"Elementary, my dear Watson!"

[muckefuck]

So I've just been asked how it's possible to translate complicated terminology like deoxyribonucleic acid in non-Western languages. The answer is: The same way we do in English. That is to say, such terms are simply built up out of shorter roots. The main difference are: (1) Since Chinese has less inflectional morphology than English, the roots are invariable; (2) The roots are drawn from earlier stages of the same language rather than from a related language. (Of course, since non-Sinitic languages use Chinese roots in the same way--much modern Chinese vocabulary was actually originally coined in Japan--there are parallels to the English situation in other East Asian countries.)

First, let's break down the English term: de- oxy(gen) rib(on) -o(se) nucle(us) -ic acid, and look at each element in detail:

1. de- is a privative suffix, showing that something is lacking or has been removed. (It's related to the Latin preposition de "down, off".) It maps to Chinese 去 qu4 "depart, drive away".
2. Most names of elements in Chinese are new coinages: A certain radical is combined with a phonetic to create a unique character. Noble gases take the "air" radical (found in existing characters such as 氣 qi4 "air, gas, breath, qi"). For whatever reason, the phonetic chosen for oxygen is 羊 yang2 "sheep, goat" and, for whatever other reason, the resulting compound 氧 is pronounced yang3 rather than yang2. Go figure!
3. ribose is an arbitrary rearrangement of arabinose, the name of the sugar from which the German chemist Fischer synthesised it. (-ose, of course, is the usual chemical suffix for sugars, cf. lactose, sucrose, etc.) The Chinese translation is 核糖 he2tang2 "kernel sugar", probably due to its being found in the nucleus of cells (vide infra).
4. In Latin, nucleus means "kernel", being a diminutive of nux "nut". The corresponding Chinese term is 核(子) he2(zi), e.g. 核子戰爭 "nuclear war"
5. -ic is an adjectival suffix of the sort which Chinese makes no use of.
6. acid comes from the Latin acidus "sour", because that's how acids taste to us. The Chinese make use of the same semantic extension, using 酸 suan1 for both "sour" and "acid".

Put it all together, and you have 去氧核糖核酸 "departed oxygen kernel sugar kernel acid". The near one-to-one mapping between the Latin and the Chinese is no accident; most Chinese scientific terminology was derived directly from the Greco-Latinate vocabulary of the major European languages.

Now, hear's an exercise for the student: If I tell you that 炭 means "charcoal", then what do you think 二氧化碳 represents?

Comments

[cpratt.livejournal.com]

Kohlensäure?

[mistress-elaine.livejournal.com]

I believe that is the right answer. :-)

[cpratt.livejournal.com]

Seems like it. I don't read Chinese; it's just that charcoal sounds like it would be related to carbon [-> G Kohlenstoff], and as long as we're talking about acids...

I did cheat and check to make sure using Word 2003's built-in translation feature, though. :)

[mistress-elaine.livejournal.com]

I do read Chinese, and my dictionary confirms that you and I had the right hunch. In my case, it was the er4 (two) which gave it away. I just knew it had to be di- something, and, er, Kohlensäure seemed the most obvious choice. :-)

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

Most certainly carbon dioxide. Though here I think you make the grave mistake of lulling those unfamiliar with Chinese into the false sense of security, with the belief that attaching a radical to a character will produce another character with a related meaning (from my experience, such logical formations are in the minority. ^^;;;).

Japanese uses 二酸化炭素, and 炭 is charcoal, carbon -- like many other languages, there's no differentiation.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

So what's "oxygen" in Japanese then? Is it a literal calque on Sauerstoff?

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

Indeed it is -- 酸素, sanso, "Sour element". Most scientific terminology is either transliterated directly from German or is at least heavily influenced by it.

[pne.livejournal.com]

So no points for guessing the Japanese word for "hydrogen".

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

What, are you looking for extra credit or something?

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

You can guess it regardless. ^_-