|
 |
Effectivity vs Efficiency | ||
Tags: Meaning of words | English | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4053 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes  Studies: German | Message 9 of 17 03 January 2015 at 12:04am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
The following is an anecdote from my personal experience. One evening, my spouse and I invited some francophone friends over for dinner. While we are all fully bilingual, we habitually converse in French only. Two of our guests had enjoyed lengthy careers as translators (English to French) in large organisations and both had university degrees in their chosen field. Another guest had earned a combined engineering and geology degree and had enjoyed an international career working for American multi-national companies as well as large mining companies located in Québec. For my part, while I had begun engineering at university, I finished in applied science and, giving way to wanderlust some years later, retrained in accounting and finance, worked in the field for a number of years, but finished my career as the production manager in large processing plant in the Québec hinterland. Consequently, at least two of us were quite accustomed to using the terms “efficiency” and “effectiveness” in our work (in French and English) whereas at least two others should have been, in theory, equally comfortable with these terms.
As it happens, during the light-hearted dinner conversation, one of the translators used the word “efficace” (effectiveness) in a context that, to my mind, would have called for “éfficience” (efficiency). Knowing full well that I was about to enter the Lion’s Den (my “interlocteur” was brittle even at the best of times), and yielding to the pedant in me, I suggested that “éfficience” (efficiency) might better express what the she had intended. I received a prompt rebuke from both translators and was accused of trying to introduce, yet another, “anglicism” into the language. Undaunted, I provided a definition, in French, of both words, which the engineer promptly and fully supported. There ensued vain attempts to explain that “efficace” (effectiveness) did not fully capture the nature of “éfficience” (efficiency). As a final line of defence, the translators accused the engineer and myself of destroying the purity of the language. Having several dictionaries at my disposal, I reached for my copy of Le Dictionnaire historique de la langue Française and produced the evidence. The conclusion of the translators was that “they” (the French of France) lacked imagination and would accept “anything” into their language. PS: A quick Google search will locate numerous references to both “effectivity” and “éfficience”. Edited by Speakeasy on 03 January 2015 at 12:05am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4666 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 10 of 17 03 January 2015 at 12:28am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
Of course they do exist. I was just remarking on their rarity, which you confirmed with your anecdote.
And while "efficience" has a good reason to exist, given the ambiguity of "efficace" (or "efficacité" I guess), I'm not so sure "effectivity" does. :-) Edited by tastyonions on 03 January 2015 at 12:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4053 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 11 of 17 03 January 2015 at 12:48am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
In my experience, anyone working in the fields of mathematics, engineering, accounting and finance, and applied sciences has no difficulty using "efficiency" or "effectiveness" correctly. However, in the wider population, again, in my experience, both francophones and anglophones confound the two words or simply recognize the existence of only one. Sadly, a miniscule sampling of university-trained translators confirms my long-held suspicions concerning the “efficacy” of the educational system.
Another good example of what might be considered as "specialized knowledge" would be the following (apparently simple) questions: What number is derived from rounding 5.5 to zero decimal places? What number is derived from rounding 6.5 to zero decimal places? Explain your reasoning (by which I mean "justify" your application of the "rules of rounding"). Ignorantia juris non excusat! Edited by Speakeasy on 03 January 2015 at 9:38am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| IBEP Bilingual Triglot Newbie United States Joined 3632 days ago 19 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English*, Kannada*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 12 of 17 03 January 2015 at 10:23pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Woah, woah, woah, hold your horses. I think you are confusing game theory with gaming. Game theory is a serious academic discipline dealing with the mathematical discipline of games, but as with many things in serious academic subjects, their definitions vary from mainstream parlance; even the word game, in the context of game theory, is defined as any sort of complex human interaction or decision making process. And in game theory, yes, effectivity does have a technical meaning. Even outside of such specialized usage though, insofar as you view effective and efficient as having differing definitions, then effectivity would be to effective as efficiency is to efficient- that which is effective has the property of effectivity, while that which is efficient has the property of being efficient. Of course, perhaps efficient and effective are synonymous to you, in which case, the effectivity is likewise redundant. And of course you might further assert that effectivity has the same meaning as effectiveness, as the Urban Dictionary entry so derisively puts it, but languages are full of redundancies so this isn't anything particularly surprising or meaningful; further, despite the protestations of said article that the word is a dumb neologism, Google NGrams shows that the word "effectivity" goes back to at least 1795. See here: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph? content=effectivity&year_start=1000&year_end=2000&corpus=15& smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ceffe ctivity%3B%2Cc0 (Anyone to anyone who would pedantically assert that "effectivity" isn't a real word because it's not on their super- duper-exclusive-guest-list, er, I mean, in their dictionary: dictionaries describe rather than prescribe usage, and besides, I found the word in several online dictionaries.) Edited by IBEP on 03 January 2015 at 10:29pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 13 of 17 07 January 2015 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
No, I am not :)
Gaming is what some people do to entertain themselves or, in short, for kicks when parcheesi is not enough for them any more. Among the nerdier gamer types who devote huge amounts of time to such gaming there are those who favour elaborate games that often require complex multi-player competition or cooperation strategies, or more 'traditional' strategy, war or skirmish games in which good players make at least some of their moves after calculations involving damages and protection coefficients, probabilities, logistics, and whatnot. Effectivity shows up quite often there. Sorry if my reference to "gaming scene" interfered with your reading about "game theory" in the Urban Dictionary. Such circles (I mean gaming) revolving around a mainly non-scientific yet complex activity, they abound in elements light-heartedly lifted from just about any context the games need, like psychology, probability or game theory (hello?), weaponry and the military, etc., to give themselves a semblance of respectability and being well-grounded, whereas the stuff employed is typically poorly understood or devoid of its applicability context in real life (or science) by game developers and players alike. To give just one example, lengthy tables are commonplace to avoid simple probability calculations, and I have even witnessed such tables being made by actually throwing dices. Any language linked to the employed elements is usually handled no better so I'd take care when picking up vocabulary or its proper use from gaming circles and the like unless it's game-specific. (But people debating stuff they have no idea about is nothing new either.)
WRT to scientific disciplines, I'd have never dubbed language in them as careless when I was in my twenties, but now that I am a bit more of a grown up, I know better -- scientists are as prone as everybody else to use language carelessly with in-field technical terminology being an usual but not universal exception. See, scientists 'hijack' common parlance terms when they are not clear or precise enough to discuss something within the context of a particular field, and these scientists often concoct 'proper' neologisms (i.e., shorthand words for new or specific concepts that make language more agile by eliminating roundabouts). So far, so good -- but they also make up unnecessary neologisms when perfectly valid words to describe something exist prior to their coining of new terms -- being scientists has nothing to do with it. Mind you, I'll be the first to dub dictionaries 'incomplete' when proper neologisms (as I defined them above) that are already in common acceptance are absent from them, and I'll refrain from saying something is 'not a word' merely because of redundancy conjugated with unpopularity, but making up words in a more or less serious context just because you are too lazy to check a dictionary seems to me a pretty dumb or even pedantic thing to do -- no matter if you are a layman or a scientist. Some people get away with it, though. Of course not all cases are equal, and I'll happily accept say 'myrmecophagia' along, or instead of, 'ant-eating' because of the vastly differing etymologies and context of probable use, while I am generally not happy at all about 'efficacy vs. efficaciousness' or 'normalcy vs. normality'. Which reminds me, you forgot to tell us if there's actually a difference, and what it is, between "effectiveness" and the unpopular "effectivity" (which I had heard but was absent of the first dictionary I checked) in game theory, or outside it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4666 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 14 of 17 09 January 2015 at 3:58am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
First time for everything: I heard "efficience" on the French radio today, haha. Just thought I would report back. Edited by tastyonions on 09 January 2015 at 3:59am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| ZeroTX Groupie United States Joined 6136 days ago 91 posts - 100 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 15 of 17 31 January 2015 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
"Effectivity" is not a word in the English language. Problem solved.
Source: Native speaker and teacher of English with two university degrees (earned in English). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 16 of 17 01 February 2015 at 9:10am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
English is not always so linear. For example, honest and reliable are obviously separate words, but unreliable is to reliable what dishonest is to honest. The real question here is whether "effectivity" is different from effectiveness or at least interchangeable with it. Most seem to agree that it's just a careless derivation. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
