[Vocabulary] Can we say I hung up the call instead of I hung up the phone?

[Aamir Tariq]

We normally use "hang up the phone" or "hang up the phone on someone" when we put the telephone receiver back on the cradle while the person on the other end is still talking.

I was piqued and I hung up the phone.
I was piqued and I hung up the phone on him.

Can we say

1. I was piqued and I hung up the call.
   
2. I was piqued and I hung up the phone.
   
3. I was piqued and I hung up the call on her.
   
4. I was piqued and I hung up the phone call on him.

Tell me about other natural ways of saying the same thing in your versions of English, American, British, Australian, Canadian.Regards
Aamir the Global Citizen

 

[Tarheel]

Even when I still had such a phone I would hang up on him/her. Now I just press a virtual button.

 

[Barb_D]

1. I was piqued and I hung up the call. - NO
   
2. I was piqued and I hung up the phone. - This sounds weird now that we don't have handsets
   
3. I was piqued and I hung up the call on her. - NO
   
4. I was piqued and I hung up the phone call on him. - NO

I was mad and I hung up on her.

I can't imagine saying "piqued" unless I was going for a slightly humorous affect.

 

[Aamir Tariq]

Even when I still had such a phone I would hang up on him/her. Now I just press a virtual button.

Yes, we don't use those phone any more but we do use these phrases, so can we say hang up the call or phone call instead of phone?

 

[Raymott]

You can say "I hung up". That's all we usually say once it's established that we are talking about a phone call.

 

[Tarheel]

I don't know if anybody says "hang up the call" but there is "hang up" and "hang up the phone" is probably used. But we probably hang up on the PERSON most often.

I don't know what other people say, but I guess we'll find out.

 

[Barb_D]

Yes, we don't use those phone any more but we do use these phrases, so can we say hang up the call or phone call instead of phone?

Did you read my comments above?

 

[Rover_KE]

I usually say 'I ended the call'.

 

[Aamir Tariq]

Did you read my comments above?

Yes, I just did. Thanks.

 

[Aamir Tariq]

Okay you people don't say hung up the call, hung up the phone call, but if it is written in this way, will it still be grammatically correct, even if it is unnatural?

 

[Barb_D]

Okay you people don't say hung up the call, hung up the phone call, but if it is written in this way, will it still be grammatically correct, even if it is unnatural?

This question always puzzles me.

Why would you even WANT to say something that no one else would say? It's grammatical to "hand up a call" but (as someone in another forums said just today) it's also grammatical to say "I bought three green noses from the dragon at City Hall." Grammatical is useless if there is no meaning, and grammatical is not great when it's not idiomatic.

Be grammatical AND natural.

 

[Aamir Tariq]

This question always puzzles me.

Why would you even WANT to say something that no one else would say? It's grammatical to "hand up a call" but (as someone in another forums said just today) it's also grammatical to say "I bought three green noses from the dragon at City Hall." Grammatical is useless if there is no meaning, and grammatical is not great when it's not idiomatic.

Be grammatical AND natural.

It is a compulsion for me. since I do translations from Urdu to English I have to be faithful to the source text (i.e Urdu). I don't want to use unnatural English when I speak with someone but I have to when I am translating to maintain faithfulness.

 

[GoesStation]

It is a compulsion for me. since I do translations from Urdu to English I have to be faithful to the source text (i.e Urdu). I don't want to use unnatural English when I speak with someone but I have to when I am translating to maintain faithfulness.

You should use unnatural English if you're translating something written in unnatural Urdu. When you translate a more typical text written in natural Urdu, you have to write in natural English; otherwise, your translation is unfaithful to the original.

 

[Aamir Tariq]

You should use unnatural English if you're translating something written in unnatural Urdu. When you translate a more typical text written in natural Urdu, you have to write in natural English; otherwise, your translation is unfaithful to the original.

No in fact, every language has a style of its own. Sometimes there are things that sound perfectly natural in the source language Urdu but when we translate them into English their literal translation doesn't sound natural in English, this is where it puts me in a quandary now what to do with it. And yes sometimes we have to deal with unnatural things when the sentences are incomplete and we are not sure in what context they were used. Incomplete sentences with a lot of pauses where the speakers stops and starts talking about something else, it makes it a little hard for us because it also makes the readers of our translations confused.

 

[emsr2d2]

Using Piscean's example and your statements about staying faithful to the original, are you saying that you think "I am hungry" would not be a faithful rendition of "J'ai faim" if you were doing a French-to-English translation?

 

[Aamir Tariq]

Using Piscean's example and your statements about staying faithful to the original, are you saying that you think "I am hungry" would not be a faithful rendition of "J'ai faim" if you were doing a French-to-English translation?

I think Piscean is absolutely right. I think "I am hungry' is a faithful translation of "J'ai faim". Because I am a language guy and I have a great passion to learn foreign languages and the same is the case with other languages when we translate one language to the other we have to deal with things like this. So if we translate them in a literal way they sound very strange in the translated language.

 

[GoesStation]

I think your translation would be faithful if, a month after reading it, someone who is perfectly fluent in Urdu and English couldn't remember which language it was in.

 

[Aamir Tariq]

I think your translation would be faithful if, a month after reading it, someone who is perfectly fluent in Urdu and English couldn't remember which language it was in.

I am fluent in Urdu since it's my national language. I don't know about my English and I don't know if I sound fluent to you people while I write on this forum. Because I didn't learn it from the native speakers but from the people around here who speak unnatural English. And I have never spent time in any of the English speaking countries in the world. If I had I would've been fluent and I would use natural English.

Sometimes we face certain problems while translating from Urdu to English. Now, there are things that are specific to certain communities, cultures and religions, there are those cultural words that we cannot translate word to word, we don't find their equivalents in English but still we can explain them. So if I come across such a word in the source language (i.e Urdu) and I have to translate it into English then I keep searching for it's equivalent and it wastes a lot of my time. Because some of my American cousins they don't even use any equivalents, rather they use those Urdu words in English and they pronounce them the same way they are pronounced in Urdu. But they understand them because they are Pakistani Americans they have lived some parts of their lives in Pakistan.

 

[GoesStation]

In those situations, it's okay to transliterate the Urdu word. Depending on the kind of text, you might be able to add a footnote or even a few words in parentheses explaining the foreign word.