Translations and saying yes or no

[lesbiassparrow]

Having recently suffered through some very interesting subtitles I was thinking about translation and how insane it gets if people try to do it literally. I was reading through a modern Irish comic book version of The Táin (the most famous Irish epic) with someone to help out with their Irish and we had some odd moments. Such as when they

Comments

[calixa]

you just read either the positive or negative form of the verb back at someone

That is how Chinese and Vietnamese work, too.

[lesbiassparrow]

Really? That's so interesting. *adds them to her list so Irish is not alone*

[koalathebear]

As calixa pointed out above it's the same in Chinese and Vietnamese. What's funny in Chinese is that when people study it, they desperately want a word for 'no', so will usually say 'bu' which basically just means 'not'.

对(correct), 不对(not correct)
是 (am, are, is), 不是 (am not, are not is not)
有 (have), 没有 (have not)
知道 (know), 不知道 (don't know)

etc. Chinese is handy as well because it doesn't have conjugation of verbs :D

[lesbiassparrow]

People do the same with Irish; it is hard to convince them otherwise. They usually want to say 'tá mé' for I am and 'nil mé' for I am not, not matter what the verb.

Sadly Irish does have conjugation of verbs. Though that is not usually where problems arise - it's with the really complicated noun and personal pronoun system (we have an awful lot of the latter which can are combined with prepositions and can only be used in certain circumstance. It drives people mad).

[fivil]

I had no idea about most of this stuff! This is damn cool.

And then there was the whole issue of how Irish doesn't have a verb to say 'I have'; you have to say that something is 'at you' or 'on you.'

Same with Finnish, and all Finno-Ugric languages, I believe. The "be" verb is used and a case changed, so "Hän on" (he is) but "hänellä on" (he has). Must be a pain for foreigners to learn, personally I never even thought about it.

I may be wrong but I think Chinese doesn't have yes or no, either. Listening to Taiwanese dramas, they tend to say "bu shi" or "mei yoo" (the first means "is not" and the latter I think means "nothing") for no and "shi" (is) or "dui" (true) for yes.

[lesbiassparrow]

The "be" verb is used and a case changed, so "Hän on" (he is) but "hänellä on" (he has).

That's interesting. Is it always the same suffix (-ella) or does that vary from person to person (i..e from 'I' to 'he')?

[fivil]

The case is called adessive and like in Irish, it's English meaning is "at". "Minulla on" = I have but also "pöydällä on" = there are __ at the house.

The suffix is "-lla" but thanks to Finnish being the bastard difficult language it is, it's sometimes "-llä" and the words of course change before you add the suffix (thus minä changes into minulla). I don't actually know why.

I'm so glad I never had to learn how to use all of these.

[lesbiassparrow]

*boggles, then boggles some more*

Er, yes, you guys don't have the easiest of languages do you?

[pontisbright]

Welsh doesn't have 'yes' or 'no' either: same context-dependent thing.

'By my dressing gown' is an excellently non-sweary kind of swearing. :)

[lesbiassparrow]

It's like 'by the hammer of Thor' - though I think in the context a slightly stronger emotion was being expressed.

[evilbearhunter]

I've always found that annoying about Latin, but they didn't have 0 either, so what can you do?

[lesbiassparrow]

Nor a way to say 'being' as in the concept and not 'human being.' I always wondered if this is why they managed to conquer so much more effectively than the Greeks...