllable of an accentual phrase, while the utterance-final fall common in most languages is either very small or absent. There are significant variations in pitch accent between dialects. Thus, in most of western and northern Norway (the so-called high-pitch dialects) accent 1 is falling, while accent 2 is rising in the first syllable and falling in the second syllable or somewhere around
4872-501: The forms that are close to Nynorsk is called radical . Nynorsk has forms that are close to the original Landsmål and forms that are close to Bokmål. Opponents of the spelling reforms aimed at bringing Bokmål closer to Nynorsk have retained the name Riksmål and employ spelling and grammar that predate the Samnorsk movement. Riksmål and conservative versions of Bokmål have been the de facto standard written language of Norway for most of
4959-462: The gender can be inferred. For instance, all nouns ending in - nad will be masculine in both Bokmål and Nynorsk (for instance the noun jobbsøknad , which means 'job application'). Most nouns ending in - ing will be feminine, like the noun forventning ('expectation'). Translation Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws
5046-530: The human translator . More recently, the rise of the Internet has fostered a world-wide market for translation services and has facilitated " language localisation ". The English word "translation" derives from the Latin word translatio , which comes from trans , "across" + ferre , "to carry" or "to bring" ( -latio in turn coming from latus , the past participle of ferre ). Thus translatio
5133-555: The language. No standard of spoken Norwegian is officially sanctioned, and most Norwegians speak their own dialects in all circumstances. Thus, unlike in many other countries, the use of any Norwegian dialect, whether it coincides with the written norms or not, is accepted as correct spoken Norwegian. However, in areas where East Norwegian dialects are used, a tendency exists to accept a de facto spoken standard for this particular regional dialect, Urban East Norwegian or Standard East Norwegian (Norwegian: Standard østnorsk ), in which
5220-629: The local population. Around 1030, Christianity came to Scandinavia , bringing with it an influx of Latin borrowings and the Roman alphabet . These new words were related to church practices and ceremonies, although many other loanwords related to general culture also entered the language. The Scandinavian languages at this time are not considered to be separate languages, although there were minor differences among what are customarily called Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian , Old Gutnish , Old Danish, and Old Swedish . The economic and political dominance of
5307-866: The middle of the eleventh century, when the benefits to be gained from the Arabs’ knowledge of the classical texts were recognised by European scholars, particularly after the establishment of the Escuela de Traductores de Toledo in Spain. William Caxton ’s Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres (Sayings of the Philosophers, 1477) was a translation into English of an eleventh-century Egyptian text which reached English via translation into Latin and then French. The translation of foreign works for publishing in Arabic
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#17327938346265394-527: The modern European languages. A greater problem, however, is translating terms relating to cultural concepts that have no equivalent in the target language. For full comprehension, such situations require the provision of a gloss . Generally, the greater the contact and exchange that have existed between two languages, or between those languages and a third one, the greater is the ratio of metaphrase to paraphrase that may be used in translating among them. However, due to shifts in ecological niches of words,
5481-479: The more recent terminologies, to " formal equivalence "; and "paraphrase", to " dynamic equivalence ". Strictly speaking, the concept of metaphrase—of "word-for-word translation"—is an imperfect concept, because a given word in a given language often carries more than one meaning; and because a similar given meaning may often be represented in a given language by more than one word. Nevertheless, "metaphrase" and "paraphrase" may be useful as ideal concepts that mark
5568-486: The mother tongue of around 1% of the population. From the 1840s, some writers experimented with a Norwegianised Danish by incorporating words that were descriptive of Norwegian scenery and folk life, and adopting a more Norwegian syntax. Knud Knudsen proposed to change spelling and inflection in accordance with the Dano-Norwegian koiné , known as "cultivated everyday speech." A small adjustment in this direction
5655-417: The oldest form of the runic alphabets . A number of inscriptions are memorials to the dead, while others are magical in content. The oldest are carved on loose objects, while later ones are chiseled in runestones . They are the oldest written record of any Germanic language. East Germanic languages West Germanic languages Icelandic Faroese Norwegian Danish Swedish Around 800 AD,
5742-757: The population. Norwegian is one of the working languages of the Nordic Council . Under the Nordic Language Convention , citizens of the Nordic countries who speak Norwegian have the opportunity to use it when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for any interpretation or translation costs. Like most of the languages in Europe, Norwegian derives from Proto-Indo-European . As early Indo-Europeans spread across Europe, they became isolated from each other and new languages developed. In northwest Europe,
5829-442: The principles of Norwegian orthography, e.g. zebra in Norwegian is written sebra . Due to historical reasons, some otherwise Norwegian family names are also written using these letters. Some letters may be modified by diacritics : é , è , ê , ó , ò , and ô . In Nynorsk, ì and ù and ỳ are occasionally seen as well. The diacritics are not compulsory, but may in a few cases distinguish between different meanings of
5916-750: The script was simplified to the Younger Futhark , and inscriptions became more abundant. At the same time, the beginning of the Viking Age led to the spread of Old Norse to Iceland , Greenland , and the Faroe Islands . Viking colonies also existed in parts of the British Isles , France ( Normandy ), North America, and Kievan Rus . In all of these places except Iceland and the Faroes, Old Norse speakers went extinct or were absorbed into
6003-527: The sense. Dryden cautioned, however, against the license of "imitation", i.e., of adapted translation: "When a painter copies from the life... he has no privilege to alter features and lineaments..." This general formulation of the central concept of translation— equivalence —is as adequate as any that has been proposed since Cicero and Horace , who, in 1st-century-BCE Rome , famously and literally cautioned against translating "word for word" ( verbum pro verbo ). Despite occasional theoretical diversity,
6090-606: The southern part of northern Norway ( Nordland county). Today, Nynorsk is the official language of not only four of the nineteen Norwegian counties but also various municipalities in five other counties. NRK , the Norwegian broadcasting corporation, broadcasts in both Bokmål and Nynorsk, and all governmental agencies are required to support both written languages. Bokmål is used in 92% of all written publications, and Nynorsk in 8% (2000). Like some other European countries, Norway has an official "advisory board"— Språkrådet (Norwegian Language Council)— that determines, after approval from
6177-610: The syllable boundary. The pitch accents (as well as the peculiar phrase accent in the low-tone dialects) give the Norwegian language a "singing" quality that makes it easy to distinguish from other languages. Accent 1 generally occurs in words that were monosyllabic in Old Norse , and accent 2 in words that were polysyllabic. The Norwegian alphabet has 29 letters. The letters c , q , w , x and z are only used in loanwords . As loanwords are assimilated into Norwegian, their spelling might change to reflect Norwegian pronunciation and
6264-474: The target language, "counterparts," or equivalents , for the expressions used in the source language: When [words] appear... literally graceful, it were an injury to the author that they should be changed. But since... what is beautiful in one [language] is often barbarous, nay sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words: 'tis enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate
6351-491: The target-language rendering. On the other hand, such "spill-overs" have sometimes imported useful source-language calques and loanwords that have enriched target languages. Translators, including early translators of sacred texts , have helped shape the very languages into which they have translated. Because of the laboriousness of the translation process, since the 1940s efforts have been made, with varying degrees of success, to automate translation or to mechanically aid
6438-401: The three grammatical genders from Old Norse to some extent. The only exceptions are the dialect of Bergen and a few upper class sociolects at the west end of Oslo that have completely lost the feminine gender. According to Marit Westergaard , approximately 80% of nouns in Norwegian are masculine. Norwegian and other Scandinavian languages use a suffix to indicate definiteness of
6525-475: The two Germanic languages with the greatest numbers of speakers, English and German, have close similarities with Norwegian, neither is mutually intelligible with it. Norwegian is a descendant of Old Norse , the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age . Today there are two official forms of written Norwegian, Bokmål (Riksmål) and Nynorsk (Landsmål), each with its own variants. Bokmål developed from
6612-426: The unofficial Høgnorsk is more conservative than Nynorsk and is far closer to Faroese , Icelandic and Old Norse . Norwegians are educated in both Bokmål and Nynorsk. Each student gets assigned a native form based on which school they go to, whence the other form (known as Sidemål ) will be a mandatory school subject from elementary school through high school. For instance, a Norwegian whose main language form
6699-418: The untranslatables have been set aside, the problems for a translator, especially of Chinese poetry, are two: What does the translator think the poetic line says? And once he thinks he understands it, how can he render it into the target language? Most of the difficulties, according to Link, arise in addressing the second problem, "where the impossibility of perfect answers spawns endless debate." Almost always at
6786-447: The vocabulary coincides with Bokmål. Outside Eastern Norway , this spoken variation is not used. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the standard written language of Norway. As a result, the development of modern written Norwegian has been subject to strong controversy related to nationalism , rural versus urban discourse, and Norway's literary history. Historically, Bokmål is a Norwegianised variety of Danish, while Nynorsk
6873-427: The word bønder ('farmers') is pronounced using the simpler tone 1, while bønner ('beans' or 'prayers') uses the more complex tone 2. Though spelling differences occasionally differentiate written words, in most cases the minimal pairs are written alike, since written Norwegian has no explicit accent marks. In most eastern low-tone dialects, accent 1 uses a low flat pitch in the first syllable, while accent 2 uses
6960-568: The word, e.g.: for ('for/to'), fór ('went'), fòr ('furrow') and fôr ('fodder'). Loanwords may be spelled with other diacritics, most notably ï, ü , á and à . The two legally recognized forms of written Norwegian are Bokmål (literally 'book tongue') and Nynorsk ('new Norwegian'), which are regulated by the Language Council of Norway ( Språkrådet ). Two other written forms without official status also exist. One, called Riksmål ('national language'),
7047-508: The work of the Tang dynasty poet Wang Wei (699–759 CE). Some of the art of classical Chinese poetry [writes Link] must simply be set aside as untranslatable . The internal structure of Chinese characters has a beauty of its own, and the calligraphy in which classical poems were written is another important but untranslatable dimension. Since Chinese characters do not vary in length, and because there are exactly five characters per line in
7134-933: The works of others than in their own works, and hold higher than their own glory the service that they render their country. Due to Western colonialism and cultural dominance in recent centuries, Western translation traditions have largely replaced other traditions. The Western traditions draw on both ancient and medieval traditions, and on more recent European innovations. Though earlier approaches to translation are less commonly used today, they retain importance when dealing with their products, as when historians view ancient or medieval records to piece together events which took place in non-Western or pre-Western environments. Also, though heavily influenced by Western traditions and practiced by translators taught in Western-style educational systems, Chinese and related translation traditions retain some theories and philosophies unique to
7221-451: Was changed further towards Bokmål. Since then Bokmål has reverted even further toward traditional Riksmål, while Nynorsk still adheres to the 1959 standard. Therefore, a small minority of Nynorsk enthusiasts use a more conservative standard called Høgnorsk . The Samnorsk policy had little influence after 1960, and was officially abandoned in 2002. While the sound systems of Norwegian and Swedish are similar, considerable variation exists among
7308-480: Was clearly not Aasen's intended meaning. The name of the Danish language in Norway was a topic of hot dispute throughout the 19th century. Its proponents claimed that it was a language common to Norway and Denmark, and no more Danish than Norwegian. The proponents of Landsmål thought that the Danish character of the language should not be concealed. In 1899, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson proposed the neutral name Riksmål , meaning 'national language' like Landsmål , and this
7395-453: Was implemented in the first official reform of the Danish language in Norway in 1862 and more extensively after his death in two official reforms in 1907 and 1917. Meanwhile, a nationalistic movement strove for the development of a new written Norwegian. Ivar Aasen , a botanist and self-taught linguist, began his work to create a new Norwegian language at the age of 22. He traveled around the country collecting words and examples of grammar from
7482-641: Was officially adopted along with the 1907 spelling reform. The name Riksmål is sometimes interpreted as 'state language', but this meaning is secondary at best. (Compare to Danish rigsmål from where the name was borrowed.) After the personal union with Sweden was dissolved in 1905, both languages were developed further and reached what is now considered their classic forms after a reform in 1917. Riksmål was, in 1929, officially renamed Bokmål (literally 'book language'), and Landsmål to Nynorsk (literally 'new Norwegian'). A proposition to substitute Danish-Norwegian ( dansk-norsk ) for Bokmål lost in parliament by
7569-624: Was revived by the establishment of the Madrasat al-Alsun (School of Tongues) in Egypt in 1813. There is a separate tradition of translation in South , Southeast and East Asia (primarily of texts from the Indian and Chinese civilizations), connected especially with the rendering of religious, particularly Buddhist , texts and with the governance of the Chinese empire. Classical Indian translation
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