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.

[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.

[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. :)

[evilbearhunter.livejournal.com]

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