Did you know that the english word âstarâ and the japanese word æīŧãģãīŧdonât actually mean the same thing?
Language does not simply name pre-existing categories; categories do not exist in 'the world'
â Daniel Chandler, Semiotics for Beginners
I read this quote a few years ago, but I donât think I truly understood it until one day, when I was looking at the wikipedia article for âstarâ and I thought to check the Japanese article, see if I could get some Japanese reading practice in. I was surprised to find that the article was not titled ãæã, but ãææã, a word Iâd never seen before. Iâd always learnt that æ was the direct translation for âstarâ (I knew the japanese also contained meanings the english didnât, like âdotâ or âbullseyeâ, but I thought these were just auxiliary definitions in addition to the direct translation of âstarâ as in "a celestial body made of hydrogen and helium plasma").
To try and clear things up for myself, I searched japanese wikipedia for æ. It was a disambiguation page, with the main links pointing to the articles for 夊äŊ (astronomical object) and ãšãŋãŧīŧč¨åˇīŧ(star symbol). There was no article just called ãæã.
Itâs an easy difference to miss, because in everyday conversation, æ and star are equivalent. They both describe the shining lights in the night sky. They both describe this symbol: â
. They even both describe those enormous celestial objects made of plasma.
But they are different - different enough to not share a wikipedia article. æ is used to describe any kind of celestial body, especially if it appears shiny and bright in the night sky. âStarâ can be used this way too (like Venus being called the âmorning starâ), but itâs generally considered inaccurate to use the word like this, whereas there is no such inaccuracy with æ. You can say âoh thatâs not actually a star, itâs a planetâ, but you CANâT say ãåŽã¯ããã¯æã§ã¯ãĒãææã ãã (TL: thatâs not actually a hoshi, itâs a planet). A planet IS a æ.
æ is a very common word, essentially equivalent to âstarâ, but its meaning is closer to âcelestial bodyâ. I havenât looked into the etymology/history but itâs almost like both english and japanese started out with a simple, common word for the lights in the sky - star/æ , but as we found out more about what these lights actually were, english doubled down on using the common word for the specific scientific concept, while japanese kept the common word generic and instead came up with a new word for the more specific concept. If this is actually what happened, Iâd guess that kanji probably had something to do with it - æ as a component kanji exists inside the word for planet, ææ, and in the word for comet, åŊæ, and in the scientific word for âstarâ, ææ, so it makes sense that it would indicate a more general concept when used standalone.
This discovery helped me understand that quote - categories donât exist in the world, we are the ones who create them. I thought that the concept of âstarâ was something that would be consistent across all languages, but itâs not, because the concept of âstarâ is not pre-existing. Each language had to decide how to name each of those similar star-like concepts (the â
symbol, hot balls of gas, twinkling lights in the sky, planets, comets, etc), and obviously not every language is going to group those concepts under the same words with the same nuance.
Knowing this, one might be tempted to say that ææīŧããããīŧ is the direct translation for âstarâ. But this isnât true either. In most of the contexts that the word âstarâ is used in english, the equivalent japanese will be simply æ. Despite the meanings not lining up exactly, æ will still be the best translation for âstarâ most of the time. This is the art of translation - knowing when the particulars are less important than the vibe or feel of a word. For any word, there will never be an exact perfect translation with all the same nuances and meanings. Translation is about finding the best solution to an unsolvable problem. That's why I love it.
