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Re: Etymology of derivation


From: Taylan Kammer
Subject: Re: Etymology of derivation
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2020 06:07:49 +0100
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.4.0

On 01.11.2020 20:27, Arun Isaac wrote:

Hi Guix,

I am translating Guix to the Tamil language. Tamil doesn't yet have a
very standardized technical vocabulary, and I mostly coin terms on my
own. Most often, I construct calques of existing English words, and it
sounds alright. But, I'm having trouble with the word "derivation" (as
in Guix's low-level build actions). I haven't seen the word "derivation"
used anywhere outside of Guix. Why is a "low-level build action" called
a "derivation"? If someone could clarify the etymology, it might really
help with good translation.

Thanks!


In Turkish, taking the easy way, we sometimes just bastardize an English word, for example in this case we might say "derivasyon." (Other such examples: "depresyon" for depression, "enflasyon" for inflation, etc.) Can such a thing be done in Tamil?


Alternatively, it might be useful to check what terminology is used in Tamil for mathematical derivation / derivatives, as in calculus.


By the way, using Google Translate on various English, German and Turkish words which all stand for "derivation" (namely "derivation", "derivative", "Ableitung", "türev" and "türetme") have all resulted in:

வழித்தோன்றல்

Although translating it back leads to words like "descendants" and "grandchildren."


- Taylan



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