Croatia to "consign EU translations"

Why has Zagreb been so busy trying to change words in the Serbo-croat language and invent new words to concoct a new 'croatian' language?

It looks pathetic to me.

Imagine if the Australians, New Zeaanders, Irish, Scots, Welch, Canadians, USers, and scores of other English speaking countries decided to fabricate their own englishes.
Cop on!

MB,Ireland

I challenge you to tell us a date for Serbia's accession to the EU.
(Mircea, 1 January 2010 17:44

I would love to see a posting of yours on other than EU enlargement.

Happy New Year to Everybody.

Croatians linguists were constantly insisting that Serbian and Croatian are two completely different languages; it looks like they’ve now dispelled that myth. I recall some time ago that Brussels was keen on resurrecting Serbo-Croat as an official EU language in order to lessen the administrative burden of having to deal with several nationalistic/regional labels for what is essentially one language. I don’t think that level of irony though would go down very well with linguistic extremists in Zagreb and Sarajevo.

@ Amer
"Translation" from "ije" to "e" cannot be considered a translation at all.
The cumbersome part, requiring "human" intervention will be dealing with the clumsy syntax of croatian sentence which is, basically, a poor transplant/translation of a German sentence structure. A possible consideration will be also a language cleanup of newly invented words, invented only with a task of making them sound more "croatian".
Happy New Year!

This is very good news especially for those who can't really afford doing it themselves (BiH, MAK)..

Translation of the acquis communautaire is quite a significant undertaking and should shave off a decent amount of time Serbia needs to join the EU.

Amer:
> Happy New Year - and let's all hope it's also the beginning of a better decade.

We purists consider 2011 as the start of the new decade :)

Hap-py new year to all.

'This is very good news especially for those who can't really afford doing it themselves (BiH, MAK)..'

It's the EU that will be saving the money, since it's the one that funds the process. Too bad about all the translators who won't get the work, although editors surely will be needed to deal with the more subtle differences.

(Logic, 2 January 2010 17:16)

Croatian/Serbian differences are obviously not my strong point. On the other hand, if there is only a limited number of positions in which exceptions are found then it can be handled higher up in the program than the general rule. For example, if the nominative form of a word ends in -ija, as in your example, you just specify that ije does not go to e at the end of a word. For exceptions, compile a list, or just run a spellchecker at the end and deal with the problems individually. (I occasionally have to do this to convert my American English into British English - someday I'll go beyond the spelling rules (BE ou vs. AE o (colour/color) and deal with things like singular vs. plural for collectives: eg. BE "the team are" vs. AE for "the team is." NB: this is NOT a New Year's resolution.


Peter, Sydney - caught me! Like a lot of people, I'm really eager to see the end of the 00's.

Now, this is something a leader does.

Question for discussion: how many of the changes from Croatian to Serbian can be made automatically (e.g., ije to e), how many will require human intervention?
Happy New Year - and let's all hope it's also the beginning of a better decade.

Aleks,

I challenge you to tell us a date for Serbia's accession to the EU.

@ AMER

"The ije/e matter is simply one of transliteration (like changing the alphabet)...computers do that all the time"
Technically, piece of cake. But not a sweet one.
I believe that through some over-simplification of ije/e "matter" you were wrongly led to believe that a simple automatic change would be a possible solution. Which in turn proves the old saying that insufficient knowledge is sometimes more dangerous than no knowledge at all. Imagine only the plural of the word "cell"- celija/cel-IJE, be it biological or prison ones, transformed to cel-E,meaning literally bold, hairless parts of heads, or simply, bold, hairless people.
Undemocratic as it may sound, a person attempting such a "bold" move, i.e. automatic change should be physically restrained and permanently removed from computer premises before he/she comes close to that keyboard!
As for croatian language holding so faithfully to it's slavic roots, are you sure Croats would approve of your comment? Whatever happened to the much cherished theories of some Iranian tribe, or some Gothic origin? They spoke some language,too?
By the way, thanks for Antwerp link - a real diamond, keep the good work like this coming!

'@ Amer
"Translation" from "ije" to "e" cannot be considered a translation at all.
The cumbersome part, requiring "human" intervention will be dealing with the clumsy syntax of croatian sentence which is, basically, a poor transplant/translation of a German sentence structure.'

The ije/e matter is simply one of transliteration (like changing the alphabet) - no question of translation here, computers do this all the time.

As for the syntax, if you mean the use of the infinitive in Croatian (the dictionary form) where Serbian uses the subjunctive (da +), this was the original Slavic situation, wasn't it? It's still the form used in Eastern and Western Slavic languages, after all.

Aleks,

I challenge you to tell us a date for Serbia's accession to the EU.

Now, this is something a leader does.

Question for discussion: how many of the changes from Croatian to Serbian can be made automatically (e.g., ije to e), how many will require human intervention?
Happy New Year - and let's all hope it's also the beginning of a better decade.

'@ Amer
"Translation" from "ije" to "e" cannot be considered a translation at all.
The cumbersome part, requiring "human" intervention will be dealing with the clumsy syntax of croatian sentence which is, basically, a poor transplant/translation of a German sentence structure.'

The ije/e matter is simply one of transliteration (like changing the alphabet) - no question of translation here, computers do this all the time.

As for the syntax, if you mean the use of the infinitive in Croatian (the dictionary form) where Serbian uses the subjunctive (da +), this was the original Slavic situation, wasn't it? It's still the form used in Eastern and Western Slavic languages, after all.

This is very good news especially for those who can't really afford doing it themselves (BiH, MAK)..

Translation of the acquis communautaire is quite a significant undertaking and should shave off a decent amount of time Serbia needs to join the EU.

'This is very good news especially for those who can't really afford doing it themselves (BiH, MAK)..'

It's the EU that will be saving the money, since it's the one that funds the process. Too bad about all the translators who won't get the work, although editors surely will be needed to deal with the more subtle differences.

@ Amer
"Translation" from "ije" to "e" cannot be considered a translation at all.
The cumbersome part, requiring "human" intervention will be dealing with the clumsy syntax of croatian sentence which is, basically, a poor transplant/translation of a German sentence structure. A possible consideration will be also a language cleanup of newly invented words, invented only with a task of making them sound more "croatian".
Happy New Year!

I challenge you to tell us a date for Serbia's accession to the EU.
(Mircea, 1 January 2010 17:44

I would love to see a posting of yours on other than EU enlargement.

Happy New Year to Everybody.

Why has Zagreb been so busy trying to change words in the Serbo-croat language and invent new words to concoct a new 'croatian' language?

It looks pathetic to me.

Imagine if the Australians, New Zeaanders, Irish, Scots, Welch, Canadians, USers, and scores of other English speaking countries decided to fabricate their own englishes.
Cop on!

MB,Ireland

Croatians linguists were constantly insisting that Serbian and Croatian are two completely different languages; it looks like they’ve now dispelled that myth. I recall some time ago that Brussels was keen on resurrecting Serbo-Croat as an official EU language in order to lessen the administrative burden of having to deal with several nationalistic/regional labels for what is essentially one language. I don’t think that level of irony though would go down very well with linguistic extremists in Zagreb and Sarajevo.

Amer:
> Happy New Year - and let's all hope it's also the beginning of a better decade.

We purists consider 2011 as the start of the new decade :)

Hap-py new year to all.

@ AMER

"The ije/e matter is simply one of transliteration (like changing the alphabet)...computers do that all the time"
Technically, piece of cake. But not a sweet one.
I believe that through some over-simplification of ije/e "matter" you were wrongly led to believe that a simple automatic change would be a possible solution. Which in turn proves the old saying that insufficient knowledge is sometimes more dangerous than no knowledge at all. Imagine only the plural of the word "cell"- celija/cel-IJE, be it biological or prison ones, transformed to cel-E,meaning literally bold, hairless parts of heads, or simply, bold, hairless people.
Undemocratic as it may sound, a person attempting such a "bold" move, i.e. automatic change should be physically restrained and permanently removed from computer premises before he/she comes close to that keyboard!
As for croatian language holding so faithfully to it's slavic roots, are you sure Croats would approve of your comment? Whatever happened to the much cherished theories of some Iranian tribe, or some Gothic origin? They spoke some language,too?
By the way, thanks for Antwerp link - a real diamond, keep the good work like this coming!

(Logic, 2 January 2010 17:16)

Croatian/Serbian differences are obviously not my strong point. On the other hand, if there is only a limited number of positions in which exceptions are found then it can be handled higher up in the program than the general rule. For example, if the nominative form of a word ends in -ija, as in your example, you just specify that ije does not go to e at the end of a word. For exceptions, compile a list, or just run a spellchecker at the end and deal with the problems individually. (I occasionally have to do this to convert my American English into British English - someday I'll go beyond the spelling rules (BE ou vs. AE o (colour/color) and deal with things like singular vs. plural for collectives: eg. BE "the team are" vs. AE for "the team is." NB: this is NOT a New Year's resolution.


Peter, Sydney - caught me! Like a lot of people, I'm really eager to see the end of the 00's.