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 translated this phrase 'dar m’fhallaing' as 'by my dressing gown,' which I guess it literally does mean in modern Irish, but it's really a sort of very archaic mild oath. 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.' Nor do we have an all purpose useful word like 'hello' which is annoying if you answer the phone a lot.

Irish doesn't also have a word for yes or no: you just say either the positive or negative form of the verb back at someone. I've always wondered how many other languages don't have a word just to say yes/no. Latin doesn't really (though I guess people always say you can use 'itaque' for 'yes' but it doesn't really work.

Um. That's it.

ETA: As an update on the bunny front, here's an Irish saying:

Is fearr greim de choinín ná dhá ghreim de chat

Literally it means 'one bite of a bunny is better than two of a cat' - in other words that it is better to eat a little bit of rabbit than a lot of cat, or quality is better than quantity. I don't know why people say this as I don't think cats were ever on the menu in Ireland. Maybe it's just that a huge amount of Irish sayings involve cats.

Comments

[calixa.livejournal.com]

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

That is how Chinese and Vietnamese work, too.

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

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

[koalathebear.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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).

[jenavira.livejournal.com]

...you mean the personal pronouns get worse? *has just finished arguing with the textbook about the necessity of pronouns-for-emphasis and pronoun+verb-combinations-but-only-when-we-feel-like-it and is now worried*

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

If you're at the arguing with the textbook stage you must be deep into the madness (what book do you use?) so maybe you know the worst of it. I know people who have never recovered from some prepositional pronouns though: for some reason uaim has that effect.

My fall back when a textbook insists that something I do is horribly grammatically incorrect is that it's a Donegal thing. You've got good odds that what you're doing is correct in one of the dialects...

[jenavira.livejournal.com]

I'm using Micheal O Siadhail's Learning Irish, an old 80s edition my mom's had lying around the house my whole life (and sometime this week I'll have a tape player so I can start fighting with the pronunciation, too -- spelling and pronunciation aren't even kissing cousins in Irish, are they?), but I don't think I've hit prepositional pronouns yet.

Dialects are such handy things, aren't they? You can blame all sorts of nonsense on them...

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

That book's hardcore. I didn't have the courage to teach from it (I went with the gentle 'Gaeilge agus Failte' though that tries to pretend that Irish really doesn't have grammar and takes a lot time to get anywhere.

Irish pronunciation is a bit of a nightmare alright. The general rule I give people is to pretend the middle bits of words don't really exist most of the time.

This site http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/colinandcumberland/ is quite good for practice, though it's Donegal Irish so you'll find stuff a bit different from the O Siadail's book. But it's got some fun stuff and the games are quite cute.

[fivil.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

*boggles, then boggles some more*

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

[pontisbright.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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

[evilbearhunter.livejournal.com]

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

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

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...