 Re: Translating Idioms
Idioms are sometimes devilishly hard to translate.
There's a piece of dialogue in an old sitcom involving the manager of an old people's home, Harvey, and his secretary, Jane. Jane is always trying to impress Harvey, but he always ignores her. In one scene, she says something that sounds like garbage...
Harvey: What did you say?
Jane: It's Korean. It means, "Your mother must have slept with a tiger".
Harvey: I will not tolerate these disgusting rumours about my mother, do you understand?
Jane: Oh no, it's just a figure of speech! It's means you are so strong and masterful.
Jane's attempt at translating the idiom failed because it has no meaning in English, except for the literal meaning. Harvey thus misunderstood her and was suitably horrified.
An antonymic translation, just to clear this one up, is not a word-for-word translation. It is a type of transformation where a positive sentence is translated by a negative sentence, or vice-versa. For example (a random example I found on the internet), take the Russian sentence:
Nye dyerzhitye rebyonka na solntse.
Literally translated, this would be:
Do not keep the child in the sun.
But that is not how we normally say it in English. A better translation would be:
Keep your child out of the sun.  |