Words I hate: そもそも

[Warren Smith]

The dictionaries gloss this as "to begin with." While that sometimes works, often it does not.

 

My sentence today is "そもそも、訂正発明1は、[REDACT]に限定されていない。"

 

As this is the conclusion of the argument, there is no follow-on sentence; hence "to begin with" cannot work.

 

I am thinking that a NES might translate this as "It is significant that Amended Invention 1 is not limited to [REDACT]."

 

Perhaps "It is important to note that..."  Or perhaps, "After all..." would be better (although this seems to have a bit of a tonal mismatch in a legal brief...) "Don't forget that..."?

 

What do my esteemed colleagues think about this?

Warren

 

 

[Matthew Schlecht]

I don't have extensive experience with rendering that phrase, but will suggest "inherently" or "intrinsically" as potential glosses that could work in your context.

Matthew Schlecht, PhD
Word Alchemy Translation, Inc.
Newark, DE, USA
wordalchemytranslation.com

[Herman]

On 1/12/22 10:34 AM, Warren Smith wrote:
> The dictionaries gloss this as "to begin with." While that sometimes
> works, often it does not.
>
> My sentence today is "そもそも、訂正発明1は、[REDACT]に限定されていない。"
>
> As this is the conclusion of the argument, there is no follow-on
> sentence; hence "to begin with" cannot work.
>

> I am thinking that a NES might translate this as "_It is significant
> that_ Amended Invention 1 is not limited to [REDACT]."
>
> Perhaps "_It is important to note that_..."  Or perhaps, "_After
> all_..." would be better (although this seems to have a bit of a tonal

> mismatch in a legal brief...) "Don't forget that..."?
>
> What do my esteemed colleagues think about this?
>

I think the choice of how to translate this would be highly context
specific and so would depend on what exactly preceded this sentence.
Also, in some cases, there may be no need for a separate equivalent word.

I don't think that "It is significant that", "It is important to note
that" or similar are valid translations because, as far as I am aware
anyhow, そもそも does not have that meaning or nuance. The general sense
of it, when used with a negative verb, is essentially to reinforce the
negation.

Here, I would probably either use "In any case" or "Thus", depending on
the relationship to what is stated before.


Herman Kahn

[Stephen A. Carter]

Put it in the imperfect tense and stick a "never" in there.

-- 

Stephen A. Carter, C. Tran.

sca...@hticn.com

Nagoya, Japan

2022年1月13日 午前3:35:23 に "Warren Smith" <Warren...@Comcast.net> が執筆：

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[Herman]

Perhaps I should note that although そもそも does not really mean
"thus", it can be rendered as such in a situation where "thus" would
imply "thus, as was stated/implied to begin with [and has now been
demonstrated], ..." or "thus, having considered everything from start to
finish, it can now be concluded that..."

Herman Kahn

[Fred Uleman]

Back when I was teaching translation, I mentioned that そもそも essentially means "now I am going to say something important" and often does not need to be translated. That said, were I to translate it, I would think along the lines of "when you get right down to it" and/or "extraneous clutter aside." (this second having the rhetorical advantage of declaring everything else extraneous clutter)

- -- --- ---- --- -- -

Fred Uleman

[timl...@aol.com]

Be that as it may?

Tim

[Warren Smith]

Thanks, everyone, for your help. It seems as though this word is actually as slippery as I thought it was!

 

In the exact opposite of the "dictionary translation" of "to begin with," perhaps here a good translation (when this word is used in the final sentence in the section) might be, "In the end though..." or "After all is said and done,..." Both of these phrases are used by NES to convey the idea that this is the key concept, the critical observation that shuts down the need for further argument.

 

Warren

 

[Stephen Robertson]

A late response here, but, in keeping with the dictionary translation, as well as Fred's observation of そもそも's rhetorical deployment to override other considerations, another possibility might be:

"First and foremost, (however) ..."

-Stephen

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[Warren Smith]

Brilliant!

 

Thanks, this is very good. (Doesn't work in my case where そもそもappears at the end of the conclusion, but a great way to say it otherwise.)

 

W

 

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[Herman]

"In the end though..." and "After all is said and done..." seem to imply
"There may be some reasons for thinking otherwise, but in the end...",
whereas そもそも seems on the contrary to suggest that there are no
reasons for thinking otherwise at all/to begin with/by nature. But given
also the usage of そもそも to change the subject or reprise a previous
point (similar to さて), it really doesn't map to any particular English
expression and may have to translated largely on the basis of the
logical relationship of what was said before and after the そもそも -
which, in the context in question, is most likely the relationship of
"Thus, ..." (or colloquially, "So anyhow, ...").

Herman Kahn

[Warren Smith]

I wonder if, in some less-formal documents at least, this concept would best
be expressed by all caps, or bold and underlined.

"Mr. Ishida, PUNCHED MY CLIENT IN THE FACE, so deserved what he got..."

W

[Fred Uleman]

Friday quibble:

The term そもそも is not slippery. It is very clear and does not mean different things to different people. The fact that there is no easy one-stop go-to translation for it is a translation problem and not a slippery-term marker.

(And no, shouting is not an equivalent.)

- -- --- ---- ----- ---- --- -- -
Fred Uleman

[Warren Smith]

Why isn't underlining, bolding, etc., not an equivalent?

 

W

 

---

From: hon...@googlegroups.com [mailto:hon...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Fred Uleman
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2022 9:04 PM
To: hon...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Words I hate: そもそも

 

Friday quibble:

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[Fred Uleman]

Shouting (aka all-capping, underlining, and bolding) is not an equivalent because that is arguing with force of emotion and is hence essentially different from the cold, logic-based, in-some-cases-look-down-your-nose そもそも which simply dismisses other points as irrelevant. そもそも could even be uttered with a slight chuckle in the "you realize, of course, that none of what you are saying mitigates, much less refutes, the axiomatic truth that . . ." sense. Shouting seeks to overwhelm the other position, そもそも to destroy the other position from within.

[Herman]

On 1/13/22 6:03 PM, Fred Uleman wrote:
> Friday quibble:
> The term そもそも is not slippery. It is very clear and does not mean
> different things to different people. The fact that there is no easy
> one-stop go-to translation for it is a translation problem and not a
> slippery-term marker.
>
> (And no, shouting is not an equivalent.)
>

Well, there is (1) そもそも which has the sense of and can be replaced
with そもそもから, where it has the sense of "from the outset" or
similar, but there is also (2) そもそも in an emphatic sense, as in そも
そも何 "what exactly", "what the hell", and (3) そもそも used when
starting or reprising some topic "So, ....", "Anyhow, ....".

There maybe situations where it is not clear which of these senses or
combination thereof is applicable, and then the term does become
"slippery".

Herman Kahn

[Herman]

On 1/13/22 6:14 PM, Warren Smith wrote:
> Why isn't underlining, bolding, etc., not an equivalent?
>

I think it could be an equivalent, for instance, when translating from
English to Japanese in plain text format, e.g. one could render "HOW did
he know?" as ”そもそもなんで知ったのか”, but when going from Japanese to
English, it would seem odd to me to resort to such a technique.

Herman Kahn

[Fred Uleman]

Diplomacy may be war by other means, and perhaps vice-versa, but few would argue they are equivalent.

[Hart Larrabee]

Jumping in late . . .

On Jan 14, 2022, at 11:03, Fred Uleman <ful...@jpnres.com> wrote:

Friday quibble:

The term そもそも is not slippery. It is very clear and does not mean different things to different people. The fact that there is no easy one-stop go-to translation for it is a translation problem and not a slippery-term marker.

This prompted me to look at the nearest 国語辞典, which lists the following two senses of the word:

一 （名）
（物事の）最初。起こり。どだい。副詞的にも用いる。「―は僕が始めたものだ」「―の始まり」

二 （接続）
改めて説き起こすとき，文頭に用いる語。いったい。だいたい。「―，事前調査の不備がこのような事態を招いた」「―私の今日あるは彼のおかげだ」〔1は2の転〕

It’s the second sense that seems to be the subject of the current inquiry. 

The dictionary entry above might be glossed as “a word used at the beginning of a sentence when beginning to explain something again.” It strikes me that I often use そもそも when I am trying to reiterate, with renewed simplicity or clarity, the crux of an issue that is already being argued or discussed. My impression is that it can also convey an air of exasperation as one tries to distill an issue down to the baseline, salient fact that trumps all others.

I associate そもそも too, with introducing information that rearranges the playing field by refocusing debate toward fundamentals. Imagine (for example) a company accusing a freelancer of taking actions that contravene the provisions of the company’s NDA. After going back and forth a bit about the actions the freelancer is accused of, were the freelancer to inform the company that he had, in fact, never been asked to sign an NDA and so is not even bound by its provisions, he might introduce that information with a そもそも.

Warren’s context was:

My sentence today is "そもそも、訂正発明1は、[REDACT]に限定されていな い。"

Perhaps, “the point is,” (or perhaps even “the essential point is") would work. 

Good luck,

Hart

Hart Larrabee

ha...@valley.ne.jp

Nagano, Japan

[Herman]

On 1/13/22 7:22 PM, Fred Uleman wrote:
> Diplomacy may be war by other means, and perhaps vice-versa, but few
> would argue they are equivalent.
>

If "diplomacy is war by other means" is interpreted as "diplomacy is
another means of achieving something that could be also achieved by
war", then the question arises, if the target language does not have an
equivalent means, is the translation solution to use a non-equivalent
means to achieve the same end -- or is the means itself such an
essential part of the communication or meaning, that employing a
non-equivalent means fails as an act of translation?

Herman Kahn

[Fred Uleman]

"if the target language does not have an equivalent means, is. . ."

is a hypothetical question because the target language has many equivalent means. Indeed, this whole thread has been a discussion of which of these many equivalent means to deploy in Warren's particular case. One could even suggest the "frankly" in "frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" is one such equivalent means, so abundant are they.