Translations

How many times have we tried to translate a word to another language, but it seems that we don't really find it?. Having a translator in the family, I have seen it a few times, even with professionals. I witnessed an exaggerated example of that last Wednesday. They are about to establish a joint center of several of Taiwan's universities in order to prepare for the use of ALMA, and they were looking for a translation of the English word Advancement, in order to translate its name to Chinese. So, they started throwing in ideas. As you can see in the picture, they found more that twenty different ways.

I cannot say how close the meaning of the proposed words were to the English one or if they were more or less acurate approximations or were only poetical. They also told me that they were not only looking for a word close enough, but it also had to sound right, even with some special added quality. All in all, very difficult.

They told me today that they finally found the word. It didn't look like that to me on Wednesday. The funnier thing will be the acronym they may end up using. It will be partially my fault.