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Hello 

A French friend has asked me to translate the following  phrase from the work of Thierry Renard into English  ...

où passe un mot passe un monde

I'm stumped and would welcome any suggestions. The context is about the power of literacy to open a world of opportunity

Best wishes

Nigel

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Literally "where a word passes there passes a (new) world".

Does it mean "The word opens the door to a new world" ? or ,as you have put it "Literacy opens the door to a world of  opportunity" ?

Does that make sense (I don't think a close translation is possible) ?

 

I think  a more normal French way of putting it might have been "là où passe un mot, passe  aussi un monde (nouveau) "

 

I have a second theory!  " Passer un mot " might mean "to communicate" ( I am sure it can mean "to leave a note or message") and "passer un monde" might mean " a world  appears"

ps "mot de passe" means "password " but I don't think that can have a bearing here-its just coincidental.

Hello George

Thank you for getting back with your advice and suggestions.  Discussing the issue is, in itself, very helpful and I'm inclined to think that you're right and that a close translation is not really possible. 

Maybe the safest thing is to take it out of the quotation marks and paraphrase it.

Best wishes

Nigel

I think others will be more helpful than I was but one thing that I  find difficult is the use of the second "passer" with "monde".

What does "le monde passe" mean?

One meaning would be "come to an end" but that seem to be the opposite  of the overall sentiment.

Sorry, I can't write in english, my definition is a little bit difficult to translate. Hope you can understand.

Je pense que vous devez avoir une vision un peu plus global de la phrase.

Sans le contexte, la phrase ne veut pas dire grand chose. Et là, vous essayez de trouver une définition en traduisant mot par mot. Il vaut mieux se pencher sur le second degrés de la phrase, c'est à dire :

Nous pouvons considérer deux types de mondes, celui des analphabètes et le nôtre.

Notre monde transmet un mot/une note/un message au monde des analphabètes.

Le fait de faire passer ce message leurs permettent d'apprendre à lire et à écrire, afin de prendre la place du mot et de rejoindre notre monde.

This is my theory, long live the philosophy !! :D

I think I see what you mean.

So  could we say  "Give a man a book and give him a passport. ?"

Does that  agree  with your understanding  and would it work as a free  translation ?

I don't know... do you have a context ? Or it's just a simple sentence ?

No I don't have the context myself exactly   but Nigel said "The context is about the power of literacy to open a world of opportunity" and it comes from something written by Thierry Renard.

I don't know who he is.

Dear George and Florian

Thank you so much for your replies. I'm finding the discussion very interesting and helpful. It has also demonstrated to my French friend that whilst an online translation tool like Google Translate might have many uses there can be very significant limitations too.

Best wishes

Nigel 

I don't know him too. Maybe a writers or poet (poète).

The most important thing to know is this sentence talk about humanitarian aid.

Not sure about this.

I would rather say that he is trying to tell us that a word encapsulates a corresponding world in the sense that each language is a world in itself and that we all live in our specific language, that our mode of thinking and being is first determined by the idiosyncrasy of the language we use.

I would be against that as it would seem to be advocating some kind of a cultural colonialisation which is distinctly out of fashion these days.

 I have managed to track down a "Thierry Renard" who  is apparently a poet and a writer (just do a  "Thierry Renard" search in Google Books).

However I cannot track down the passage containing the phrase "où passe un mot passe un monde" .

If the author is writing with his poet's hat on  then I  suspect his aim  may be to achieve or tolerate   a lack of clarity  (we are supposed to fill in the gaps I think) .

Of course those gaps are  always present  in language  no matter how precise we attempt to be.

I don't suppose that a thought  originates in language (except when we think about language itself) -rather that language is the offspring of the thought (or perception)

 

ps I still don't quite know what  this phrase could actually mean  in a common or garden sentence as I can't find any instances of similar phrases on the internet.

It has nothing to do with cultural colonisation as it doesn't say that any language is superior to one another. If we consider that languages were first embedded in a specific space with its specific perception of the environment it's not wrong to posit that it structures people psychologically and intellectually. For instance the Inuits have several words for the colour of snow (nuances of the white colour) and some colours are absent from their language it's clear that their perception of the world is slighly different from ours and reflects a kind of different world. An other example is that according to some the emergence  of  metaphysics is tightly linked to the structure of the Greek grammar . This vision of things is still supported by some linguists and it doesn't entail that one perception should prevail. Interestingly it runs counter to the vision of a uniformed world and tends to respect each variety of perceptions.

It is in this sense that we can say that a word reflects a world.

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