New Words, New Concepts

As we elevate our vocabulary knowledge over the course of our education, it seems to be getting more difficult to find an even close equivalent in Farsi for some of the new words we come across.

Each word is a matter of convention or mutual agreement among language users. Whenever we use a word in any language it is accompanied by a bundle of ideas and concepts that are defined by those unwritten conventions. Therefore it is very difficult, trying to compare different words from different languages and set them as precise equivalents, since there is a very specific connotation behind each word, especially in abstract concepts.

As far as translations is concerned, there is no one-to-one correlation existing between the words and phrases of different languages. Translation is not encoding and decoding equivalents between the two languages, using a bilingual dictionary as the codebook. Translators should also find a word or phrase that best represents the connotation or concept of the one in the source language.

But in learning a new language -especially for literature students, in my opinion the best approach would be to learn the new vocabulary items by seeking help from the words and sentences that are already present in that language –not by making every endeavor to translate them into your mother tongue and consequently losing some or most part of the meaning that word conveys.

As mentioned each word represents a concept. To form a new concept in our mind we should read as many sentences and examples as possible. In upcoming posts I will try to collect some authentic phrases and sentences and also some semantically close words from different contexts and dictionaries for some of the new words that I find debatable. Hopefully this can help us acquire a better sense of the new vocabulary items. Please DO NOT hesitate to share your comments and opinions.

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