Traducción - Daha da kötüsü (Turco)

Hi kafetzou!

I have trouble understanding the last part of the sentence: "mere trivialities of substance"

I have made a research and seen that "mere" means "just, only" But the words "triviality" and "substance" have opposite meanings. Triviality = something which is not important" and "substance= importance."

So, in this case, the Turkish translation would be:


"Önemliliğin sadece önemsiz şeyleri olarak varsaydık"

Is not it really weird? If you help me, I'll be very glad. Thanks in advance

CC: kafetzou

substance...> stuff (here)

... or material

"sadece madde önemsizlikleri" olur mu?

Here's the whole paragraph - I found it online:

For most areas of language we are actively building theoretical models, but one area has been badly neglected: writing - spelling, punctuation and the specifics of written grammar and discourse structure. Worse still, we have too often assumed that the differences between spoken and written language are mere trivialities of substance. This gap is obviously crucial for education: "... linguistic theory has not made a clear distinction between written and spoken language. That is, linguistics has paid attention to the sound features of language, but has assumed that the grammar of speech and the grammar of writing are in all essentials the same." (Kress 1994:6) This complaint is hard to counter as it rings uncomfortably true, and it is easy to sympathise with the view that "... linguistic theories have, on the whole, not been conducive to enlightened and effective practice in (the teaching of) either reading or writing." (ibid)

Maybe we need a bit more to see what the author is contrasting this triviality of substance with:

The relations between spoken and written language are important because educationalists have to take some position on how much new grammar children learn when they learn to write. One view which is influential in education (Carter 1999; Kress 1994; Kress 1997) is that they are essentially starting from scratch and learning a radically different grammar. To the extent that they have considered the matter at all, linguists have tended to see written and spoken language as sharing a common core (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan 1999; Leech 2002). However, we are rather short of theoretical models of the relation between spoken and written language in general, and especially in relation to grammar. This is an area where future research will surely involve both linguists and applied linguists (as well as psychologists), to the great benefit of education.

Based on the above, I would say that "substance" here means something more like "içindekiler" if that's possible when you're not talking about food.

Dear kafetzou,
Doesn't "içindekiler" mean "contents" ?
Cümlenin akışına göre "konu" daha uygun değil mi?

Hi Kafetzou,
The bold didn't work because you had used [the teaching of] within the marks
Fixed now.

Merdogan: Well, "konu" is "topic", and that's really not what's meant here. One may speak and write about the same topic, but he way we speak or write about it will be different, i.e. the substance of what we say or write.

Lilian: Thanks - I had just copied and pasted the original. I was wondering if the problem was the internal brackets.

"esas" olur mu acaba?

esasla ilgili önemsiz evsaf/nitelik?

Tekrar merhaba,

Ben "içerik" diyelim diyorum. Bu durumda önerim:

Daha da kötüsü, konuşma dili ile yazı dili arasındaki farkları çoğu zaman içeriğin sadece önemsiz nitelikleri olarak varsaydık.

Ne dersiniz?

Geçmiş zamanı değil, ve şimdi doğru olup olmadığından emin değilim. Bence Merdoğanın ilk çevirisi anlamına daha yakındır.

Let me explain further. I understand this text because it is in my field - applied linguistics.

It means that up until now, we have looked at the difference between written and spoken English as only a few unimportant details, such as the fact that in written English we use punctuation, whereas in spoken English we use intonation; in written English, students have a chance to revise what they have produced, whereas in spoken English they don't, etc.

What this author is saying is that these examples are relatively unimportant compared to the fact that there are actually differences in grammar between written and spoken English.

Does this help?

Yes, Laura.
The problem was the use of square brackets, they block the bold function, that's why I changed them to parenthesis and it worked.

Hmm, I guess it is more clear now. So, I'll accept the translation as it is. The meaning is given as for me. Is it OK for you?

Well, I still don't like "konu". Maybe "önemsiz detaylar"? Merdogan, what do you think?

OK, that will be better.

Daha da kötüsü, konuşma dili ile yazı dili arasındaki farkları çoğu zaman önemsiz detaylar olarak varsaydık.

Katılıyorum , olabilir.