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Ooneykcall
yesterday
LeviHighway
yesterday
TATAR1
yesterday
Ooneykcall
yesterday
LeviHighway
2 days ago
Thanuir
5 days ago
LeviHighway
6 days ago
frpzzd
6 days ago
LeviHighway
6 days ago
LeviHighway
6 days ago
Could I add pun jokes and could I translate them?
I don't think anyone has ever objected to puns here. There's a pun tag with some 250 sentences so marked. It would be interesting to learn some Chinese puns, which must be numerous given its logographic writing.
๐
Can I translate them? If I translate by the literal meaning, the pun would be gone.
Literal translations of sayings are not uncommon, though they are best accompanied by an idiomatic translation as well to highlight the difference, but in case of a pun which may not have a similar punny translation, I guess a literal one would suffice, perhaps with a comment to explain what the original pun was like/about.
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The content of this message goes against our rules and was therefore hidden. It is displayed only to admins and to the author of the message.
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I feel quite frustrated when translating English into Chinese. There are many English sentences use "it," "he/she," or "this/that." This is frustrating because even tho if I can translate them into ๅฎ, ไป, ๅฅน, ้ๅ, ้ฃๅ, but they all sound very unnatural. For example "it is there" is translated into "ๅฎๅจ้ฃ," but we rarely use ๅฎ that way. We almost always specify the thing. Also, there're sentences that use "he" and "she" together, like "he loves her." It is translated into "ไปๆๅฅน" but you would never hear this sentence in real life, because ไป and ๅฅน have the same pronunciation. It would sound like "ta lives ta," which is very confusing. Also "this/that happens" is translated into "้/้ฃๆ็ผ็" or "้/้ฃไปถไบๆ็ผ็," which are still understandable, but you'll never say them in real life. I can't think a good solution for those situations.
An addition: "do", Chinese much less commonly use a generalized verb like English "to do".
Just curious, regarding the ta/ta situation, is it any different in writing (i.e. would it be just as unnatural to read that sentence in a book)?
How do you generally refer to multiple different people of different genders in context - would you generally refer to them by name each time? For instance, something like:
"I don't think Tom should marry Mary."
- "But he loves her!"
If an analogous interaction were taking place in Chinese, would the second sentence just repeat their names? Or maybe use a pronoun for one of them while repeating the other's name?
It feels weird to me. Because when I read a sentence, there's a voice in my head. So "ta loves ta" would look weird, because I'm trying to read out the sentence.
Without knowing Chinese, some possibilities, in no particular order:
1. Leave the difficult sentences untranslated. Maybe you have a better idea when you meet them in the future, and there is no lack of English sentences to translate, not to speak of other languages.
2. Look at other translations of the sentence for inspiration. (But be careful to add any translation to the sentence it is a translation of.)
3. Consider a context for the original sentence, and then consider how you would or could translate the entire context, and then check if that creates a valid translation for the sentence in question.
4. To translate "He loves her." into Finnish, I have to do some maneuver like "he" -> "man/boy" or "she" -> "woman/girl", as "he" and "she" both translate to "hän", and "Hän rakastaa häntä." is a somewhat strange construction. I do consider these various variations with man, boy, girl or woman to be acceptable translations.
5. English has constructions like "There is a car in the garage.", where the "there is" part has no equivalent in Finnish, so this would simply become "Autotallissa on auto.". The structure of the sentence is different, but the meaning is the same. A valid translation.
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I have sent a audio recording request to team@tatoeba.org, but I haven't received any replies. Did the team receive my request?
We did receive the e-mail, which you sent five days ago. It's quite possible that the person who takes care of audio has been too busy to respond yet. I would give him more time. I sent him a note mentioning that you had posted here on the Wall as well.