Brothers

In an earlier post (rice), I discussed the issues involved when we try to translate between one language which has a general term (a superordinate) and another language which only has the more specific terms (hyponyms). In reality, dealing with rice is not too problematic, as the meaning usually becomes clear from context.

However, in some other cases, there is more of a problem. Take the English term brother. Neither Malay nor Chinese have this superordinate term, as they both distinguish between older and younger brothers (Malay: abang/adik; Chinese: 哥哥/弟弟).

So what do you do if you want to translate an English sentence such as "His brother was waiting outside" into Malay or Chinese? You simply have to make a decision between an older or younger brother, and if you don't know, you have to guess.

What about the other direction? Suppose we want to translate a Malay sentence with abangnya or a Chinese one with 他的哥哥 into English. Of course, we can render it as his older brother. The problem with this is that it is a bit unnatural in English, as it would be more usual just to say his brother. In this case, we have to see how important the status of the brother is in the context. If it is important to know that the brother is older, then his older brother would be fine. Otherwise, just his brother would be better, even though it involves some loss of meaning.