How to translate "imprinting" in this context?

brunodc

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Monday, December 19th 2011, 10:55am

How to translate "imprinting" in this context?

Quoted

Animals seem to possess inherited patterns of behavior such as nest building, defending their young, and feeding their offspring, but most of this behavior is based on imprinting and internal body chemistry. Animals with large adrenal glands and a large brain will tend to perpetuate those characteristics in their offspring. Bull dogs of several hundred years ago were very ferocious, which was thought to be inborn. Since then, most of that has been bred out of them by reducing the size of their adrenal glands, which lessened the violence of the animals. It was not the case that the violence was inherited, but rather that the size of the adrenal gland caused the aggressive behavior that characterized the species.

nest building, defending their young suggests the psychological notion of imprinting.

large adrenal glands, large brain suggests genetic imprinting.

I think we're missing a link between the first and second sentence, which makes the paragraph a little confusing.

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nomada

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Tuesday, December 20th 2011, 12:21am

It is a very interesting subject. And after reading it all over, it clearly denotes that there is much to learn about how it works.

I found an article written by an English researcher and a Portuguese. So in the Portuguese version i verified that the author suggested "estampagem" (stamping, in English for translation, but referred that usually it is a non-translated term.

http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n14/exper…dex-lorenz.html

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Diana

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Tuesday, December 20th 2011, 8:47pm

Hi!

in Italian we don't translate it, we just use the English word "imprinting".
It is not very common because it's specific of Ethology studies but it is in the dictionaries.

What about the French word "empreinte", does it make sense to you?

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brunodc

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Tuesday, December 20th 2011, 9:00pm

I'm not looking for a way to translate it, I'm asking your opinion about those two notions of imprinting I referred to which have two different translations. In this context I'd use the psychological imprinting, even though the next sentences talk about genetic imprinting. I was wondering if you guys concurred with that.

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Diana

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Tuesday, December 20th 2011, 9:36pm

nice clarification

Now I got what you asked!

I'd use genetic imprinting.

Because I don't see that building nests and feeding or defending offspring is a psychological notion, is it? Those actions are much more instinctive impulse because of their genetics, while I'd talk about the psychological notion if the animal was influenced by a certain environment...

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nomada

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Thursday, December 22nd 2011, 1:05am

Got it now too :seymour:

Genetic Imprinting is something different from what JF is telling there, I think:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_imprinting

but i don't understand much abut the concept. Just that the genetic of an animal doesn't explain its behavior. But the environment does; both internal (organism) and external environment. Even that the information is written in a genetic code that allows us to (re)produce copies of ourselves into future generations. I don't really see a separation between psychological and genetic imprinting in this phenomenon that JF tells about. But i cant define well the term either : (

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Diana

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Thursday, December 22nd 2011, 2:32am

Hey Bruno, you got it right: it is the psychological notion here !!
(in Italian we do associate the psychological notion of imprinting to Ethology and I confused it with genetics :sigh:

)

EDIT:
... (to add a bit more, I was also excluding the psychological notion because I knew that) behaviors like building nests are often 'suggested' (don't find a better word) by chemistry, and in particular by hormones.

This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "Diana" (Dec 22nd 2011, 1:12pm)