Questions tagged [translation]
Determining English equivalents for words or phrases in other languages (that is, translation into English). We don't actually do translations: we can try and help you with your own translation. Please see the detailed tag info for guidance on what to ask.
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How to derive a noun or adective or adverb from "nya"? [closed]
In Russian network jargon there is adjective "няшный" (originating from anime fandom's "nya"). It is somewhat related to "kawaii" (cute) or "nice", but not the same.
However in English any attempts ...
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Is there an idiom that conveys the meaning of the French “mi figue mi raisin”?
The French idiom “mi figue, mi raisin” (literally: “half fig, half grape”) refers to someone or something that is neither entirely good, nor entirely bad. I guess the meaning of the expression can be ...
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English term for pre-thinker?
I was searching for an English translation for the German Vordenker. Basically a person, often a scientist, who began or further significantly developed a new concept or theory by contributing epoch-...
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What are the different nuances of "passing with distinction" in a CV?
I am in the middle of translating my (German) CV to English.
In the German/Austrian school system, there is the notion of passing ...
... "mit gutem Erfolg" (which is better than average, yet not ...
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Minimum and maximum age of "guy"
Guy has pretty much the same meaning as the German counterpart Kerl.
There is the progression of age in the sequence child, teenager, adolescent, (young) fellow, guy, old man/guy (?), senior.
But ...
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Translation of Soccer term: disarm
I'm looking for the translation of the soccer term that in Portuguese we use as "disarm". It is the action of taking the ball from the opponent player or when the player with the ball attempts to ...
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What is the proper name of a "line account"?
I've come across having to translate the Danish word "stregregnskab" to English. The direct translation would be "line account", but I seem to recall there being a proper name for this sort of account....
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"I'm all mashed up inside."
I'm all mashed up inside.
Inside the Lost (TV series) a guy named Boone who got desperately injured imparted his physical situation to the doctor with the above sentence. The guy prefers to die, and ...
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"The odor of strong rum made a greasy pass through the room."
I found the sentence as a ldoce sample sentence for "odor".
The odor of strong rum made a greasy pass through the room.
"... made a greasy pass through the room".
What does the writer mean? The ...
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Why are names abbreviated in certain books? [closed]
When reading certain books I will encounter names of places or people that have been abbreviated. An example is in Catherine Hutter's translation of Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther":
A few ...
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Word for "distance in time"
I need the correct English word for the German expression (zeitlicher) Abstand. Abstand means "distance", and zeitlich means "in time".
The "distance" between building maintenance dates is about ...
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What can I call the two possible directions on a line (as a category)?
In English, a vector is said to have two properties: a length and a direction. The possible directions correspond to half-lines out of the origin (so that, eg, up and down are different directions). ...
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Are English language books translated to contemporary English? [closed]
Were Shakespeare books translated to contemporary English? Which version is more common? Is there a rule to choose which books will have its language updated? Are poems updated too?
From which year I ...
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What does "no-op" mean?
In the Remarks section of a Microsoft dbset.add page I read
Remarks: Note that entities that are already in the context in some other state will have their state set to Added. Add is a no-op if the ...
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Housekeeping App — does it make sense?
We are providing an app which manages your finances — like a housekeeping book. Our space is limited; therefore, we want to use the slogan "Housekeeping App".
Would an English speaker know what is ...
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How do you mark a translator's note?
Inside a piece of text, I have a word in another language. I'd like to keep it that way, and add a translator's note with the translation to English. What is the common practice of doing that?
I'd ...
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What does "lost sales" mean?
What does "lost sales" mean in the sentence below?
The most important quality cost, lost sales, is often omitted from quality cost reports.
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Thanks or no thanks
I'm currently translating an article of Joel Spolsky's which is called Thanks or No thanks and I'm a bit confused about the meaning of the title.
The only two possible meanings that I could guess are ...
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What is the difference between "palazzo" and "palace"?
I have noticed that palazzo is used not only in Italian but in English too.
So what is the difference between palazzo, and palace (in English)?
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What does “persona non grata” mean? [closed]
In Gossip Girl, there’s a line like this:
Spotted, Lonely Boy going from
Teacher’s Pet to persona non grata in
the pitter-patter of a heartbeat.
What’s persona non grata?
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Can I name one client of my application "tenant" if I have multitenancy?
I'm a software developer and want to add the feature "multitenancy" (German: Mandantenfähigkeit, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitenancy) to my application. Each entity in my ...
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How do you tell when you're reading a poor translation?
John Ciardi, in his foreword to his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, observes that any translation is, at best, a failure. He means it is impossible to convey the depth and levels of meaning of ...
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"Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
“Is become” vs “has become”
This is a famous quote from J. Robert Oppenheimer after the successful detonation of the first nuclear weapon. The quote ...
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"In the middle" of a time span – will "middle" work? Better ideas?
I am translating a German text into English.
It contains a sentence that translates roughly to
In the middle of life, you stand alone.
I'm unsure about "middle" here, and can't think of a more ...
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Do most languages need more space than English?
I saw the following statement on User Experience:
Supporting multiple languages can break the user interface, because most languages need more space than english
This seems to be a gross ...
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Are there sentences in languages which use grammatical gender that lose meaning when translated into English?
English nouns which don't denote people or animals with natural gender do not (apart from a few rare examples) use grammatical gender. So for example, "table" is always an "it" in English, whereas it ...
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Favourite untranslatables [closed]
What are your favourite words and idioms in other languages that don't have good, succinct equivalents in English?
(The issue of whether there is, or could be, a sentence on one language whose meaning ...