Various translations, mostly Russian and Spanish.

[franztastisch]

I've been using Google translate, basically as place-holders, but we all know how reliable (or not) it can be, so I'm wondering is anyone on here could translate some things for me, primarily Russian and Spanish.

All translations follow the pattern of "what I want said" - (What Google gave me)

Comments

[jgofri]

"No questions in English" - What is the purpose of this phrase? To keep the conversation in Russian so that the guy does not understand? In that case, I would say something more like "Не по-английски!" (Not in English!) Or "Ни слова по-английски!" (Not a word of English!) But if you need exact translation - "Никаких вопросов по-английски

[franztastisch]

Wow thank you! The "No questions in English" I probably should have explained more. The character teaches beginner Russian and wants people to ask as many of the questions in Russian as they can manage. She says this when the male character comes into the classroom asking to speak with his friend a moment, and his friend translates it for him. So it's a sort of teacherly instruction.

And the "Not nice at all" is agreeing with another character about being left out of conversations due to speaking different languages. It's jokey and not meant in a mean way.

And thank you for the information about pet names. "Dear sun" sounds like something that might work, though darling might too. it's just to me, darling sounds like a rather saccharine thing to say - just because it is a little in British English. Not terribly so, but a little. But I'll give it a think. :)

And thanks for the offer of messaging you. I might take you up on it. It'll be random and intermittent, so it could be a while. :)

[jgofri]

In that case, I would imagine the teacher saying something like "Спрашивайте по-руски," ("Ask your questions in Russian"), or just "По-русски, пожалуйста!" (In Russian, please!") This sounds a lot more natural in context

[franztastisch]

Cool, thanks.

And yeah, pet names do tend to fall a little on the saccharine end of things, but things like "love" and "dear" and "darling" would seem so in English and Russian while "dear sun" might be so in Russian but is not at all common in English, so seems less so to me. And I did try to think up something specific for the characters, but that was early in the story and I couldn't think of one at the time. Maybe I'll give that another shot, and then maybe message you about it, if you're OK with that. :)

[orange_fell]

If the person being described as courageous is female, you need the feminine ending, "courageuse." -Eux is masculine.

New Mexicans (white and Latino) can speak English in a kind of nasal tone and with a vowel shift (pellow = pillow, hoTAL = hotel). If you put "Burqueños" into youtube you can see a comedian doing the accent and slang. . . I don't know how useful that is for your story though!

[franztastisch]

Thank you! And thanks for the New Mexican info. I'm not sure I use it specifically, but it's always interesting to know. :)

[green_grrl]

For your Spanish, I'm not a native speaker, but your first phrase sounds too much like a literal transliteration to me. I suspect it would more likely be something like "ya sabes que es una grosería excluir a alguien," but hopefully a native speaker will chime in.

For your second phrase, Spanish speakers almost always use the adjective as a noun, so, "Lo siento, bella." (A popular endearment for a beautiful girlfriend is "linda," which could cause some fun misinterpretations for the girlfriend or bystanders around her name not being Linda.)

Mierda literally means shit, but that is a classic swear exclamation.

[franztastisch]

Thank you! The "linda" thing I really useful to know. I'm sure I can get that in somehow. :D

[alley_skywalker]

I second pretty much everything jgofri has said. Although, do you have some more context for "not nice at all"?

Also, for the pet name: is it meant to be playful/teasing? Could you give examples of dialogue in which she would use it? As already mentioned, the Russian words for "beautiful" (красавец, красавчик) don't really work as straight up endearments, with the first often being used as a euphemistic insult and the second one most often used in a slightly ironic/teasing tone as well. But then, I don't think "beautiful" in English is really used as a straight up pet-name in English either. Like, aside from someone saying "hey, beautiful" or something, I can't think of any other situation. So maybe you could elaborate on exactly what you're going for?

You can always message me if you want :)

[franztastisch]

"Not nice at all" follows an exchange two characters have in American Sign Language, which no one else understands. So the Spanish speaking character says "It's not nice to leave people out, you know." in Spanish, to highlight (playfully) the fact that they're being a bit rude, and the Russian speaker, who is good at languages and knows Spanish, follows up with "not nice at all" in Russian, again playfully.

The "beautiful" thing is much as you mention - in the sort of "hello, beautiful" sort of way, but also occasionally as a sort of nickname sort of way. Substituted for his name occasionally, in a positive way. I'm not really sure how to explain it. Comforting and friendly. And in this instance, the fact that it's in a language he doesn't understand is also part of the "pet name-ness" of the whole thing.

“You got a full ride to an out-of-state college all on your own, красивый,” she says quietly. “And there’s nothing wrong with asking for help.”

Thank you for the offer of messaging. :)

[alley_skywalker]

Ok, yea, so for the "not nice at all" it can simply be "Совсем некрасиво" as stated above.

For the nickname. Yea, the way you have it sounds really weird. If you're really attached to the word "beautiful" instead of just saying "красавец" you could put "мой красавец" which is basically adding the word "my" so like "my pretty." But, IDK, it's still...in some contexts it could work as a playful endearment but in others it would be weird.
From the other nicknames that have been suggested above "милый" sounds the most neutral and non-cutesy to me personally. It's like "dear," but without the slightly condescending or preppy edge that "dear" and "my dear" tends to acquire in English. On the other hand...it's not really that hard to pronounce, although I could see the "ый" ending causing some confusion.

[franztastisch]

Thank you for all your help! :)

[carmarthen]

I'm sort of skeptical of an endearment someone couldn't figure out, unless it's something really really obscure. Even if a beginner can't figure it out (and ime beginners are often more able to figure out mangled words than native speakers, because to them the mangled aspect might not be distinguishable, e.g. a beginner can't always hear the difference between Russian i and y), if the story is set after Google Translate, it will suggest the correct spelling for common English-phonetic spellings of Russian words. And it's crap for sentences, but generally pretty reliable for single words. I typed in every weird romanization of solnyshko I could think of and every time it went "did you mean..." and gave the correct Russian and translated it as "sun". Googling "solnishko" and "solnyshko" bring up definitions that explain the diminutive as the top results, because it's the name of a song

[franztastisch]

My reasoning is that, because he understands that it's meant positively and he has no reason to doubt her intentions, he trusts her not to be insulting him when she uses it. As such, he doesn't care what she saying so much as the sentiment of being given the name in the first place. Obviously, he finds out what it means eventually, but he doesn't necessarily look that hard to find out.

[carmarthen]

Fair enough, I just think that if he's curious enough to Google or ask a student, he'd probably be able to figure out the gist of it without much effort at all (I'm a little puzzled that he wouldn't ask her, but it's your story and your characterization choices - I just wanted to point out that it's really easy to find out that kind of information post-internet even if one mangles the romanization).

[franztastisch]

I think it's one of those weird things where it wasn't a character decision so much as my brain going of course that's what he'd do. It just fit. I don't know why. I think he's half worries it'll be something bad and would rather just live in denial. He has horrible self esteem. *shrugs*