How do you say something is "morally relevant", "carries moral weight" or is "morally significant"?

[Yadang]

Hi,

 

I'm wondering how I can say that some facts are morally relevant in situations and some facts aren't.

 

For example, how would I translate the below sentence?

 

"A morally relevant feature is a feature that makes a difference to the moral status of an action."

 

It would also be cool to know synonyms such as "carries moral weight" or "morally significant" or "has bearing upon the morality of the action/situation", as well as the opposites. 

 

So, for an example sentence in context, how would I say:

 

"Gender and race do not carry moral weight. That is to say, the morality of an action is not changed by the gender or the race of the person doing that action."

 

 

Thanks!

[Yadang]

As an afterthought, how would you say:

 

"this action is morally impermissible", "this action is morally permissible" and "this action is morally required"?

[Michaelyus]

If you are treating "moral relevance" as a "thing" (that is, if you see it as reified), then the exact equivalent is 道德相关性. This is the fixed noun form expression, and consists of 道德 in apposition to 相关性. You may find 道义 in more involved discussions on ethics in Chinese - I only really encounter 道德 on a day-to-day basis though.

 

Slightly less rigidly, the same concept can be expressed by [在]道德上 and 相关/影响, where the first part of the phrase uses the locative instead of the adverbial construction "morally", and the last part uses adjectives / stative verbs (usually translated "relevant" and "influence"). This is generally the most common form.

 

I think 影响 shows its versatility here, with all the senses of "weight" equivalent to 影响[力] + 大 as a collocation, whereas 相关 treads that path that leads from relevant to significant. Occasionally you may see "moral weight" equated to 道德压力, but I'd tend to see that as a misunderstanding of the English as "moral pressure", which is of course different to (indeed, almost opposed to) "moral weight".

 

Additionally, there is no need to use 带 for "carry" + "weight" here: 有 + 影响 is fine, and using the verb 影响 straight up works too. 

 

 

Further translation points:

• "makes a difference to" is an idiomatic collocation that requires an equivalent rather than a translation;
• "change" can be transitive in English, and is equivalent to the verb 改 in Chinese; the passive "to be changed" is common in English, but the connotations of the passive with 被 in Chinese render this construction undesirable in this context. Use another equivalent;
• the participle clause after the noun head "Person doing that action" is transparent and in daily use in English. Any translation of "do" into Chinese is, as a rule, fraught with difficulty because of its high idiomatic use in English. The participle construction can only be translated into the 的-based relative clause construction in Chinese, which is clunky and inelegant. I would condense this into a single, preferably disyllabic, noun.
• "That is to say" is quite usual in formal English discourse; 就是说 sounds at best impromptu and at worst downright non-书面语 to me. Use a more formal collocation than that one.

"Permissible" is usually translated 可容许的.

[vera_zxl]

我觉得morally relevant feature可以翻译成“和道德有关的”或者“有关道德的”

 

"carries moral weight" or "morally significant" could be “道德上的压力” or “道义上的压力“。

 

"this action is morally impermissible" 道德上允许的。

 

It seems "上" always goes with "道德".

[gato]

If you try to translate word for word, or even phrase for phrase, you are likely to end up with awkward-sounding translation-ese. I'd try to translate entire sentences (or even paragraphs) and not confine yourself to the original English word/phrase.

There are various more naturally Chinese way of saying "morally relevant" and "moral weight" depending on what you are trying to say.

For example, "Gender and race do not carry moral weight. That is to say, the morality of an action is not changed by the gender or the race of the person doing that action."" can be translated "对一件事的道德判断不应该考虑当事人的性别或种族". In order words, I would combine the two sentences in the translation. Unless there is a special reason to translate the first of these two sentences, I would omit it, as it doesn't add anything.