Head Canthus
This week: Translating is possibly the most finicky of all the arts. The Japanese word megashira is a perfect example of why I avoid it whenever possible. Let’s get into it!
Mind the Gap
Translation, in language lessons, is a funny thing. As a teacher, you don’t want to just translate everything as that prevents the student from experimenting with the target language. At the same time, the reality of modern teaching is such that, sometimes, you just need to translate a particular word or phrase so that you can move on with the main point of the lesson. The trouble is, sometimes translating that one word or phrase sends the entire lesson down a miles-long rabbit hole from which nobody emerges unscathed.
This particular rabbit hole starts with a rather innocuous Japanese word, megashira, which Jisho (dot org) translates as:
inner canthus
Cool. Only what’s a canthus? Now, truthfully, I’m being a little disingenuous here as Jisho’s full definition is:
inner canthus; inner corner of the eye
And so we know, right away, what canthus means. But, just to be sure, let’s get Merriam-Webster’s take on the word:
either of the angles formed by the meeting of an eye's upper and lower eyelids
Thankfully, the definitions match. But they do raise a number of questions for people not as used to English and all its byzantine mannerisms. Questions like: Which one is the better translation? Why are there two definitions anyway? And, inarguably, the most important question, what do I use when talking to people?
Lacuna Matata!
It’s tempting to add megashira to the long list of Japanese to English lacunae, the words that don’t have direct English translations, simply because we do need either two or five words to equal it. But the kanji that comprise megashira consist of eye followed by head, or, head-of-the-eye. And that might not make a lot of literal sense until you look at the antonym, mejiri, which is eye followed by tail. We might read it in English as outer canthus.
Both megashira and mejiri are two-kanji compounds called jukugo that function very similarly to how compound nouns work in English. And compound nouns are, at a basic level, two words functioning as one. In other words, inner and outer canthus are more than just similar meanings to megashira and mejiri, they are grammatically similar. Arguably this would make inner canthus the best translation of megashira if it wasn’t for the fact that canthus is just not that common
a word.
1010A-List
English has over a million words. Most of us know between 20 to 30 thousand depending on education, occupation, interest, and a host of other socio-economic factors. But we don’t use most of those words. Instead, we get by using the most common two to three-thousand. In fact, if you were to do a breakdown of this very essay, you’d find that with the exception of a few esoteric words like, uhm, esoteric, the majority of these words would fall within the most common few thousand.
We have a list. In fact, we have several. In my job, we mostly use a list called the New General Service List. It’s a teaching corpus that features, well, you guessed it, the general words needed for people studying English. And canthus is not on it. In fact, canthus is not on any of my vocabulary teaching lists.
Nor is it in either of the paper dictionaries on my shelf. Where it does show up, however, is in medical dictionaries, often compounded with other jargon-y words like lateral and medial. Which brings us to our next question - which is the better translation, the medical word that might be used by an ophthalmologist, or the common phrase that needs a whole five words to equal a single Japanese one?Contextualization
Jargon is not so easily defined. Is it necessary vocabulary that creates a communicative shortcut between people in a similar context? Sure, of course. Is it a tool that can be wielded unjustly to create cliques and exclude people from within the group? Also yes. What both ideas have in common is that jargon is used within a group of people sharing the same context, whether that’s a job or just a peer-group. What is less clear is whether jargon should be explicitly taught to ESL / EFL
students.As an example, in one of my classes, I teach EFL to students studying to be nurses and pharmacologists. In another, I teach students studying to become architects. In both cases, arguably, some jargon is needed. However, in order for these students to be able to communicate with each other in English, the most common, non-jargon-y words are needed. Which is where the importance of context comes in.
Canthus is not an isolated case. English has, as noted, over a million words. Nobody needs to know them all, even if they could. Instead, for most students, what is needed is the skill of looking at the dictionary and knowing which definition to choose in a given situation. For my student, for everyday purposes, having yet another concrete example of the use of inner and outer is arguably more important than knowing the word canthus. Until he’s overseas and needs to get his eyes checked, when suddenly, it might become vitally important. Context.
Down the Rabbit Hole
I cut about 800 words out of this week’s essay in a (failed, marginal) attempt to keep it to a readable length, so I hope it’s not too jarring. But, one of the bits that got cut was a discussion of lacuna, or gaps, that happen when looking between languages. It’s a really interesting part of linguistics and a topic I hope to return to someday. In the meantime, here are three links to get you started:
The Guardian - English is picking up brilliant new words from around the world – and that’s a gift
Nippon.com - Laid-Back Loanword “Chirui” Chosen as One of Japan’s Words of 2021
From the Archives
I’ve been really enjoying Hulu’s Wu-Tang: An American Saga; for me it hits that perfect, sweet spot where I know the history, but not so well that I can’t enjoy the more fictionalized, sensationalized version they’re putting on screen. But it did remind me that I’ve written about rap and hip-hop a few times here in Learned. Including this essay from about a year and a half ago all about bars.
Not to be confused with the “jazzy drum & bass trio from Hanau, Germany,” who I didn’t know but am now enjoying!
And not just because I didn’t know it, thank you very much!
In does, however, show up in the Corpus of Contemporary American English. Exactly 18 times. And, of those 18 responses, the vast majority come from medical websites. The two that don't come from a t.v. show and a movie where a doctor is disucssing a post-mortem and a plastic surgery!
Although it is in the online dictionaries because they have unlimited space. This is actually a good, easy litmus test of which words are most commonly used in English at the time of printing.
English as a second language / English as a foreign language. Think learning English in the U.S. or U.K. vs. learning English in a non-English-speaking country like Japan.