ศาลาชุมนุม

[xkkpafi]

Does Thai tend to be more verbose than English, or am I missing subtle points in the Thai version? For example, if I map the following Thai directly to English, it comes out something like:

สำหรับ หลักทรัพย์ ที่มีการซื้อขายสูงสุด 5 อันดับได้แก่ (followed by a list of these shares and their price movements)
"For stocks that have trading most 5 levels, namely"

I think in English this would be more accurately expressed as something like
“The five most traded stocks were etc..etc ”

So in the context of this sentence, อันดับ is not really needed, and ได้แก่ could also be ignored.
So when translating, are we allowed license to ignore the Thai like this?

In another snippet it says:

ดัชนี ปรับเพิ่มขึ้นสูง

Why the ปรับ? If its taken to mean ‘improve’ we get “the index improves increase high”. Well, if the index increases, it has improved by definition, so why the ปรับ. No one in the domain of stock markets or investing needs to be informed that rising share prices or indices are an improvement .. it literally goes without saying – or am I again missing a subtle point in the Thai? To me this sentence means “The index rose sharply”.

I think virtually every article that I enjoy reading in Thai presents these questions about verboseness and to what extent one has licence to ignore or replace Thai words when trying to formulate a version of English that can be understood by English speakers.

If there is anything info/tutorials that might exist that is aimed at novice translators like myself I would greatly appreciate the link.

[Pirin]

Does Thai tend to be more verbose than English, or am I missing subtle points in the Thai version? For example, if I map the following Thai directly to English, it comes out something like:

สำหรับ หลักทรัพย์ ที่มีการซื้อขายสูงสุด 5 อันดับได้แก่ (followed by a list of these shares and their price movements)
"For stocks that have trading most 5 levels, namely"

I think in English this would be more accurately expressed as something like
“The five most traded stocks were etc..etc ”

So in the context of this sentence, อันดับ is not really needed, and ได้แก่ could also be ignored.
So when translating, are we allowed license to ignore the Thai like this?

In another snippet it says:

ดัชนี ปรับเพิ่มขึ้นสูง

Why the ปรับ? If its taken to mean ‘improve’ we get “the index improves increase high”. Well, if the index increases, it has improved by definition, so why the ปรับ. No one in the domain of stock markets or investing needs to be informed that rising share prices or indices are an improvement .. it literally goes without saying – or am I again missing a subtle point in the Thai? To me this sentence means “The index rose sharply”.

I think virtually every article that I enjoy reading in Thai presents these questions about verboseness and to what extent one has licence to ignore or replace Thai words when trying to formulate a version of English that can be understood by English speakers.

If there is anything info/tutorials that might exist that is aimed at novice translators like myself I would greatly appreciate the link.

สำหรับ หลักทรัพย์ ที่มีการซื้อขายสูงสุด 5 อันดับได้แก่

<=

สำหรับ = for, as for
หลักทรัพย์ที่มีการซื้อขายสูงสุด 5 อันดับ = the top 5 stocks that are bought and sold
ได้แก่ = are ...

........

"อันดับ" is the classifier in Thai for the phrase "top 5 stocks".

[Gwindor]

It's true that in some cases Thai may require words which appear to be unnecessary compared to English. But the same can also be said in reverse:
"The five most traded stocks were..."

"The" isn't critical to the meaning of the sentence. It serves a demand of language structure that is ultimately unconnected to meaning (in this statement). Similarly "were" isn't really critical. And that is true in two ways: it isn't needed as a verb, or a time marker. Both of these statements would be equally meaningful:
The 5 most traded stocks were a, b, c, d and e.
Five most traded stocks a, b, c, d, e.

It is arguable that อันดับ is not really needed for clarity, and neither is ได้แก่. But that is equally true for the and were. In the case of อันดับ particularly, although it's use here may not be critical to the meaning of the sentence, I think that classifiers in Thai frequently play a necessary role. In fact, that role can be somewhat similar to the role of definite and indefinite articles in English. Sometimes they support clarity, sometimes they don't. Either way, they are necessary to make the sentence sound "right".

Most languages place peculiar demands on speakers.