Hey people!!!
IS THERE A TAG FOR SAYING SOMETHING LIKE THIS( especially when we have two variants, one more litteral, and one better):
"not the same thing litteraly, but better and more common variant" ?

"Non-literal translation"?

"Adapted translation" works well, too.

@CK
I would agree.

@Selena777 and
@Ooneykcall
I expected preexisting tag. Something all of us will easily understood.
Well, I guess something like 'Non-literal translation', Selena will suffice - since if we have one literal, and other that is not - one could expect that non-literal one is automaticaly better and more commonly used. Isn't that so? I have had need to write this kind a comment on several occasions - and use of tag would be better...

Auto complete for tags wasn't working. There are both tags already. Sorry!

In this case, writing comment is a good solution. You can save it and paste when you need. So, you wouldn't have to write it again every time.

Just let me confirm. Is the other translation still what people say? Do you think it's OK if learners of Serbian learn it?

I personally only add the version that I think sounds the most natural.

Trang writes, "if you are translating into your native language, you should always, always re-read your translation as if it was a single sentence, and ask yourself if it is actually something people would say. You can use the comments to indicate a literal translation."
http://blog.tatoeba.org/2010/02...eba.html#rule4

@tommy_san
yes. I would not do otherwise.
In this occasion we have two similar way to say, both are natural, but there is a preference to use slight shift from the meaning. Here it is as if the original sentence was

The only thing we can do is to... (in Serbian)
or in English might be more common to say (this one is highly speculative from my side, since I am not even close to be so good in English):
There is hardly anything we could do except..

There are not the same sentence, but since it isn't about something exact, but a more a stilystic way to put a stress on the second part of the sentence (to emphasize...). I try to be very careful when deciding how much I could shift a meaning to get more commonly way of saying something. And if more literal translation sound naturaly, I will leave that variant also.

In that case, it might be better to remove the "literal translation" tag on the other sentence. It could give the impression as if it were a bad sentence that shouldn't be used. Most sentences here are "literal translations" anyway.

I see. It's logical. But I would like to say which one is better, to give advice which one should be picked if you need only one. I've made a lot 'literal translations' here, and all of them are good (sounds natural, I've never made literal, robot-sounding sentences); but there might be a better choice to say it - so I used tag to make a distinction between the two. That was wrong, then.

If I get this right from all of this talk if I want to have those two sentences, in general:
- more literal (trying to use same words), it still sounds natural; but it can be said better
- commonly used variant (with possible slight shift in original meaning),
it would be better to not use tags at all, only comments?

I just want to do in a way that is more useful, and understandable for all of us. I am suprised if this situation hasn't been delt here before. I have such dilemma quite often. I wonder: Is it, than problem in me? ;)

So, comments?

"not the same thing litteraly, but better and more common variant"
That's very commonly the case. I would even say that's the usual job of a translator. Only if the difference is extraordinarily big I would mention that.

CK is certainly right; a tag may cause confusion, because we would have to guess (or we had to analyse painstakingly the logs in order to find out) which two sentences are concerned. So if necessary at all I would prefere a comment.

You can make as many translations of the same senrences as you count as nesessary. Also, you can write comments to you translations if it's nesessary.
"Jedino možemo da mu se divimo na hrabrosti." It seems this one is simpler, but more literal translation may be useful for Serbian speakers, learning another language(s). (if it can be linked to the English sentence as well).