Übersetzungsprobleme in Myanmar

Es sind nicht so sehr die Wörter als die Konzepte, als die gesellschaftlichen Phänomene, die fehlen. Nicht nur Sprache prägt Denken und gesellschaftliche Wirklichkeit, sondern gesellschaftliche Wirklichkeit verändert das mit Sprache Aussagbare. Was hilft politische Korrektheit, wo die gesellschaftliche Wirklichkeit ihr den Boden entzieht. 

Failing words in Myanmar

Thomas Fuller, "Those Who Would Remake Myanmar Find That Words Fail Them", NYT 7/19/2015:

It’s the dawn of democracy in Myanmar. If only the Burmese had their own word for it.  As this former dictatorship opens to the world, language is a stumbling block.  

For half a century, Myanmar was so cut off from the outside world that people were jailed for owning an unauthorized fax machine. As the rest of the world was hurtling into the information age, the strict censorship of publications, limited access to global media and creaking connections to the Internet stunted the evolution of the Burmese language, leaving it without many words that are elsewhere deemed essential parts of the modern political and technical vocabulary.

For example, there's democracy:

The English word democracy was subsumed into the Burmese language decades ago — it is pronounced dee-mock-rah-SEE — but for many Burmese it remains a foreign and somewhat abstract concept.

Of course, English borrowed democracy around 1500 from Middle French democracie, and the French borrowed it in their turn from post-classical Latin democratia, which in turn borrowed it from ancient Greek δημοκρατία. And Myanmar is far from the only place in the world where democracy "remains a foreign and somewhat abstract concept".

Those Who Would Remake Myanmar Find That Words Fail Them

[...] When foreign experts recommended that the government pass a computer privacy law, Burmese translators scratched their heads because there is no precise translation for privacy in Burmese. The very idea may not exist, possibly because there is little privacy in a society in which people traditionally lived and slept in common areas. [...] 
Rule of law “is not an attractive concept,” said U Pe Myint, a commentator and columnist. “We do not usually equate the rule of law with justice. It has connotations of pacifying, subjugating people. I think most people don’t really understand what it means.” [...] 

Younger Burmese are growing up exposed to modern technology and foreign concepts, creating a gulf of vocabulary between generations.
A 21-year-old developer who creates apps for Android phones, Daw Ei Myat Noe Khin, says her job is bewildering for some members of her family.
“When I talk about my work to my mother and her friends, I can’t explain it in Burmese,” she said.
“There is no word in Burmese for developer, so I used the English word programmer,” she said. “If they don’t understand programmer, I say, ‘It’s what is inside your phone and makes it work.’ ”
“They say, ‘Oh, it’s something to do with computers!’ 
” And they say it using the English word. There is no Burmese word for computer. Or phone, for that matter.

Failing words in Myanmar (Fortsetzung)

Younger Burmese are growing up exposed to modern technology and foreign concepts, creating a gulf of vocabulary between generations.

A 21-year-old developer who creates apps for Android phones, Daw Ei Myat Noe Khin, says her job is bewildering for some members of her family.

“When I talk about my work to my mother and her friends, I can’t explain it in Burmese,” she said.

“There is no word in Burmese for developer, so I used the English word programmer,” she said. “If they don’t understand programmer, I say, ‘It’s what is inside your phone and makes it work.’ ” [...]

As this example illustrates, the whole discussion is not about vocabulary items, but about concepts. Ryan Weller, who sent in a link to the article, observed that

It's a classic "no word for X" article, asserting that one of the challenges in reforming Burma is that there are no "native" Burmese words for things like "computer" or "democracy." In my experience working with Burmese refugees, they understand perfectly well what a "computer" is despite the word's foreign origin.

Indeed, the Japanese seem to have managed the modern world pretty well, despite having borrowed the English word コンピューター (konpyuutaa = "computer") and made up a word for telephone out of Chinese parts (電話 denwa = diàn huà), which the Chinese took back in their turn. Not that computer and telephone are anglo-saxon words to start with…

All in all, a worthy addition to our "'No word for X' archive".

[...] "Failing words in Myanmar", 7/20/2015
"No word for 'fetch'", 11/25/2014
"No word for 'father'", 10/22/2014
"When there's no Hebrew word for something, it's a bad idea", 4/4/2014
"No word for rape" (11/20/2013)
"No word for normal parts of early childhood?" (7/23/2013)
"Wade Davis has no word for 'dubious linguistic claim'" (1/14/2013)
"No word for 'privacy' in Russian?" (1/15/2012) [...]

Fontanefan:
Es geht also nicht einmal so sehr um Übersetzungs- als um Gesellschaftsprobleme.