Comments on: Agency

By: NPTO

NPTO — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:42:51 +0000

I am also skeptical about “language x has no word for x”. Quite often, the language in question has a perfectly appropriate way to say the same thing using more than one word. Some other language may have a word for “having agency”, and find it amusing that English-speaking people needs two words for that.

As for agency, leaving aside for the moment the fact that English-speaking philosophers could discuss the precise meaning of the “agency” for hours in a row, I think “pratique” would do in some contexts, “action” in others. In some contexts, “devenir” as in Deleuze.

There might be some overlap between devenir and capability, I’m not sure.

By: Glen Tomkins

Glen Tomkins — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:36:27 +0000

Hippity-bippity-bop

According to the Disney song, “the thing-a-ma-bob that does the job is hippity-bippity-bop”. So now, if only you can find the translation for “hippity-bippity-bop” in any given language, you have your translation of “agency”.

If that doesn’t help, perhaps the problem is the namby-pambification of the old concept of virtue. Like the Theological Virtues specifically, the idea of virtue in general has been drained of the original potency that the etymology of the word implies, the ability to act effectively that an earlier age associated with manliness. It almost means the exact opposite of agency nowadays, as we think of virtue as involving the refusal or inability to do what we want to do, or what is in our interest to do. The prominence off this connotation makes “virtue” useless in English to mean “agency”, and is basically why the latter needed to be coined. Perhaps you will find that in some languages, the local cognate of “virtue” hasn’t been emasculated, though perhaps the risk there will be that it also hasn’t lost the connotative implication that agency is a masculine trait.

By: Ingrid Robeyns

Ingrid Robeyns — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:17:58 +0000

great zamfir: I tried really hard to translate ‘capability’ into Dutch, but I think it simply doesn’t work without losing part of its meaning. If I’d explain in a sentence what capabilities are, I’d say that these are genuine opportunities to be the person you want to be and do those things you want to do, taking into account both internal capacities (like talents) and external constraints. So the most-often seen Dutch translation, ‘menselijke vermogens’, is also not getting close enough to my taste. So no surprise that the Dutch translations of Nussbaum’s work make me want to cry… (Funnily enough there seems to be much less demand for Dutch translations of Sen’s work).

By: Nadav Perez

Nadav Perez — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:37:23 +0000

Hebrew does not have a word for agency, other than ‘Sokhnut’, used for the institutional meaning (CIA = Sokhnut HaBiun Hamerkazit).
We don’t have a good word for actor, either, as Sakhkan, a stage actor, is also player, and contains the ‘play’ element, which is unwanted here. Makes things a bit difficult.

Lucky for us, we have quite a good translation for capabilities, Mesugaluiot.

By: Martin Wisse

Martin Wisse — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:10:36 +0000

14: “zelfstandigheid” is more independence than agency, imo; I would use “vrijheid van handelen” or an equivalent phrase.

38: “vaardigheid” != capability. Vaardigheid is skill, while capability is not something you know how to do, but something you are able to do. Gelegenheid?

Since English is now the linga franca of science and enginering and the like, it’s no wonder more jargon is generated in it and only awkwardly translatable in Dutch.

By: Great Zamfir

Great Zamfir — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:49:50 +0000

What’s wrong with ‘vaardigheid’ as translation of capability?

By: Retief

Retief — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 05:23:18 +0000

I have to second Alex’s suggestion of “libre arbitre.” That at least is how “free agency” is translated by French mormons. I believe it ties in to volonté or will appropriately too.

By: Ingrid Robeyns

Ingrid Robeyns — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 05:02:39 +0000

… but then one may encounter the problems that Geert points out, that people don’t understand this newly created word. Indeed, funny stuff, language, and even funnier stuff, translations.

By: Ingrid Robeyns

Ingrid Robeyns — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:58:58 +0000

I agree that ‘agency’ is a technical term, though surely not only from social choice—I recalled that when I took some courses in feminist theories there was lots about agency there too, as there is in sociology of course too. But then this prompts (at least for me) the question what it means if we don’t have a word in a particular langauge for a technical or new word; the same happened in Dutch, as Dave (#2) pointed out for ‘gender’, ‘computer’ and ‘capability’. In the former two, everybody now talks in Dutch about ‘gender’ and ‘computer’ as if it are Dutch words; for ‘capability’ (in the technical meaning from the capability approach) all translations I’ve seen so far fall short, so I tend to use the same—I just call them ‘capability’ and ‘capabilities’ – an English word pronounced in Dutch. Not particulary beautiful but the best way to deal with this translation issue, in my opinion.

By: Pär

Pär — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:24:54 +0000

Jacob,
i think the swedish version of agency is agens, at least i remember seeing it. In philosophy, agent is the same as in english.

By: geert

geert — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:16:06 +0000

I read ‘agencéité’, in a paper I read just one week ago, as a translation of Sen’s ‘agency’, but no one understands this word. Pouvoir d’agir (as suggested in # 17 or capacité d’agir seems much better.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:08:22 +0000

In much economic writing “actor” and “agent” are treated as synonymous, and I think Sen’s use is consistent with this. But English has no word for “the property of being an actor”.

By: sean m

sean m — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:59:43 +0000

This can’t be too hard. There’s a cross-pollinated intellectual genealogy here. The word “agency,” for example, is sprinkled through English versions of P. Bourdieu and C. Levi-Strauss. Of course, they don’t mean the exact same thing as Sen, but it’s close enough to use the same word. One could check the original of “La Pensée sauvage” or “Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique, précédé de trois études d’ethnologie kabyle” to find out how people have addressed this question in the past. If anyone does this, I’d be interested in the result.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:38:56 +0000

That cite didn’t come out right, I was quoting the first line of #12. Bloody HTML.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:37:18 +0000

The don’t have a word for is just about always wrong

Yeah, right, that’s why accurate translation of complex concepts is so easy…

[or as the French say “like a woman: if she is beautiful, she is not faithful; if she is faithful, she is not beautiful.” N.B. I do not endorse these sentiments, I merely report them…]