WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]
top | item 12157487

Ask HN: Is there a mismatch between Math in German and English?

8 points| k__ | 9 years ago | reply

I had a bunch of math at university in Germany, but after I looked into functional programming at the level of Haskell, I felt completely lost.

Monad (Monade) seems to be a philosophical concept in German and Monoids have a completely different name (Halbgruppe -> Semi Group)

Also, if I enter some terms into translators I don't get meaningful translations at all.

Is there a mismatch or is it simply, that most mainstream media (google.com, leo.org, etc) don't bother with such concepts and make them harder to find?

10 comments

order
[+] Tomte|9 years ago|reply
"Semi group" exists in English, too. Monoids are simply special semi groups.

I don't know what you're expecting. I certainly don't see a mismatch between languages.

If you're confused by terminology, enter a term in the German Wikipedia and click on "English". You'll see the equivalent lemma in English.

[+] k__|9 years ago|reply
Thanks for the tip.

My procedure was simply entering these words into translators.

[+] CarolineW|9 years ago|reply
Technical terms are often faux amis[0] between languages. Just because this technical term in this language looks like that technical term in that language, it doesn't mean that they are the same thing.

Although they might be.

The same is true in natural languages. In English, "Preservatives" can be added to jams, etc., but don't say in French that the jams you have are "sans préservatif"[1] because that means something completely different. Other, similar faux amis are less amusing.

With regards Google Translate, you can try, but pretty much all of the technical terms will be screwed up. Google Translate works by statistical methods, and there just isn't enough material to make it work. In fact, anything other than the simplest sentences will be translated badly, and the only reason it works "well enough" is because of the astonishing native language abilities of the human brain.

Translation is hard, language is weird.

</rant>

[0] French: "False Friends"

[1] Correct term is: "sans conservateurs"

[+] k__|9 years ago|reply
Yes, so it's probably everything right with Math and my language skills suck, haha.
[+] sold|9 years ago|reply
"Monad" in English and "Monade" in German are the same, they can both mean the functional programming concept or the philosophical concept. You can just ignore the philosophical concept, it's not relevant to mathematics.