Re: [topicmaps-comment] multilingual thesaurus - language, scope,and topic naming constraint

["Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@home.com>]

[Bernard Vatant]
> Thanks to all who tried to answer, both on this list and through private
communications.
> ..
> And he was right! The only sustainable viewpoint is that there is no such
thing as a
> *concept independent of its representation by a term in a certain
language*. Every
> attachment of a term to a concept is always asserted in the scope of a
certain language,
> and every other language conveys a slightly or radically different view of
the world and
> organisation of concepts, and that's why lingual diversity is so precious,
and translation
> so difficult ...
>
> So what is a descriptor, putting together those six concepts for the
purpose of
> cross-language communication and translation?
> What do you do when you gather topics? Obvious - you build an association.
And what is the
> scope of that association? The scope of the language viewpoint from which
you assert this
> association, that means the default language of the thesaurus ...
> This association asserts that those topics can be considered as
"equivalent", allowing a
> translation which makes sense, maybe in a certain scope. Note that the
scope is not on the
> names, but on the association. And that the associations are not
necessarily the same if I
> stand from another language viewpoint. So if I edit the thesaurus with a
different default
> language, I will certainly have to change the set of associations.
>
Bernard, this is good stuff.  Of course, it brings up the issue of the
nature of concepts and their relation to language, a heady topic if there
ever was one!. I have often thought that associations were the perfect way
to represent synonym and homonym-like relations, and a thesaurus association
is in that vein too.  But that would have been for __words__ - represented
as topics.  I didn't think of representing that those words themselves stood
for different concepts.  Interesting!

Tom P