Logical samba `avec' translations

I.M.R.Pinheiro (Note 1)

Written:7th August 2006.

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is providing a joyful logical account on the technicalities of

the translation work. We mix some superficial understanding of the Chinese language

with a deep understanding of the technical translation work (involving both

Portuguese and English languages) to support the applications of Logic to Language,

that is: we defend Semiotic studies by means of a new association, yet not tried. As a

plus, we also make use of our previous work, on the `Sorites’ problem, to identify

similarities between the `Sorites’ problem and issues related to the technique of

translation, that is: we provide an alternative way, for linguistic experts, to understand

the `Sorites’ problem as well as to make use of it, as a tool, in their own research.

Keywords:

Translation, Fuzzy, Paraconsistency, Sorites, Language, Logic.

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1. Introduction

Four pieces of writing form our introduction:

1. Explanations on the `Sorites' problem;

2. Explanations on the `Fuzzy' logical system, as devised by `Zadeh';

3. Explanations on `Paraconsistency', as understood by `Priest', accompanied by

a description of the underlying reasoning behind the language translation

works.

After this introduction, we then try to apply those concepts to the theory (logic) which

makes of `translation' a professional field.

1.1 Sorites paradox

We here copy our introduction to the problem as stated in (PINHEIRO, M.R. (2006)).

The name `Sorites' derives from the Greek word soros (meaning `heap'), and

originally referred to a puzzle known as `The Heap’ (not to a paradox):

`Would you describe a single grain of sand as a heap?

No.

Would you describe two grains of sand as a heap?

No...You must admit the presence of a heap sooner or later, so where do you draw

the line?'

[HYDE, D. (1997)]

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The Sorites paradox is generally taken to mean all problems which are variations of

the above `heap problem’. The `heap problem’ starts with a clear heap of sand and one

takes one grain of sand at a time until there are no grains left. The problem is telling

where one stops having a heap. The heart of the problem is determining where the line

(if there is any), which separates `heaps’ from `non-heaps’, is located. The puzzle has

been astonishing people for centuries because it is evident that there must be a line

between `heaps’ and `non-heaps’: one has, at the beginning of the puzzle, a clear heap,

and, at the end, a clear non-heap. Admitting that there is no line to be drawn, that

things `are’ and `are not’, at the same time, as Paraconsistency wants to defend, would

mean stating that it is the case that either what you see at the beginning is not what

you see, once you clearly see a `heap’, or what you see at the end is not what you see,

once it is clearly a `non-heap’. It seems completely unnatural to admit that something

that one would easily classify as a `heap’ is actually a `non-heap’ as well. Therefore, it

must be the case that there is a moment when the `heap’ stops being `a heap’. We must

reassure the reader as to the view we hold: the Sorites was born in a classical logic

context, and, in it, it should be solved, even because what intrigues people is its

similarity to the mathematical induction, which is, clearly, classical.

So far, we only repeated the words written in [PINHEIRO, M.R. (2006)], but we now

ask the reader to concentrate on these lines: `Admitting that there is no line to be

drawn; that things “are” and “are not”, at the same time, as Paraconsistency wants to

defend, would mean stating that it is the case that either what you see, at the

beginning, is not what you see, once you clearly see “a heap”; or what you see, at the

end, is not what you see, once it is clearly “a non-heap”.

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1.1.1 How to generate problems containing the essence of the heap

problem

An easy way to create a Sorites is finding out the `right amount’ to be added to some

specificity of the attribute of the first element of the sequence (for instance:

`brightness’, in the case of colors) as well as the `right attribute’, which may actually

be chosen from several options (any color, any vaguely defined quality, etc.). But we

also need to present the Sorites in a particular way, so that people are lead to believe

that there is no way to tell where the line is. This way of presenting things is as the

increasing set goes, precisely, that is, if one changes the set ordering, placing, for

instance, the final element from the class beside the first one, there is the danger that

one identifies at least one sharp cut-off in the sequence immediately, and the problem

loses its value. Therefore, a soritical problem demands:

a) An attribute which may be established by means of a progressive sequence

(increasing (Note 2));

b) The right amount (increment) to be added to each attribute, of each element, of the

sequence;

c) Of course, a first element for the sequence (our a1);

d) A clear opposition between the first and the last elements (say element a1 and

element aN), with the number of elements (n) allowed to be infinity (elements

of the sequence) regarding the attribute (either the attribute may be given to

the first, but may not be given to the last, or vice-versa).

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1.2 Fuzzy Logic

We have decided to cut and paste (with very minor editing modifications) the

explanation from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ANDERSON ET AL.

(1996)):

`The term ``fuzzy logic" emerged in the development of the theory of fuzzy sets by

``Lofti Zadeh” [ZADEH, L. (1965)].

A fuzzy subset A of a (crisp) set X is characterized by assigning to each element x of

X the degree of membership of x in A (e.g., X is a group of people, A the fuzzy set of

old people in X). Now if X is a set of propositions then its elements may be assigned

their degree of truth, which may be “absolutely true”, “absolutely false” or some

intermediate truth degree: a proposition may be truer than another proposition. This is

obvious in the case of vague (imprecise) propositions like ``this person is old"

(beautiful, rich, etc.). In the analogy to various definitions of operations on fuzzy sets

(intersection, union, complement...), one may ask how propositions can be combined

by connectives (conjunction, disjunction, negation…), and if the truth degree of a

composed proposition is determined by the truth degrees of its components, i.e., if the

connectives have their corresponding truth functions (like truth tables of classical

logic). Saying `yes' (which is the mainstream of fuzzy logic), one accepts the truth-

functional approach; this makes fuzzy logic to something distinctly different from

probability theory since the latter is not truth-functional (the probability of

conjunction of two propositions is not determined by the probabilities of those

propositions).

Two main directions in Fuzzy logic have to be distinguished [ZADEH, L. (1994)]:

Fuzzy logic in the broad sense (older, better known, heavily applied but not asking

deep logical questions) serves mainly as apparatus for fuzzy control, analysis of

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vagueness in natural language, and several other application domains (it is one of the

techniques of soft-computing, i.e., computational methods tolerant to sub optimality

and impreciseness (vagueness), which give quick, simple and sufficiently good

solutions)".

Another exert from the same source (ANDERSON ET AL. (1996)), same article, is:

`Fuzzy logic, in the narrow sense, is symbolic logic with a comparative notion of truth

developed fully in the spirit of classical logic (syntax, semantics, axiomatization,

truth-preserving deduction, completeness, etc.; both propositional and predicate

logic): It is a branch of many-valued logic based on the paradigm of inference under

vagueness. Fuzzy logic is a relatively young discipline, serving as a foundation for

Fuzzy logic in the broad sense, as well as subject of independent logical interest, since

it turns out that strictly logical investigation of this kind of logical calculi can go very

far'.

This definition looks very good, as introduction, and explains quite a lot about the

logic under trial of explanation.

In the Sorites paradox, Fuzzy logic got translated into assigning random truth degrees

contained in the real interval [0,1], so that each step in the soritical sequence is further

or closer to the truth, depending on what degree the antecedent of each inferential step

acquired by this random assignment. With the progressive, and gradual, acquisition of

non-veracity by the antecedent, one finally gets a false implication, so that the last

step is always nicely justifiable. This account is accused of higher-order vagueness by

researchers in Logic, and such a point is very clearly made by Hyde in, for instance,

[HYDE, D. (1997)]. Basically, it is as if Fuzzy logic produces an interface in which to

convert real values contained in [0,1] into either 0 or 1, that is, it changes `close to

human representation’(once we believe to have proved that human normal – not ill –

representation goes far beyond) into machine representation. Problem is that it is easy

Pinheiro 6
to prove that such is never possible entirely (otherwise Turing contest would have

made it [CASTI, J. (1999)]). Same problems addressed in [PINHEIRO, M.R. (2006)]

appear in this account on the Sorites.

1. Paraconsistency and Translation

The paraconsistent logical system is that which differs from the others for one specific

reason: it allows contradictions to not bring the law of explosion in an implication,

that is, uttering `p' and `not-p', at the same time, does not make the whole set of

possible assertions in the system true, only a few chosen ones.

In principle, that is what makes Paraconsistency special.

Paraconsistency is mentioned in several sources in the literature. Perhaps a good start

is [TANAKA, K. (2003)].

As mentioned in [PINHEIRO, M.R. (2006)], with further detail, `Priest’ defends it to

belong to the beings, that is, to be ONTOLOGICAL, whilst `Da Costa’ defends it to

never belong to beings, that is, to be purely logical/machine friendly.

As the most recent application of Paraconsistency (July, 2000), in the conference held

in Brazil, SP, with participation of both `Priest’ and `Da Costa’, someone has

presented a robot which could be programmed to instead of crashing, having received

conflicting information from the environment, when it had not been programmed for

such, would still perform an action, that is, would still be able to act/move.

We here wish to explore this aspect of Paraconsistency: the ability of allowing

decisions when facing extremely conflicting information. The matter, however, is just

allurement to explain how the technical process of translating takes place.

Paraconsistency is also mentioned in [PRIEST, G. (2000)] for the curious reader.

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We must mention here that we do not believe in Ontological Paraconsistency.

Irrespective of the point of `Tanaka’ in the mentioned References Section, there is

another misconception contained in `Priest's’ and other co-thinkers' works: when they

claim the point is about Logic and logical systems, we claim that the point is about

whether inconsistencies are really found in the World, or it is just our Parallax

mistake, that is, the mistake of not mentioning all the conditions involved in our

observation, which makes us mistakenly `assume' that the entities bear inconsistencies

in themselves. We actually believe, as mentioned in [PINHEIRO, M.R. (2006)], that

the beings do not bear inconsistencies, they simply `are'. What there is is an obvious

difficulty with expressing things to people via words, or any other means, which may

be able to convey what we, ourselves, are not able to think of, in precise terms. If our

own judgment is a failure, in the sense that it usually does not involve, or mention, for

instance, in the example `Tanaka’ mentions about `Priest’, about the moving objects

and the law itself, the `referential'; how can our language ever express our thoughts

with the precision that just was not there when we thought of things?

As simple as the wind blows, there is obvious misconception, not in the Brazilian

school, highly founded in scientific studies and `precisification' of definitions (for

instance, in Brazil, it is not accepted that a Mathematics lecturer ever thinks of

brackets as irrelevant, whilst in Australia it is OK: knowledge acquired via direct

observation of systems), but in the Australian `school'. School, here, replaces

`Education' and `Philosophy' of a Country/people of that Country. In terms of that,

what would make it better won, for the Brazilian score, is the statistics on how many

papers are published, in scientific and relevant journals, produced by Brazilian

specialists in both Mathematics and Linguistics. We hold a belief that the Brazilian

score is higher than the Australian score, what makes it more believable that the

Brazilian School of thought holds a far higher chance of being better founded. Apart

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from that, we must also consider how holistic the educational approach in Brazil is

and, in those regards, it is definitely more holistic than the Australian approach,

Brazilian courses encompassing at least four majors per se, and being all of at least

four years, when it comes to university degrees.

Brazilian students are `obliged' to learn at least two other languages, different from

their native language, whilst studying at high school level, what, per se, means more

World communication/understanding/knowledge.

Therefore, considering the way Brazilians are raised, as well as their schools, and

their scientific production, we tend to think that, for probability reasons, they would

be the best bet of any amateur.

For obvious simple logical reasons, the Parallax mistake is there to tell us that

Paraconsistency cannot be ontological, given its easily defeatable argumentation, such

as the one made by `Priest’ and mentioned by `Tanaka’ in the AJL.

Just for the sake of illustration, in 2006, year of this article, `Da Costa' accumulated

135 research articles published in scientific journals, along with several other interests

such as successful supervision of PhD students [DA COSTA, N. (2006)]. `Dr. Priest’,

at the same year, with a much more reduced scope of work, accumulated 114

[PRIEST, G. (2006)]. The difference, in the figure of the papers, might not be that

relevant, but it is still greater to the Brazilian top theorist in the subject. Also, if put

together with other statistical factors, such as diversification of different professional

tasks, it is even more in favor of the Brazilian theorist, what confirms our written

argumentation on the strongest statistical support, if nothing else, to the non-

ontological Paraconsistency.

This is one more argumentative line (technical), to the side of our previous assertions,

about someone who knows nothing about Logic, but wants to `bet their assets' on one

of the schools being righter than the others.

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Well, all of this must have to do with translation, at some stage. Let's see...

1.4 Intersections involving Fuzzy logic, Paraconsistency, and the

technique of Translation

Basically, due to the extraordinary number of matches, of similar meanings, in

another language, for a couple of words in a origin-language, one may think that

certain lexicon word `may be' and `may not be' what is there, stated in the dictionary.

However, fact is that the words are always referring to something very precise in the

head of those writing/making use of them somehow. That is a case in which

`epistemicism' applies. Basically, if we ever had instruments which were as accurate

as the mind of the speaker/writer/etc, we could tell precisely the image they see (or

reference) whilst speaking/writing/etc, what would make of translation an easier task.

However, as such is impossible, we know there is always going to be some amount of

mistake encompassed in each translated text (of any nature, even technical). That does

not mean `it is a translation' and `it is not'. It is, obviously, a translation. How perfect

that translation is, is another matter. The ontology of the word, however, is precise, in

both languages, when the user of those words is considered (mental images). Easy to

see how Logic could never apply to words of language in general, as non-classicists

would like them to. Pure Language is where logic systems cannot really go, just like

God. God can only be accessed (or experienced) by a person, individually, in their

own degree of understanding/realm of spiritual gifts: The same way goes language.

Language is created by all of us, all the time; it is something `renewable', `dynamic'.

However, the own lexicon is always stuck in time, always behind, given that, when

the words are there included, they have been in common use for long. Once the

lexicon is the only accessible scientific part of language, and even being so, still

Pinheiro 10
differs depending on who writes them, Logic cannot, ever, deal with language.

Basically, apart from everything which may be done with language, people can still

employ words vaguely (in new contexts), and are usually understood, to make things

worse. With a huge push, non-classicists (and Paraconsistency, as well as Fuzzy logic

are non-classical logic systems) could think of employing Logic to technical

translation/lingo: That is certainly something useful and possible, given legal words

and scientific words are usually contained in glossaries used all over the World,

always referring to the same universal mental picture. Therefore, if Paraconsistency

can ever be useful to translators, or theorists in the subject, it has to be where the texts

are 100% technical, that is, texts where all words are contained in the reduced

technical part of Language which is already unique, and taken as standard, all over the

World.

Translators and theorists in the subject must know, however, that several non-

classicists have been creating systems for their own entertainment, with absolutely no

practical use.

With this, those willing to pursue applications in Language, of such systems, are

going to be doing precursor work.

Logical systems are about reasoning and inferences, that is, what may be deduced

from a given set of premises.

With this, new computer programs for translators may be built based on the

application of such logical systems to the reduced scope of purely technical

translations.

In general, in the case of Paraconsistency, giving up, hopefully with generalized

agreement, on the ontological possibility, a loose translated word `may', and `may

not', correspond to the original, in the original language, in terms of mental images,

for instance. Perhaps, however, two words together are definitely going to correspond,

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given it is technical lingo. With paraconsistent systems, we are then allowed to make

provisions for such reasoning, and, mixing more than one logical system, we finally

reach the top competent computer program of translation in the case of technical

translations, which is fully placed under the umbrella `purely technical text'.

On the other hand, there might be a degree of closeness to the mental picture which

may be found by the time the translation is being made. If that degree is entered by

the translator in the computer system (reliability he/she gives to their work), there

might be more accuracy, which may even be mathematically measured, in the final

document, what is a good outcome, once nothing like that currently exists.

In the sections which follow, we write about:

a) Section 2: The technique of Translation;

b) Section 3: Sorites and Chinese language with Fuzzy logic and Paraconsistency;

c) Section 4: Conclusion;

d) Section 5: References.

2. Translation works in general

The translation works, in general, are split into technical and non-technical works,

despite of what `Wikipedia' states in [Wikipedia authors (2006)]. Inside of the non-

technical works, there are the literary translations and flicks, for instance.

Interpretation, that is, that sort of translation involving only verbal work, is considered

something apart: another area. These classifications are easily found in any major

association of professionals in these fields (see for instance `Sintra' in [Sintra website

authors (2006)]).

Technical translations are those which usually bring fewer options to the pair (source;

target), of language words. The source-language is that from which one wishes to

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translate texts/words, and the target-language is that into which one wishes to

translate texts/words.

Every computer program, which makes translations in place of human beings, must

make use of a `translation function' which chooses `a best match', for a certain word,

in the target language.

One can easily see how Fuzzy logic adapts well here, in terms of performing the

matches .

It is obviously the case that the mental picture seen by the speaker of some language

may only be translated into the same picture into another language by a top

professional, if all the following things take place, at the same time:

a) The speaker is an excellent communicator;

b) The audience, as well as the professional of either translation or interpretation,

does not hold any traumas associated to the mention of the words or context,

or even possible memories which may create interference (noise zero from

environment, as we could put it) – notice here that even if we take the

professional to be 100% free from psychological/psychiatric problems

regarding that picture, or words, used to describe it by the speaker, or even

his/her gestures, or type of display used, there is still a problem with the

reception by the audience of whatever the professional is stating: notice well

the full human complexity involved, and, so far, we are still disregarding

factors such as attention, care, concentration, etc.;

c) The professional who is translating, or interpreting, is an excellent

communicator himself/herself, with no restrictions to moods, environments,

audiences, etc.;

Pinheiro 13
 d) The cultural understanding of the professional is broad (both sides, both

cultures: audience - each member of the audience must be taken care of, as

well as speaker/writer).;

e) The audience is interested not only in the speaker/writer as a holistic being

(needed to interpret gestures, intonation, and rectify possible translation

mistakes), as well as in the contents of their speech/writing, but also in

understanding all that to their best;

f) The vehicle of delivery of the translated message is 100% well in health

(might be sound equipment, might be typographic service provider, etc);

g) There is contemporaneity in the immediately accessible piece of mind of all

involved (current meaning of the words, updating).

All that stated, one can see that if the same picture is ever grasped by the majority of

those reading/listening to whatever the translation/interpretation professional has

written/said, God was probably there. And this is no blasphemy, once wherever there

is perfection, there must be God.

3. Sorites, and Chinese language, with Fuzzy Logic

We consider the amateur knowledge of ours, acquired from true Chinese people, and

someone else's research [XIAOQING, Z.K. (1995)], plus the Chinese dictionary

[MANSEI, MARTIN H. (2003)], as a basis for our writings. Apparently, each word in

Chinese (Mandarin, the main stream of Chinese) allows people to use it in at least 4

different ways via intonation (that is, the spelling goes the same way, but there is a

different intonation, or oral accent, given to the word, by the time someone utters it,

which may change its meaning completely). Going straight into the Chinese

dictionary, one understands that the meaning is known via recursion to the next word

Pinheiro 14
from the text/speech. However, the word with same spelling, and different meanings,

is still there: interesting enough. With that as basis, we notice some differ in the sound

because there is a phonetic alphabet that comes with it, or different drawings in the

same sort of symbology (they also hold different written alphabets apparently [MD.

MARUF HASAN AND YUJI MATSUMOTO (2000)]). Once our knowledge is

superficial, and there is not much romanized about the Chinese language, we try to

use this piece of knowledge, along with others, just as allurement, and write about

possibilities (only).

There is apparently a confusion, once the Chinese (Mandarin) alphabet allows more

sounds (phonetically richer) than the roman characters, when going from Chinese to

an occidental language, or vice-versa. It is easy to see how the same romanized word

would be corresponding to a few variations in the Mandarin dialect by the `forceful

match' process, that is: in not existing enough sound expressions in our alphabet, they

use the closest sound, what leads to a single word in the occidental language

encompassing more than one meaning (same referent in the occidental language,

meaning a range of references, in Chinese, rather than one word, as many theorists of

language would put it). However, it is still true that just via very brief research into

the Chinese written words, we find easily some words with up to 3 different meanings

for the same drawing/romanized particle/word.

We then joyfully play with that little finding and the Sorites paradox, along with its

fuzzy account, for our readers' entertainment.

From [XIAOQING, Z.K. (1995)], we get the romanized Chinese word `jiao', for

instance. In the source, it is mentioned that there are four different sounds for it, the

sounds being described this way:

a) Long sound with constant pitch;

b) Short sound with rising pitch;

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c) Long sound with falling/rising pitch;

d) Short sound with falling pitch.

It is not very easy to imagine a set S, for the scope of sound variations, the same way

we did with the colors, in [PINHEIRO, M.R. (2006)].

However, suppose:

S={x+α, ..., x+nα, ..., nx+α, ..., nx+mα },

for instance, as our sound variation, where x would mean `short sound', which,

multiplied by a special real number n, would give us a long one, and α would mean

`falling pitch', which may be made `rising' if multiplied by another special real

number m, passing by `constant’, on the way, the same way that, in the other case, it

may pass via several intermediaries (what would be expected, given occidental people

would probably hold more variations in sound emissions than the oriental people,

used to their own sounds, who gave origin to their systems). We all know that

alphabets were designed after the sounds, what means that each culture has created

them based on their own abilities to emit sounds (occlusion matters and etc.).

The beautiful thing, with this comparison, is that we know the division exists, but it is

completely `blurred', so that it falls perfectly well into the objections to the fuzzy

account on the `Sorites’ paradox, until someone is obviously able to `precisify' that, if

possible at all (different people might emit similar sounds and still be understood as

saying the same word).

On the other hand, `jiao' is told to have 3 different intonations, in the mentioned

research work (dictionary), and they would be those listed as first, third, or fourth

place, above, disclosing three different English meanings: `to teach’, `0.1 yuan’, and

`to shout’.

Pinheiro 16
One can easily ask then: when does `to teach' stop and `0.1 yuan' starts (by

considering all intermediary sounds not yet mentioned from our sound set)?

It is beautiful to see, once more, how the `Sorites' is definitely as good as Gödel’s

theorem, or as the Turing machine contests, in the sense of perceiving how

meaningful to our understanding of the World, and things which belong to it, the

problem is. It is basically a statement, per se, that whatever is a human expression

cannot, ever, be fully translated into machine lingo, unless the human into

consideration had been, by means of disease or abnormality, changed into a less able

human (retards, etc).

Once more, we understand that communication, and expression, are definitely not,

and will never be, fully programmable, unless we do something criminal to destroy

the mental abilities of all human beings.

Notice the striking difference between the first intonation, in terms of meaning (`to

teach'), and the last one (`to shout'). It is not the same as `heap' and `non-heap',

straight away, but, by means of an equivalence function between objects and human

actions, it ends up being the same, once `to teach' naturally conflicts with `to shout', in

every possible pedagogical theory (once more, notice how broad the choice of

contexts become when we depart from what was already proven, by us, to lie far

beyond Mathematics, or Logic, but still supposed to be of concrete nature, to get to

everything which is possible in language).

The same may be said to occur in Portuguese, a very `musical' language, as most of

the Latin languages are. If any expression is picked, at random, say: `bonito, hein?', it

may hold several different meanings. The just mentioned expression bears at least 3

different intonations of speech: interrogation (?), exclamation (!), assertion (.). How to

tell one from another could easily be expressed the same way we did before with the

Chinese word. However, If we start with full stop, the meaning is basically that

Pinheiro 17
something was really good, and, if we end with the question mark, there is a

conflicting meaning, which is `what in a hell are you doing?'.

To make it all worse, however, a person may use an intonation but mean precisely the

opposite. Suffices changing what comes before and after, and it all becomes the

opposite. Language truly encompasses several things, still less complex than the

ontology of the being making use of it, of course.

One may easily see how translating these words and expressions, in the so called

literary translation mentioned before, is an actual work of patience, Logic,

Mathematics, and, of course, not less importantly, Arts: Bad enough for the readers of

translations, and pleasant enough for translators (to be really entertained with their

professions).

Basically, that may also happen with different cultures and same language: For

instance, Australian English and British English, with a Brazilian cultural

understanding (based on American culture).

As an illustration of such a difficulty, even in technical translation, we mention an

`apparently' very simple example: university courses, from Brazil, being translated

into English. For a native from Australia, or Brazil, who is not ever worried about this

sort of issue: big deal, a course and its name is just `a course and its name'. But for

those who study the extenuating techniques of translation, and have been working

with that amazing set of tasks, it might be a real puzzle, where they may make use of

their intuition, better than anything else, and actually bring lifetime damage to a

client, without ever realizing what they did wrong.

We pick, for instance, an example from our own experience. Once it is part of the

ethos of translation, we will never mention names. However, we know a person who

had a Bachelor of Science with a Postgraduate Diploma in Education plus Honors in

Mathematics, and four majors in a course in Brazil. Following the tradition of

Pinheiro 18
technical work, where amateurs reach the top cruelty of using computer programs, the

words `Licenciatura em Matemática' got literally translated into `Teaching

Certificate'. Once the document was going to be used in Australia (and context is

obviously part of this Art), a Bachelor of Science, with a Pg Dip in Ed., plus Honors

in Math, and four majors, became equivalent to simply `a license to teach’, which

may be obtained, in Australia, in a single year.

Basically, the professional (client of the translator) was relying on that translated

version of their document, and was then, therefore, severely diminished in their

qualifications, what, more than obviously, produces a devaluation in their market-

value, something equivalent to a lecturer being regarded as a cleaner.

Suppose we now create a set of all the possible market-values involving a person who

holds a Bachelor of Science, with Honors in Math, and a person who does not hold

them. We now have a `Sorites', in terms of translation, because Brazil simply never

called its courses `Honors', which would basically mean someone was `invited' to do

research works. In Brazil, up to now, everybody in the course must do the same, and

research is just one subject, or several, amongst others. Not only that, but the so-called

thesis, of a Honors course in Australia, is made by Brazilians since High School (not

original works, however, at high-school level, most of the time).

It is very easy to see that, if there is cultural understanding missing, that is, if a

superficial learner of the `Art of Translation' (let's say someone who did not graduate

in English, is of native Portuguese background, and just sat for `Naati' tests, or even a

very qualified Brazilian translator, who knows nothing about Australian culture) is

given the assignment: a lecturer might, then, end up getting cleaner's wages!

Interesting enough, we could have a `Sorites' sequence even about how good a

translator is, in those regards: we would start with `no understanding of cultural issues

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at all' and finish with `understands all about both cultures' (clearly conflicting), once

more in the scope of the fuzzy solution for the `Sorites' paradox.

We believe one may easily see how we could write forever on the special application

of the `Sorites', and its Fuzzy logic solution, to Language.

4. Conclusion

In this article, we have provided further tools, as well as insights, on how to deal with

the technique of translations and how `mechanizable' human productions might be.

We believe to have added an association between translation techniques and the

Sorites paradox, as well as translation techniques and Fuzzy logic, which was never

made before, to the scope of knowledge of readers from Language, Logic, and

Computer Science. We have also worked towards settling the matter: `human

language will never be fully computable'. Along with this, we try to contribute for the

Art of evaluation of translation professionals, and that of career design, with a few

explicit insights based on actual life examples.

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5. References

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CASTI, JOHN (1999). Cinco Regras de Ouro. Editora Gradiva. ISBN 9726626919.

DA COSTA, NEWTON (2006). CURRICULO LATTES.

Http://buscatextual.cnpq.br/buscatextual/visualizacv.jsp?id=K4787165A0.

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Accessed 31st Oct. 2000. Found online at Http://plato.stanford.edu/about.html. ISSN

1095­5054.

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Chinese

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PINHEIRO, MARCIA R. (2006). A Paraconsistent Solution to the Sorites Paradox.

www.geocities.com/mrpprofessional.

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PINHEIRO, MARCIA R. (2006). A solution to the Sorites Paradox. Semiotica, ¾.

PINHEIRO, MARCIA R. (2006). The implicational step in the Sorites paradox-

logical or human? Submitted, www.geocities.com/mrpprofessional, as a preprint.

PRIEST, G. (2006). Professional webpage.

Http:www.standrews.ac.uk/academic/philosophy/gp-papers.html.

PRIEST, GRAHAM (2000). Introduction to non-classical logic: moving about in

worlds not realized. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN-10: 052179434X.

READ, STEPHEN (1995). Thinking about Logic: an introduction to the philosophy

of logic. Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN-10: 019289238-X.

SINTRA Website writers (1998).

Http://www.sintra.org.br/site/index.php?pag=valores. Accessed in 2006.

TANAKA, KOJI (2003). Three Schools of Paraconsistency. Australasian Journal of

Logic, July.

XIAOQING, Z.K. (1995). Grundkurs der Chinesischen Sprache. Sinolingua, Beijing,

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ZADEH, LOFTI (1965). Fuzzy Sets. Information and Control, 8: 338-353.

ZADEH, LOFTI (1994). Preface in R.J. Marks II (ed.). Fuzzy logic technology and

applications, IEEE Publications.

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 Notes:

Note 1: Po Box 12396, A'Beckett st, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

E-mail: mrpprofessional@yahoo.com

Note 2: We regard the opposite direction, in which the Sorites could go, as being

logically redundant.

Note 3: Please refer to the website Http://plato.stanford.edu/authors.html, for full list

of contributors. Edward Zalta is the editor responsible.

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