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Discussion Groups / English Usage / February 2010Intentive/intentiveness
Hello everybody (and everything)! I have a question to native speakers of English (only): how much strange do the above words sound to you? I searched it in several dictionaries and it appears that both "intentive" and "intentiveness" were in use some 100 years ago (they're in 1913 Webster's) but I didn't find it in any contemporary dictionary. The reason I'd like to know this is that I translate a contemporary philosophical text (phenomenology) in which the term is used and I'd like to opt for a bit unconventional and strange-sounding translation. So if the terms sounded strange to today English speakers, it would be an argument for the proposed translation. In the text the terms are reffered to as a D.Cairn's terms from the time when he lectured in New School of Social Research, which mean they had to be used in between 1953 and 1969 for the first time (as technical terms with the given meaning), and in that time it probably already sounded quite oldfashioned, I suppose - at least to the listeners, if not for Cairns (who was born in 1901). Or could anybody give some evidence that in that time the words were normally in use? The main question is, though, how it sounds today to your today-ears. I'm waiting for interesting answers (confirming my point ;))) Katarzyna > Hello everybody (and everything)! > I have a question to native speakers of English (only): how much [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] > to your today-ears. I'm waiting for interesting answers (confirming > my point ;))) Katarzyna I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "strange". It doesn't seem peculiar to me, so much as unfamiliar. I would have to guess at the meaning, and my guess for "intentive" would be something like "relating to intention", which is not exactly what OneLook says it means. Unless context makes the meaning very clear, I would hope to see the word defined on first use. >> Hello everybody (and everything)! >> I have a question to native speakers of English (only): how much [quoted text clipped - 25 lines] > means. Unless context makes the meaning very clear, I would hope to > see the word defined on first use. I would go further: unless the context makes the meaning very clear I wouldn't use the word at all, even if I did want a "strange-sounding" translation (which on the whole I wouldn't). It's almost never a good idea to aim for obscurity: many academic texts achieve that quite readily without any intention in that direction. Complaints that a text is too clear are about as rare as complaints that a lecture is too short. For a fictional work famous for its obscurity it may make sense to aim for a similar obscurity in the translation. Putting Finnegan's Wake into clear and idiomatic Polish would be a bit pointless.  Signatureathel > Hello everybody (and everything)! > I have a question to native speakers of English (only): how much [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > So if the terms sounded strange to today English speakers, it would be > an argument for the proposed translation. We know kindred words were currently used by philosophers in the 1960s, viz. intention and intentionality (and there may be other variants.) If the translator can establish that his author used a foreign term with the same meaning as ABC's English term, she should use ABC's term to translate the word. If the translator is sure the author's term is NOT the same as every likely similar term, she would be wise to use a new and distinctive word. SignatureDon Phillipson Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada) > > Hello everybody (and everything)! > > I have a question to native speakers of English (only): how much [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] > Carlsbad Springs > (Ottawa, Canada) Intention and intentionality are "normal" words, i. e. used in everyday speach by native English users (that is why they also are in today dictionaries), whereas "intentive/ness" nowadays is not. When asking whether it sounds "strange" I ment, whether it sounds unfamiliar to today speakers - that is the answer to CDB - I didn't mean "peculiar" (I myself am not native speaker, so forgive me, if I don't always express myself clearly enough). And the CDB's answer already confirms what I expected, namely, that it is so much unfamiliar, that you even are not sure about its meaning - this is actually more than I thought, I supposed it will just sound somehow ugly and repulsive to you, like some artificially created word or something. But I would be glad to have more opinions than just one. (And I don't want to offend any good-willed advisers, but, please, I don't really need advice on how to translate or on contemporary or any other philosophy. I would like to know only, what I asked about.) Regards, Katarzyna <snip> >(And I don't want to offend any good-willed advisers, but, please, I >don't really need advice on how to translate or on contemporary or any >other philosophy. I would like to know only, what I asked about.) You'll have to excuse us, Katarzyna, if we sometimes stray from the question asked, for that is a tradition of this newsgroup. SignatureRegards, Chuck Riggs, An American who lives near Dublin, Ireland and usually spells in BrE > On Thu, 7 Jan 2010 18:03:49 -0800 (PST), kkrolewna > [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > Chuck Riggs, > An American who lives near Dublin, Ireland and usually spells in BrE OK, you are pardoned ;)) Still I have to apologize for forgetting a bit about this thread, if anyone cares anymore... I was working on something else and didnt even want to think about all those intentionalities, intentivenesses and other strange stuff. I think I will have to read Cairns' lectures first, to see whether this new terminology really has some point or whether it's just making things obscure. I'm afraid he might just have wanted to distinguish himself from other phenomenologists, who he thought were wrong and who were using the "normal" terms "intentionality" and "intentional" - but I'll have to see. Anyway, thanks for your answers. Katarzyna PS. And I don't translate to Polish (as someone hinted above), despite having a Polish name :)) |
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