it contained*

And I think there are more mistakes, could any native speaker correct it, please?

I can't translate from Turkish, but a more correct English sentence would be:

In the first years that Coca-Cola was produced, it contained cocaine. In 1914, cocaine was classed as a drug, after which they used caffeine instead of cocaine in the production of Coca-Cola.

> And I think there are more mistakes

There are. But I don't know what the original (in Turkish) means, so I'm reluctant to try to fix it. An @delete tag might be more practical.

My limited Turkish knowledge says wma's variant is close to what the original says.

Ok, I've asked a Turkish native speaker and he's told me that wma's translation has the same meaning, so no need of deleting it.

a small mistake ;)

Nope, still more.

"was classified", not "was classed".

translate to russian, uzbek, uighur, mandarin chinese, italian, french, german. and i will correct it :-)

What is this? Negotiation?

lol I'd call it blackmail :P

One day, boracasli, you will be older. And you will look back at this and ask yourself "just what was I doing back then, translating phrases into all of those languages?"

Женя, перевести его на русский, узбекский, уйгурский, китайский (мандарин), итальянский, французкий и немецкий. И я буду исправить :-)

the goal of tatoeba is translation of sentences into all languages :-)

it's informative, not blackmail

The following are the languages that I will NOT translate this sentence into:

- Russian
- Uzbek
- Uyghur
- Chinese
- Italian
- French
- German

My reason: This is a difficult sentence, and I am not nearly-expert at any of those. (so please stop making such requests)

Out of curiosity, what was cocaine classified as before it was classified as a "drug"? A nonsweet variant of sugar?

> A nonsweet variant of sugar?

It was probably classified as a medicine. ;-)

(c.f. laudanum)

Shouldn't "drug" be replaced with "narcotic" then? "Drug" doesn't seem to carry the negative connotation that this sentence seems to intend.

No, I think drug is better. Drug is more used in casual speech and it often does have a negative connotation.

Native speaker battle!

I would say that "drugs" plural has a negative connotation, but that "drug" is neutral (especially if your conversation relates to the pharmaceutical industry, where I believe people use the word quite freely to refer to the product).

Drug also wouldn't be right, because if it was a medicine before, it would still have technically been a "drug" then.

And besides, Google is on my side here tenfold if you search "cocaine (was) classified as a drug" vs. "as a narcotic".

(Ok, tenfold = 11 results vs. 1, so you could argue that, but without the "was", you get absolutely 0 for "drug")

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/cocaine.asp

In that article the 'extract of coca leaves' (in 1885) is referred to as "medicinal". Whereas it states that there was 'scarcely any of the drug left' in 1929.

But that doesn't conflict with anything I said. Cocaine *is* a drug, but more specifically, it's a narcotic (narcotic = drug, but drug doesn't always = narcotic). Coca-Cola didn't stop putting it in because it was a drug, but because it was a narcotic. Actually, I think that "narcotic substance" might be the term one would here the most in matters related to this.

You're really making me work here, Paul...

http://www.bio-guru.com/forensi...ter9-Drugs.ppt

Slide 18.

.ppt files are disallowed on grounds that I can't view them. :-P

> But that doesn't conflict with anything I said. Cocaine *is*
> a drug, but more specifically, it's a narcotic

I don't disagree with it being a narcotic, I just disagree that 'narcotic' or 'narcotic substance' is the best word to use to describe it in everyday non-formal language.

P.S. The sentence is incorrect. It was 1903 when the first major change was made to replace cocaine with caffeine. The Food and Pure Drug act wasn't passed until 1906, so was completely irrelevant. The only legal actions taken were with regard to the addition of caffeine (settled out of court with the caffeine level being reduced, but still present).

>A nonsweet variant of sugar?

yup...'cocaine was classified as a drug' sounds funny...especially that the sentence has an authoritative tone...the first thing that jumped to my mind is 'drug' as in 'medicine'...the way you'd expect it in an encyclopedia

See, Paul. Saeb agrees with me!

(Thanks, Saeb. I promise I'll get you the money tomorrow.)

But it's a shame you can't view the .ppt (download OpenOffice!). That slide makes it quite straightforward, and like Saeb said, it's the authoritative tone that makes "drug" seem strange (as such, it is NOT casual everyday speech here).

>I promise I'll get you the money tomorrow.

;D or you can help me brew a translation next door
http://tatoeba.org/jpn/sentences/show/523835

I'm not sure what's the point from the slide but here goes:
http://img833.imageshack.us/img...9/narcotic.jpg

I don't think that's Slide 18. Slide 18 is "Drug vs. Narcotic".

my powerpoint slides has it as slide 17
http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/9093/drugb.jpg

@boracasli
> И я буду исправить :-)
И я исправлю. (and I will correct [this sentence], one time)
OR
И я буду исправлять. (and I will correct sentences, many times)

исправить = to correct 1 time (perfective aspect)
исправлять = to correct sentences, several times (imperfective aspect)