Funny how I too was thinking about translating that book, to a language used in the same broader region. I think I will end up making a proposal to EY that it would rather be making a derivative work with his permission than a direct translation.
For example, I don’t want to use the term “rational”, due to its Straw Vulcan connotations. I would rather use terms that could be roughly translated back as “according to reason” or “reasonable”. I think my audience would consider AI and Zombies far too geeky, so I would title that book “living according to reason” or “making reasonable decisions”. I would also rip out the examples taken from science and rather use the more everday-life examples gleaned from the threads on LW.
I too would recommend you to not try a direct translation. It would not go down well. Write a simplified and culturally more compatible book with different terminology. Avoid using the the word rational.
I mean, if I would tell a peasant look this is not a rational way to go about planning your agriculture he would tell me to fuck off you intellectual city snob. If I would rather say the equivalent of this is not a reasonable or sensible or clever way, he would be more likely to listen.
Rationality (the term) carries too much “Enlightenmentist” connotations in this region, it feels like enlightened absolutism, from King Joe II to the Soviets. Part of the issue being rationality has always been a foreign import in this region and it rubs people’s pride the wrong way. However, people like the idea of being “shrewd”, outsmarting others, or solving problems the clever way, finding backdoors, cheat codes, low hanging fruits, you just need to present it as something a vulpine, “pfiffig”, street-smart shepherd kid would do (like in The Simple Truth), rather than something a high-brow academic would do which feels too foreign and too haughty in this region. People here tend to associate the term “rational” with Marcos Sophisticus from the The Simple Truth essay.
If you try a direct translation, you will be trying to essentially jump over multiple levels of development / progress. That book was more or less written for the Silicon Valley. Even before that book, those people were already different—smarter? geekier? - than people we are used to. So I think it is better to write a more accessible version of it.
I just want to add the recent changes (which include the change of the title; that’s why I am asking here)… and then perhaps convert it to TeX if I get some help with producing the same layout as the original. Then MIRI could sell it along with the original.
(And of course a German translation would be more useful, but I am not qualified to do one.)
Funny how I too was thinking about translating that book, to a language used in the same broader region. I think I will end up making a proposal to EY that it would rather be making a derivative work with his permission than a direct translation.
For example, I don’t want to use the term “rational”, due to its Straw Vulcan connotations. I would rather use terms that could be roughly translated back as “according to reason” or “reasonable”. I think my audience would consider AI and Zombies far too geeky, so I would title that book “living according to reason” or “making reasonable decisions”. I would also rip out the examples taken from science and rather use the more everday-life examples gleaned from the threads on LW.
I too would recommend you to not try a direct translation. It would not go down well. Write a simplified and culturally more compatible book with different terminology. Avoid using the the word rational.
I mean, if I would tell a peasant look this is not a rational way to go about planning your agriculture he would tell me to fuck off you intellectual city snob. If I would rather say the equivalent of this is not a reasonable or sensible or clever way, he would be more likely to listen.
Rationality (the term) carries too much “Enlightenmentist” connotations in this region, it feels like enlightened absolutism, from King Joe II to the Soviets. Part of the issue being rationality has always been a foreign import in this region and it rubs people’s pride the wrong way. However, people like the idea of being “shrewd”, outsmarting others, or solving problems the clever way, finding backdoors, cheat codes, low hanging fruits, you just need to present it as something a vulpine, “pfiffig”, street-smart shepherd kid would do (like in The Simple Truth), rather than something a high-brow academic would do which feels too foreign and too haughty in this region. People here tend to associate the term “rational” with Marcos Sophisticus from the The Simple Truth essay.
If you try a direct translation, you will be trying to essentially jump over multiple levels of development / progress. That book was more or less written for the Silicon Valley. Even before that book, those people were already different—smarter? geekier? - than people we are used to. So I think it is better to write a more accessible version of it.
Thanks, but the book is already translated. :D
I just want to add the recent changes (which include the change of the title; that’s why I am asking here)… and then perhaps convert it to TeX if I get some help with producing the same layout as the original. Then MIRI could sell it along with the original.
(And of course a German translation would be more useful, but I am not qualified to do one.)