Re: THEORY: Expanding in translation?

In a message dated 3/7/2008 12:28:10 PM Central Standard Time,
jimhenry1973@GMAIL.COM writes:


> Somewhere or other Claude Piron, responding to someone saying
> that Esperanto is too verbose, points out that translation -- between
> almost any pair of languages -- almost always results in an increased
> length of text.  I forget what he said the average increase is, but it was
> something like 10%.
>
> Is that true in your experience as well?  Do y'all know of any studies
> on the subject?
>
> The only contrary evidence I can think of is our translation relay
> experience; the text
> fluctuates in length from one language to the next, it doesn't seem to
> constantly
> mushroom in size over the course of the relay.
>
> Piron was a professional translator for the UN and WHO; maybe what he
> says is true
> primarily of legal documents and the like, not so much for literature?
>
I think Cucumis has some mention of this.  They compare the translation
lengths of many different languages.

Chinese seems to have the shortest.

I'll look into some more.

stevo   </HTML>

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