what do you think of this English sentence?

[Kenny同志]

I often hear native speaks say:" I have (good) reason to believe that..."

When translating this sentence into Chinese, I find it kind of funny. A word-for-word translation would be: 我有（很好的）理由相信......which is not the way I express the same meaning. I would rather say 我相信（or 我深信）..., because it is taken for granted that there must be some reason to back up my belief, so why bother to utter more words than necessary?

What do you think?

Edited November 6, 2009 at 08:36 AM by kenny2006woo

[Daan]

Good question. To me, the difference between I believe that and I have good reason to believe that seems to be that in the second phrase you indicate you have more solid arguments (that you might or might not be willing to share) to back up your belief, rather than merely the gut feeling implied by the first phrase. But I could be wrong

[gato]

Mabye it could be translated as "我有把握说....."

So "I have reason to believe that you lying." would be "我有把握说你在撒谎。”?

What do you think?

[Kenny同志]

Thanks, Daan and Gato.

So "I have reason to believe that you lying." would be "我有把握说你在撒谎。”? What do you think?

I am afraid I disagree. By that, you are saying that I am certain you are lying, leaving you no chance to correct if the reason doesn't hold.

[gato]

Ok, I think you are right.

Your problem is really with the English original then. You think "I have (good) reason to believe that..." should really be simplified as "I believe" because every belief has a reason and whether it's a good reason is a different matter. But the key of "I have reason to believe" is that it implies that you have a good reason," which I think already know, as you included "good" in bracket.

And for the same reason, you think that the Chinese translation should omit the "有道理“. But your complaint is not really a grammar or idiom issue, but a logic issue or maybe a habit issue. If you hear "我有道理相信” enough, I think you will get used it.

It's just like when I first heard “天下不会掉馅饼”, it found it kind of funny, but I got used to it after hearing it so many times on TV.

[Kenny同志]

And for the same reason, you think that the Chinese translation should omit the "有道理“. But your complaint is not really a grammar or idiom issue, but a logic issue or maybe a habit issue. If you hear "我有道理相信” enough

True, but my point is that any language, in whatever way it develops, is supposed to be more precise, and more concise. So if we can do without some words in a sentence then I think we should just leave them out.

How about put the sentence in another way:

I have (good) reason to believe that ... > I (strongly) believe /am convinced that ...

More views are invited!

PS:

天下不会掉馅饼

是 天上不会掉馅饼 吧？ 呵呵

[adrianlondon]

I "have (good) reason to" believe that ...

is usually used by managers or people in authority who aren't actually that convinced themselves but think that by making the sentence sound so formal you'll just agree anyway.

[animal world]

I have good reason to believe: here "good reason" is used for emphasis. It indicates that you have ammunition to back up your belief if someone questions you on it. I believe your wife's having an affair may reflect a gut feeling. I have good reason to believe she's having an affair ... because I saw her hopping into a motel room with a handsome man at eleven in the morning. [This is just an example so i'm not going to tell you what happened next...]

I have reason to believe: you believe that something is true but you would concede the possibility of being wrong. And, as Adrian already pointed out, it's also the way politicians speak. It sounds authoritative but it leaves room to weasel out of your position if confronted with contradictory feedback.

Imho, these two examples do not reflect wordiness but rather subtleties of the language. Yes, "I have good reason to believe" is the equivalent of "I strongly believe" but a noun trumps an adjective or an adverb most of the time. And you should also strive for variety in your writing/speaking.

[Kenny同志]

Thanks, animal world. I missed something there. Yes, you are right. the word "reason" serves the prupose of making one sound objective. It is legitimate.

[animal world]

Kenny, your endeavor to explore subtleties of the English language is commendable and rare. Your command of English is already very good and, in your shoes, most other foreigners* would be content with what they know already without making additional efforts to learn the finer points. Are you planning to become a translator/interpreter by any chance?

Like you, i dislike wordiness (my unedited posts here belie this ) Have you ever read Hemingway in English? His style is so lean and superb that i readily forgive him the macho aspects in his novels. If you haven't, try to get your hands on the first few pages of The Old Man And The Sea in English. The entire novel (novella?) is only 115 pages or so and a true masterpiece.

EDIT: * I worded this awkwardly as I probably should have said Chinese people instead of foreigners. Reason being is that many Westerners here have excellent command of English. This is natural because most of the languages they speak are derived from latin and it is easier for them to learn English than it is for Chinese people. They may also have much more exposure to English. I make this edit as it wasn't my intention to bash anyone here.

Edited November 6, 2009 at 10:04 PM by animal world

[Kenny同志]

Thanks for your compliment and recommendation, animal world. Yes, I plan to be a translator and I have studied the art for more than two years by myself. The job I've been pursuing is a challenging one yet it never fails to be fascinating.

I will get down to Hemingway once I have time.

Edited November 6, 2009 at 11:25 PM by kenny2006woo

[Daan]

Have a look at the following sentences, all containing reason to believe, from the British National Corpus (BNC):

HWG 32 Certainly evasion was rife in 1381, as can be seen from the marked discrepancies between the numbers paying the tax in that year and the figures for 1377; and there is no reason to believe that the payments in the earlier year, although more complete, provide anything close to a total record of the population

HWG 680: In this last case there is no reason to believe that there was any direct influence of London which contributed to the decline.

EFV 218 In view of his delight in music and ceremony there is every reason to believe that he enjoyed the liturgy of the church.

CBX 1773 The same applies to Manchester; though again there is no reason to believe recovery is imminent: fringe areas there are suffering.

See how they all show the speaker is basing the viewpoint he's expressed on solid arguments?

Compare, then, with the following examples, I believe, again from the BNC:

BM5 373 Yes, because I believe European makers must be encouraged to provide competition and technological challenge to all Pacific Basin car companies.

C9J 2549 There are many ways of playing 3 octave arpeggios, and this month I will show what I believe is the most effective approach.

HCD 233 I believe that in order to restore confidence and status in the profession, teaches must make the effort to be actively involved in research, and at least in the reading and discussion of the results of published research.

KRK 308 I will see that happening, but it is the freedom of schools to choose that is all important, and there are some particular elements of expertise which are not available to schools because it's not available centrally, and I believe that giving schools their budgets goes a great way to meeting this.

See how these speakers seem to be slightly more vague about the arguments they have to back up their opinions? There's a thin line between the two phrases, of course, especially in the last sentence, but there is a slight difference, I think. Native speakers might disagree

(and legal disclaimer: Data cited herein have been extracted from the British National Corpus Online service, managed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. All rights in the texts cited are reserved.)

[Kenny同志]

Many thanks, Dann. Very informative!

Edited November 7, 2009 at 03:25 AM by kenny2006woo

[Daan]

You're welcome! If I were you, I would bookmark the BNC's website. It's very useful to see a lot of examples of any given phrase in actual usage

(by the way, *informative)

[Kenny同志]

Oops, another typo. Thanks, Daan. I am always careless. I will do a spelling check before my posting. It seems necessary. Oh, I have save the site as one of my favorites. Thanks again!

[chrix]

animal world, sorry for being a nitpicker, but only the Romance languages are derived from Latin, while English is a Germanic languages. Usually the level of English of speakers of Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian etc.) is lower than speakers of other Germanic languages (German, Dutch from the same subbranch of English, and also the Scandinavian languages from a different subbranch of Germanic).

That said, most languages of Western Europe (usually this includes the Slavic languages and the languages of the Balkans) are considered to be a part of a Sprachbund called Standard Average European (SAE), which means they're structurally quite similar and have been in extensive language contact with each other, and this process continues (i.e. what you meant by exposure).

[animal world]

chrix, thanks. I meant to make a quick edit to my post and instead of saying latin i should have said languages that share the same alphabet. In addition, many of these languages share foreign terms: French terms probably resulting from the Napoleonic times (voilà, déjà vu, vis à vis, etc), German (Weltanschauung, Angst, etc), etc. This familiarity makes it perhaps also a tad easier to learn another language in those groups.

[chrix]

yes, not so much the alphabet (for instance, Indonesian uses the Roman alphabet as well), but the geographic and cultural proximity has of course led to a much higher degree of mutual exposure, including borrowings (however, Japanese and Korean have more borrowings than Chinese too). But at least the TOEFL statistics seem to confirm a correlation between the degree of proximity (primarily in a genetic way, but also in a structural and cultural way) of your mother tongue to English and your English ability.

[gato]

English shares a lot more vocabulary with French than German, though. (It's the Norman influence.)

See the first paragraphs of two articles on the same topic below, one from a French paper, the other from a German paper.

Almost a third of the words in the French version (once you take away the prepositions and articles) are cognates of English words: success, priority, mandate, chamber, representative, american, adopt, plan, reform, cover, offer, president, premier (first), victory.

The German version features much fewer words that similar to English (as least to a non-German speaker, such as myself).

http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2009/11/08/feu-vert-pour-la-reforme-du-systeme-de-sante-americain_1264311_3222.html

Feu vert pour la réforme du système de santé américain

C'est le succès dont Barack Obama avait besoin, l'une des priorités de son mandat. La Chambre des représentants américaine a adopté samedi soir un plan de réforme de la couverture santé aux Etats-Unis, offrant au président Barack Obama une première victoire au Congrès.

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/401/493745/text/

Zähes Ringen um jeden Schritt Obamas Gesundheitsreform

08.11.2009, 08:21

Es war denkbar knapp. Aber ein Hindernis immerhin ist nun ausgeräumt auf dem langen Weg zur Jahrhundertreform - oder dem, was davon am Ende noch übrig sein wird. Das Repräsentantenhaus hat für die Gesundheitsreform gestimmt - das wichtigste innenpolitische Wahlversprechen von Präsident Barack Obama und ein Anliegen, was seine Vorgänger mehr oder minder nachdrücklich seit mindestens einem halben Jahrhundert verfolgen.

[chrix]

gato, let me show you the cognates in the German text (easily more than 1/3):

zäh: tough

Ringen: to ring

es: it

war: was

denken: think

ein: one

hinder- : hinder

-nis: -ness

ist: is

nun: now

aus - : out

räumen : room

auf : of or off, I'm not sure

dem, den, der, die, das etc.: the

lang: long

Weg: way

zu: to

Jahr-: year

hundert: hundred

oder: or

was: what

Ende: end

Haus: house

hat: has

für: for

innen: inner

sprechen: speak

an: on

liegen: lie

vor: fore

gehen: go

mehr: more

seit: probably cognate with side, not sure

halb: half

ver-: for-

folgen: follow

I haven't listed Latinate lexical material here both languages borrowed from French and Latin,such as Reform or Präsident. Also cognate words don't always have the same meaning in English and German of course.

We're talking about speaker of what language can learn English more easily, not about which language has borrowed more words from Latin, or which language might be learnt more easily by an English speaker. These are different things.

Also, we need to distinguish between vocabulary in general and basic vocabulary. 60% of the basic vocabulary in English is Germanic, i.e. inherited from the original proto-language, from the same source German and Dutch come, and to a certain degree also the Scandinavian languages. French and Latin together account for almost 1/3 of the basic vocabulary alone, but it can be seen from these figures that it will be harder for a French native speaker to get a grasp of basic vocabulary in English than for a German or Dutch speaker. It's true that outside of basic vocabulary, Latinate vocabulary in English might be more prevalent, but don't forget that German and Dutch have a lot of Latinate (both Latin and French) vocabulary too, and educated speakers will more often than not have learnt Latin in school.

To wit: from the words you cited:

success, priority, mandate, chamber, representative, american, adopt, plan, reform, cover, offer, president, premier (first), victory.

the following are used in German as well:

Priorität, Kammer, Repräsentant, Amerikaner, adoptieren (in the sense of adopting a child), Plan/planen, Reform/reformieren, Offerte/offerieren, Präsident, Premier (in the sense of prime minister). You've chosen two relatively short sample paragraphs that don't have the same meaning, which will inevitably skew the results as well.

Edited November 8, 2009 at 04:18 PM by chrix