Wednesday, January 20, 2010

What's In A Word: Dictionary vs Translation

What a difference a word makes!

It was Dr. Samuel Johnson's dictionary - which he wrote singlehandedly, bar a few scrawny Scottish helpers, over a period of nine years - which laid the foundation of the English dictionaries that we have today.

Johnson's was not the first English dictionary, and earlier dictionaries were unsatisfactory because they tried to define what a word means, and not how a word has been used or is being used today. An unsatisfactory dictionary tries to fossilise a word in its historical usage, whereas a proper dictionary should try to demonstrate how a word is being used today - which may be very different from the way it was used before.

For me, the one word that has changed drastically in usage is this lovely simple word "gay." I like this word a lot. It tells of a condition in a person that is light and happy, not quite exuberant or just contented. Today, the word "gay" has a heavy sexual connotation.

Johnson's dictionary was significant because it tried to give example of how a word had been used or was being used. Words which had been used before was quite easy for him to discover, by borrowing books from friends and marking them so that his clerks could copy out. Words which were being used could be found out from current publications, and if he could not find one example, he simply gave his own version of the word. The most famous example was the word "Oats: a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people"

The greatness of Johnson's dictionary is to present for posterity the right to use words in the way as we so choose, which then make words living words rather than dead words, as opposed to giving the right over the usage of words to grammaritarians and some external linguistic authority.

So, if one were to do translation, how would one translate. Does one merely refer to the dictionary on the meaning of the word (as one would think of the nature of a poor dictionary) or does one try to understand how the word has been used or is being used and how it now can be used.

At the end of the day, the meaning of a word can be discovered only within the context that it is being used. The word does not define the context; but the context, the word.

It is only by opening words out for variations that we encourage creativity and innovation in the way we think. We can create new words for new ideas but we usually find that what we think is new is not really that new and that it could be the same old thing that now has taken a more modern facade.

If we are not allowed to think freely and express ourselves freely, then we may not be using words to master our thoughts; instead, we may find our thoughts being enslaved by words.

The way we use words betray our hidden innermost feelings about ourselves and how we see life.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Economic Relativity: Stocks & Exchange Rates

So much for the stock market to play the role of risk-taking in order to create a market for the trading of stocks in according to the expectations by investors of their future earnings. The stock market takes risks which ordinary men and women including entrepreneurs with their high sense of business would not even touch with a ten-foot pole. This is, in essence, the idea behind the establishment of the stock market in each country around the world - to help boost actual investments by real investors in order to provide an orderly basis for growth in an economy.

Now, the Malaysian stock market called Bursa Malaysia has its chief executive officer expressing dismay by the low 12% participation by the young 20-29 age group in Malaysia in "investing" in the stock market. He calls for a better business model by the stock market to attract the young.

As a parent, I am appalled by such irresponsible thinking on the part of the manager of a major market in the Malaysian economy. I would not advise my young children to think of investing in the stock market as the way forward in their career in living.

The current dismal state of the Malaysian economy is due to the overwhelming success of the stock market in enticing the best talents and the most precious of our resources into something of a zero-sum game akin to the casino. We have lost the woods for the trees. We have turned the means to investment into the only avenue for investment.

The thinking of the stock market does not jive with that of an economist. In the stock market, inflation of asset value is seen as an investment opportunity, whereas an economist will try to avoid introducing inflationary pressures into the system so that there will not be a huge wedge between monetary values and real values.

Unfortunately, today, expansionary monetary policy is seen not to be inflationary because the increase in monetary values is considered to be stable without much escalation. In economics, a constant rate of increase in monetary values is inflation and an increase in the inflation rate is an escalation of monetary values - both of which are only possible by a constant expansion of the money supply, most often inititated by external flow and later justified by the steady and rapid expansion of loans by banks.

The only fear in this twisted thinking is deflation, the decline in monetary values, because of the difficulty of stopping the price decline - as would be the case of inflation. It is therefore conventional wisdom in economics that we do not try to stroke inflation because we have to suffer deflation later.

But after having encouraged inflation (which we all are quite happy about it, especially those with physical assets), policy makers and politicians now do not allow deflation to occur. There is no downward adjustment to correct for any overshooting of prices in a market run-up in stocks or real estate.

(There is probably universal agreement on such a tacit no-deflation zone because everybody has inflated, the the deflation-ridden economy will be the worst-hit re Japan for the last twenty years.)

Be that as it may, we must recognised that monetary values around the world are all inflated, thanks to the easy money policy - easy because it makes life easy for politicians and those who have made it and do not wish to lose what they have easily gotten.

In economics, we know that the only other relative value that has to adjust downwards to be in some some eqivalence with real values (read: productivity growth and newly invested industries) is the exchange rate.

The policy issue around the world today is the correct adjustments and realignment of the exchange rates which are reflective of the underlying economic fundamentals, in an enviroment when everybody has to adjust downwards.

This policy decision boils down to choosing a scapegoat - the one currency that must appreciate when everybody must depreciate or be seen to have depreciated, in a world of economic relativity.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Exclusiveness vs Oneness

I have often been intrigued by the concept of exclusiveness - the idea that one is different from everybody else - the specialness that one has that other people do not have. How does one distinguishes oneself from everybody else - the idea of being unique.

In the land of the poor, the rich person is unique.

In the land of the rich, the poor is unique.

Even among the poor, it is still quite possible for the poor to compete among themselves to see who is the poorest.

In the same way, among the rich, each will compete with the other to see who is the richest.

But between the apex and the bottom most, if the distance between the two poles can be made large enough, it is quite possible for us to see that among those who are in caught in between, there will be sufficient space between each that makes one different from the other - and hence it is possible to say everybody is unique by being different from the next, no matter how small the difference.

In such a case, then the only truly situation is a tie, where one is the same as another - for that one is unqiuely different from the others by being the same as another - as in identical twins.

It will then be unusual and hence truly unique when a third or a fourth is unique with others - as in identical triplets and quadruplets.

As in the case of uniquely different viruses, we probably should enbark on a method for resolving the problem of naming elements in an environment of all uniquely different elements - a1, a2, a3, a4 - similar like viruses but different as in strands.

In the land of diversity, the only solution to true uniqueness is exclusion - by disallowing the existence of others, or disallowing others the use of the same symbol or word to identify one particularisation.

But, in the land of the happy people, commonness is embraced where none exists - the outside acceptance of similarity is only possible by the blatant discregard of the noticeable differences, banishing into oblivion in the mind by their insignificant of the differences.

Oneness can really only exist in the mind, when the mind accepts the concept of all being the same - even the pimple and the pus are the same, even if they are of grossly different colour and texture.