English translation: perfectibility/malleability/manipulability [(scope for) social engineering / social change]
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17:02 Jan 15, 2012
Dutch to English translations [PRO] Social Sciences - Social Science, Sociology, Ethics, etc.
Dutch term or phrase:maakbaarheid
In a column in de Volkskrant about twenty somethings nowadays who only believe in the 'maakbaarheid' of themselves, but no longer in the 'maakbaarheid van de samenleving'.
I have found 'feasibility' and 'manufacturability' in a glossary but don't think these words cover the meaning or would be used in this context in English (UK). It is more to do with their ability to contribute to or have an impact on it, but can't think of an English equivalent.
Explanation: 'maakbaarheid van het individu' could be: 'perfectibility/malleability of the individual';
'maakbaarheid van de samenleving' could be 'perfectibility/malleability of society' or 'scope for social engineering'
Example sentences:
'The revolutionaries of the eighteenth century and their later followers often, it is true, exaggerated the malleability of society; and what is worse, they imagined that merely by discarding the past they had a key to a better future, wholly rational in design, and therefore, according to their lights, ideal.'
'Malthlus was far more conservative, and far less willing to concede the malleability of individual character, than was Mill. Whereas Malthus endorsed the idea of a lottery of life characterized by deeply rooted injustices, Mill encouraged us to experiment with our lives, to take risks and to break from the mold.'
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Van Dale:
maakbaarheid de (v.) = manipulability
de maakbaarheid van de samenleving = the extent to which social change can be effected by government policies
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-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 1 hr (2012-01-15 18:04:31 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
Thanks, i believe that social engineering doesn't sound neutral, so i'll stick with malleability, as it is possible to be used in both the personal and the social sense. Many thanks again. 4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer
because of the general way in which the relevant terms have been presented, 'de maakbaarheid van zichzelf' and the 'maakbaarheid van de samenleving' -- these are general, I would say, philosophical concepts -- and as long as we don't know the exact linguistic context -- I think the phrases 'perfectibility of themselves/man or the malleability of themselves/man' and 'perfectibility of society' or 'malleability of society' are perfectly acceptable
'maakbaarheid, an enigmatic Dutch term that usually refers to a period in Dutch society between the 1960s and ’70s when government policies were explicitly aimed at spreading wealth, knowledge and power through massive bottom-up emancipation policies.' (http://www.architectural-review.com/essays/wouter-vanstiphou...
Yves ANTOINE Belgium Local time: 10:51 Native speaker of: French
23 hrs confidence: peer agreement (net): +1
potential for change/improvement
Explanation: It may not be possible to find one equivalent noun that doesn't sound contrived. I think potential for chance/improvement comes close to the real meaning of 'maakbaarheid'.
Tina Vonhof Local time: 02:51 Specializes in field Native speaker of: Dutch, English PRO pts in category: 16
perfectibility/malleability/manipulability [(scope for) social engineering / social change]
Explanation: 'maakbaarheid van het individu' could be: 'perfectibility/malleability of the individual';
'maakbaarheid van de samenleving' could be 'perfectibility/malleability of society' or 'scope for social engineering'
Example sentences:
'The revolutionaries of the eighteenth century and their later followers often, it is true, exaggerated the malleability of society; and what is worse, they imagined that merely by discarding the past they had a key to a better future, wholly rational in design, and therefore, according to their lights, ideal.'
'Malthlus was far more conservative, and far less willing to concede the malleability of individual character, than was Mill. Whereas Malthus endorsed the idea of a lottery of life characterized by deeply rooted injustices, Mill encouraged us to experiment with our lives, to take risks and to break from the mold.'
---------
Van Dale:
maakbaarheid de (v.) = manipulability
de maakbaarheid van de samenleving = the extent to which social change can be effected by government policies
---------
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 1 hr (2012-01-15 18:04:31 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
Michael Beijer United Kingdom Local time: 09:51 Native speaker of: English, Dutch PRO pts in category: 4
Grading comment
Thanks, i believe that social engineering doesn't sound neutral, so i'll stick with malleability, as it is possible to be used in both the personal and the social sense. Many thanks again.
Reference comments
23 hrs
Reference
Reference information: perfectibility of themselves
Perfection was expected to come about by a variety of means. Partly it would be by way of natural development and progress (the view espoused by David Hume) but more so by way of education (precursors of this view included John Locke, David Hartley, and the leaders of the Polish Enlightenment) and by way of overt state action (Claude Adrien Helvétius, later Jeremy Bentham); reliance was placed in cooperation among people (Charles Fourier, 1808), later in eugenics (Francis Galton, 1869). While the foundations of the faith in the future <perfectibility of man> changed, the faith itself persisted. It linked the people of the Enlightenment with the idealists and romantics — with Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the Polish Messianists — as well as with the 19th-century Positivists and evolutionists; Herbert Spencer penned a great new declaration championing the future <perfection of man>
The alternative order explicitly incorporated notions of popular sovereignty (in which the people was equated with the nation and abstracted from any individual volition), national emancipation (not in institutionalist, constitutional terms as in liberalism, but through a cultural-spiritual regeneration), and a new civilisation comprising a new man (both of which would substitute the thoroughly compromised homo economicus of liberalism but still referred to the Enlightenment ideals of the <malleability of society and the perfectibility of man>, cf. Eisenstadt 1999).
As the condition of modernity is founded on the notions of human autonomy and the <malleability of society>, any concrete, institutionalised solution for modern society is temporary and essentially contestable. Any programme of modernisation is based on multi-interpretable concepts (liberty, democracy, progress) which – due to their general and abstract nature – are open for different interpretations and thus to critique regarding
their unfulfilled status.
The translation workplace 
