Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 February 9

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February 9

French senses in translation

The French novel The Parrot's Theorem by Denis Guedj contains this sentence:

• Il avait peu à peu développé un septième sens. Son corps entier participait de la réception des sons et captait ce qui avait échappé à l'oreille.

The English translation renders it thus:

• He had developed a sort of sixth sense: it was as if he listened with his whole body and heard things that went unsaid.

According to Wiktionary, the standard French version of 'sixth sense' is the expected 'sixième sens', not 'septième sens', which means 'seventh sense'.

According to this site (google translation):

• The sixth sense is what we call intuition, and the seventh sense is what we call the superego, the one that serves as the gateway between your consciousness and the universe.

Then this site talks about eighth, ninth and higher senses. So, although we tend to confine our attention to the canonic five senses and the sixth sense as a special category, it seems others are not unknown in the literature. But my questions are:

• did Guedj really mean the seventh sense, and if not, what did he mean?
• why was it translated as sixth rather than seventh sense? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:38, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Reading the whole sentence by Guedj he would almost certainly have meant what we call the sixth sense ("his entire body took part in the reception of sounds, and caught that which had escaped (his) ears)". Lectonar (talk) 07:49, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I do not know the answer but I'll add the observation that the 1945 scifi short story "Uncommon Sense" was translated into French as Le Septième Sens. Similarly for a book by Rupert Sheldrake ("The sense of being stared at" becomes Le Septième Sens : les pouvoirs de l'esprit étendu; this postdates Guedj's novel). This could indicate a pattern. --Wrongfilter (talk) 07:53, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

The film title The Sixth Sense ("I see dead people") was translated in French as (Le) Sixième Sens. The French Wikipedia defines sixième sense as "an expression referring to extrasensory perception, that is to say, not coming from the five physiological senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell". Perhaps Guedj's use of septième was intended to avoid the interpretation of this gradually developed sense as ESP. Not being canonical, it is a free for all to assign a real or imaginary sense of one's choice to the higher ordinals.  --Lambiam 11:54, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

German TV taught me that the seventh sense was connected to being a better driver. —Kusma (talk) 12:02, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

And the german article about it actually has it a bit the other way round: "the title has led to "seventh sense" occasionally being used for the "sixth sense", i.e. the other senses outside of human perception. As Lambian said: it's a free for all. Lectonar (talk) 12:09, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, I was at sixes and sevens about this issue. I'm better now. Thanks, all. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:08, 10 February 2024 (UTC)