Musings on Language #2

[Brother Oni]

The hardest English expressions to translate are those that draw on words that have a specific meaning in expressions. For example "I'm a ham" meaning I enjoy performing and being the center of attention. Also, pretty much any American southern expression kills translation. For example, "He's got a 10 gallon hat for a 5 gallon head."

I'm a ham = I am an overactor.

I think the second one means he's pompous idiot who has an inflated opinion of himself or his abilities?


I learnt English as a native speaker - you're going to have to explain that subjunctive mood thing to me more carefully.

[Greenish]

I was trying to think of some English phrases that also defy easy translation - 'pull the other one, it's got bells on' for example - and I was wondering do other people here know of similar untranslatable phrases (Friss die Hälfte was mentioned earlier).

Some expressions have spread far and wide ("a storm in a glass of water"), others are so local the native speakers from the neighbouring village won't recognize them.

Whether anything is truly translatable (or untranslatable) probably depends on who you ask it from. All translations lose some meaning, but just because the literal translation of a phrase loses it's meaning doesn't mean the idea can't be conveyed in the target language.

For English expressions that can't directly be translated to another language, you don't have to look too hard. Say, "please" has no equivalent in Finnish.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Never heard that "a storm in a glass of water" thing before?

[Brother Oni]

Never heard that "a storm in a glass of water" thing before?

Being a commonwealth citizen, you may recognise it better as 'storm in a teacup'.

It essentially means blowing a small event out of all proportion.

[Eldan]

That same one exists in German too, with the same words. So it's probably pretty old.

[Greenish]

Never heard that "a storm in a glass of water" thing before?

I didn't claim it to be universal, but, well…

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• Arabic: زوبعة في فنجان (a storm in a cup)
• Bulgarian: Буря в чаша вода Burya v chasha voda (storm in a glass of water)
• Chinese: 茶杯裡的風波、茶壺裡的風暴 (winds and waves in a teacup; storm in a teapot)
• Czech: Bouře ve sklenici vody (a storm in a glass of water)
• Danish: En storm i et glas vand (a storm in a glass of water)
• Dutch: Een storm in een glas water (a storm in a glass of water)
• Esperanto: Granda frakaso en malgranda glaso (a large storm in a small glass)
• Estonian: Torm veeklaasis (storm in a glass of water)
• Finnish: Myrsky vesilasissa (storm in a glass of water)
• French: une tempête dans un verre d'eau (a storm in a glass of water)
• German: ein Sturm im Wasserglas (a storm in a glass of water)
• Greek: πνιγόμαστε σε μια κουταλιά νερό (to drown in a spoon of water)
• Hebrew: סערה בכוס תה Se'arah bekos teh (storm in a teacup)
• Hungarian: Vihar egy pohár vízben (a storm in a glass of water)
• Icelandic: Stormur í vatnsglasi (a storm in a glass of water)
• Italian: una tempesta in un bicchiere d'acqua (a storm in a glass of water)
• Japanese: コップの中の嵐 koppu no naka no arashi (a storm in a glass)
• Latin: Excitare fluctus in simpulo (to stir up waves in a ladle)
• Latvian: vētra ūdens glāzē (storm in a tea cup)
• Lithuanian: Audra stiklinėje (storm in a glass)
• Norwegian: storm i et vannglass (bokmål) / storm i eit vassglas (nynorsk) (a storm in a glass of water)
• Polish: Burza w szklance wody (a storm in a glass of water)
• Portuguese: Tempestade em copo de água / Uma tempestade num copo de água (storm in a glass of water / a tempest in a glass of water)
• Romanian: Furtună într-un pahar cu apă (storm in a glass of water)
• Russian: Буря в стакане burya v stakane (a tempest in a glass)
• Spanish: Una tormenta en un vaso de agua (a storm in a glass of water)
• Swedish: Storm i ett vattenglas (storm in a glass of water)
• Turkish: Bir kaşık suda fırtına (storm in a spoon of water)
• Telugu: Tea kappu lo thufaanu (storm in a tea cup)
• Ukrainian: Буря в склянці води (a tempest in a glass of water) - Transliteration: Buria v sklyantsi vody

…Tempest in a teapot really gets around.

[Kneenibble]

And, if I may add a personal pet peeve. Stop killing the subjunctive tense, all of you! If the sentence refers to a case other than reality, it takes "were" rather than "was." If you have said, "If I was there" you're doing it wrong and it should be "if I were there."

Not necessarily. It would depend on the nature of your conditional sentence.

"If I was there, then I won the Internet!"
(Past simple condition)

vs.

"If I were there, then I would have won the Internet!"
(Contrary-to-fact past condition)

[gooddragon1]

...and what have you...
-Nothing except the lint in my pockets my good sir.
...If you will...
-No, I won't.
...What ho...
-The one I use on my garden good sir.

[Xuc Xac]

There's a big difference between "can't be translated" and "doesn't make sense when translated word for word". A decent translator won't try to translate an idiom literally unless it's an obvious metaphor.

For example, "I'm a ham" doesn't mean "I'm a pork haunch". No translator would translate it that way any more than they would translate "Is your refrigerator running?" as "Is your refrigerator moving quickly on foot?"

Some things, like "and what have you" don't really make literal sense in English but the phrase represents an idea, which can be described by other languages as long as the concept isn't so unique to one culture that there are no ways to describe it. Most languages have an equivalent of "and what have you". Even English has many ways to say the same thing: "and so on", "and the rest", "et cetera".

Oh, that's one of my language pet peeves: "etc." is short for "et cetera", which is Latin for "and the rest". Using "ect." would be (I assume) "ec tetera", which is just gibberish.

[Dogmantra]

...If you will...
-No, I won't.

That brings up an interesting point, anyone know why the I from will turns into an O when you abbreviate will not, but when you abbreviate do not, shall not, cannot, and so on, they keep their vowels as they are? I would imagine it's simply that win't got a little bit corrupted over time and when standardised spelling was introduced it typically sounded more like won't but I hope there's some fantastic story instead.

[Greenish]

For example, "I'm a ham" doesn't mean "I'm a pork haunch". No translator would translate it that way any more than they would translate "Is your refrigerator running?" as "Is your refrigerator moving quickly on foot?"

Well… ideally, no, but translators have bad days too.

A book I own mentions an "*orjaileva hirviö" (which would mean something like "a monster that casually acts like a slave"). It took me a while to realize, but I think the English original had a "slavering monster".

[Xuc Xac]

That brings up an interesting point, anyone know why the I from will turns into an O when you abbreviate will not, but when you abbreviate do not, shall not, cannot, and so on, they keep their vowels as they are? I would imagine it's simply that win't got a little bit corrupted over time and when standardised spelling was introduced it typically sounded more like won't but I hope there's some fantastic story instead.

"Won't" is short for "woll not" or "wonnot". "Will" had a lot o different pronunciations and spellings. "Willn't" was used occasionally too, but when things standardized "will" beat "woll" but "won't" survived and "willn't" didn't.

[Eldan]

Well… ideally, no, but translators have bad days too.

A book I own mentions an "*orjaileva hirviö" (which would mean something like "a monster that casually acts like a slave"). It took me a while to realize, but I think the English original had a "slavering monster".

And of course, the famous joke from German Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

Paraphrased:
"Hyperspace travel is like being swallowed by another person."
"What is so bad about having ingested too much alcohol?"
"Just ask a glass of water."

[Greenish]

And of course, the famous joke from German Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

Paraphrased:
"Hyperspace travel is like being swallowed by another person."
"What is so bad about having ingested too much alcohol?"
"Just ask a glass of water."

Puns are the bane of many a translation, and one of the reasons I started reading books in English (the other one was that English paperbacks are dirt cheap). Pratchett and Adams have great translators, for example, but there's no keeping up.

[Yora]

And of course, the famous joke from German Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

Paraphrased:
"Hyperspace travel is like being swallowed by another person."
"What is so bad about having ingested too much alcohol?"
"Just ask a glass of water."

How does that one go in German? I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.

[Asta Kask]

Swedish: "Up like a sun, down like a pancake"
"There's no cow on the ice"
"Empty barrels make the most noise"
"There he stands with a washed neck"

[Xuc Xac]

The Hitchhiker's Guide reference is supposed to be
"Hyperspace travel is like being drunk."
"What is so bad about being drunk?"
"Just ask a glass of water."

[GolemsVoice]

Yeah, or the German Warhammer 40K novels, that a) translated most of the weapons, the chapter names and all the other stuff (a single glance in ANY of the other Warhammer 40K publications could have helped) and b) translated "fire in the hole LITERALLY. I died a little inside. Especially since that expression could have been easily translated to your favourite expression along the lines of "Take cover!"

[Eldan]

How does that one go in German? I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.

The English is:
"Hyperspace travel is like being drunk."
"What's so bad about being drunk?"
"Just ask a glass of water."

While the German was:

"Es ist wie getrunken werden."
"Was ist so schlimm daran, betrunken zu sein?"
"Frag mal ein Glas Wasser."

Paraphrased again, I don't have the German book anymore.

[Yora]

And that's the reason you should never get translations if you are reasonably capable to understand the original language.

[GolemsVoice]

The same thing is encountered by the translators of Terry Pratchett's works, which also feature much wordplay. It's a sad fact of life that much of that gets lost, even if the translators are aware of it. Often enough, though, they aren't, so that's that.

[Aedilred]

Oftentimes the best way to do it is to ignore the literal translation entirely and write afresh to get the same sense across in a more idiomatic way. The best example of this of which I'm aware are the excellent English translations of Asterix, where appropriate English puns and wordplay have been substituted for the French ones, rather than trying to translate the French puns directly - which would be pretty pointless.

[Kneenibble]

That brings up an interesting point, anyone know why the I from will turns into an O when you abbreviate will not, but when you abbreviate do not, shall not, cannot, and so on, they keep their vowels as they are? I would imagine it's simply that win't got a little bit corrupted over time and when standardised spelling was introduced it typically sounded more like won't but I hope there's some fantastic story instead.

I don't have any fantastic stories for you. In Middle English the word was woll. For some reason we hung on to won't (woll not) but still switched to will.




edit
Oh. Xuc Xac already said that.

Well then.

[Brother Oni]

Yeah, or the German Warhammer 40K novels, that a) translated most of the weapons, the chapter names and all the other stuff (a single glance in ANY of the other Warhammer 40K publications could have helped) and b) translated "fire in the hole LITERALLY. I died a little inside. Especially since that expression could have been easily translated to your favourite expression along the lines of "Take cover!"

Well "Take cover as I have just ignited a large amount of explosive material in our general vicinity".

The best example of this of which I'm aware are the excellent English translations of Asterix, where appropriate English puns and wordplay have been substituted for the French ones, rather than trying to translate the French puns directly - which would be pretty pointless.

Except some of the characters names have been changed depending on which territory they're marketed for - for example in the US version, Getafix is named Magigimmix and Unhygienix has been changed to Fishstix.

[Ravens_cry]

Being a commonwealth citizen, you may recognise it better as 'storm in a teacup'.

It essentially means blowing a small event out of all proportion.

I hear that much more commonly as "making a mountain out of a molehill" than either variation.

[Eldan]

That would be "turning a mosquito into an elephant" in German.

[Ravens_cry]

I'm sure there is variations in languages and cultures the world over given human nature.

[Yora]

I am quite a fan of Knorkator and Rammstein, not just for their quite decent music, but even more so for the often clever lyrics and interesting use of words and sentences (which unfortunately for you, really don't translate well).
Does anyone know of bands or musicans with english language songs, that would go into a similar direction?

The only one that comes to my mind is Tom Lehrer, and he's from the 50s.

[Greenish]

I hear that much more commonly as "making a mountain out of a molehill" than either variation.

"Storm in a teacup" would be used of something that's already been blown out of proportion when looking at it from the outside. The molehill -> mountain has more immediacy.


In Finnish, you'd "make a bull out of a fly".

[Asta Kask]

In Finnish you can "put the cat on the table." Finns are weird. My cat jumps up on the table when he wants.