Translators
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The English are [or were?] great with coping with invaders - they'd come here and within a couple of generations we would have absorbed them and pinched their best ideas, food and words and made them ours.
The invaders end up becoming English - look at the Vikings - they took over great swathes of Britain but within generations has become very localised and left few words except in place-names - perhaps it was something in the Scandinavian psyche - the Norsemen who invaded northern France became the Normans, and spoke in French within a few years... Then they invade England and within a few generations everyone is speaking an updated form of English with lots of borrowed French words, rather than French with a few old English words left in !
Most other countries usually get invaded and the original inhabitants change to become very like the invaders.
Like when we invaded other countries we didn't absorb many of their ways [I know curry is our favourite food though and we did borrow words from everywhere... the walking-aid 'zimmer-frame' isn't German as it sounds but Mongolian !] - generally we converted the 'aborigines' [=those there from the beginning] to be more like us !
The upshot is the English language will many many more words than any other - mainly because we borrowed words to make new ones, with nuances [itself a borrowed word !] rather than using just adjectives and so on... It makes translation difficult - as Thomthom says - 'face' and 'surface' are different things but would probably be translated as the same word in Norwegian - the NO translation has to 'force' the use of an alternative word that wouldn't perhaps be used in daily speech... -
While I lived in England there was a couple of Norwegian words where I found English lacked the nuances. But it was rare.
One example would be
Jeg liker deg = I like you
Jeg er glad i deg = ??
Jeg elsker deg = I love youIn English love is ambiguous - or so my impression is. The word is used in a great number of context.
While in Norwegian, elsker (love) is used much more sparsely - and we use glad i which signifies great affection, more than just liking, but less than love. -
Hehe... Speaking of Norwegian (or rather old Viking / Northern Germanic). Have a look at the word "skirt". It is from them. Originally meaning a piece of clothe something like a Roman tunica (worn by both men and women).
The Western Germanic word used to be similar but by the time it reached the British Isles (by the Anglo-Saxon-Jute tribes), it has "softened" and was already pronounced as "shirt".Nowadays the two words mean a bit different pieces of clothes; the skirt only the "bottom" part while the shirt the "top" part of the same piece (and worn by different sexes).
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And of course that's without the UK slang versions...
'Skirt' = a [good-looking/young] woman - a contraction of 'a nice piece/bit of skirt' - a sideways reference to the contents rather than the article of clothing itself - it's 'vulgar' when used between men, but disparaging / offensive when used within the earshot of women. E.g. 'The guys went to the nightclub to see if there was any new skirt...'
'A skirt chaser' = a man who is aggressive in this amorous pursuit of women.'Shirt' - or more commonly 'shirty' = 'uppity', ill-tempered, ill-natured, in a bad mood, unpleasant in manners etc... e.g. 'He's very shirty today - shouting at everyone.'
Also 'to lose your shirt' = financial ruin resulting from injudicious gambling, stock-trading etc - e,g, 'He lost his shirt in the Wall Street Crash.'
'Keep your shirt on!' = calm down, don't get angry etc.
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Yea - I quickly realised when I moved to England that what they teach at schools back home only help you up to a point. Then you got to learn how the English actually speak.
My English friends says that my English was better before I moved to England and got corrupted by them. -
AND in every part of the UK they have broad local dialects and different words for common things - 'Geordie' - from where I live - is more like Old-English mixed with German/Danish, ad probably one of least decipherable - 'Iem gannin hyem...' = 'I'm going home...' or 'Whar bairns've nee bullets an nee kets.' = 'Our children have no boiled-sweets and no candies.'...
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@tig said:
...Also 'to lose your shirt' = financial ruin resulting from injudicious gambling, stock-trading etc - e,g, 'He lost his shirt in the Wall Street Crash.'...
We say "to lose one's trousers (or rather underwear)" for the exact same thing. I guess that's even a bit worse.
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Any translators for Chinese, Japanese and other languages with non-Latin characters that are relatively active forum users? (More than just a couple of posts.)
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'Arc' and 'Hebeijianke' have done Chinese translations for me - why not ask one of them ?
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@unknownuser said:
Chinese, Japanese and other languages with non-Latin characters that are relatively active forum users
The two guys of 1001bit Gohch and Takeshi (who make very neat illustrataded tutos at Pushpullbar) but maybe they are some busy
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Takeshi is also 1001bit? Though it was only Gohch...
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Takeshi got no posts here - doesn't appear to be active. And its been a while since I've seen Gohch around. And then it's been answering questions about 1001bit.
Maybe tak2hata...
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Maybe I am wrong but I believe they have made together 1001 Shadows and SkyRatio
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Takesh goes by Takesh h on this forum:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=5916
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Did you consider Polish and Russian too? There are native SU versions in these languages (and we also have subforums for them although quite inactive). Also Portuguese maybe? That's a lot of users!
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Edson mentioned he might be able to do Portuguese.
My plan was to just have some languages as a base for the release. Didn't have an exact list. My main concern was to be able to test a range of character sets.
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I had also considered trying portuguese fo you, but in the end I decided my Port is not good enough in general, let alone for trying to do something so technical. There really are a LOT of portuguese users (Brazillian especially) who could benefit from a translation.
Seems like one of them around here might want to help even if Edson is busy and I'm not up to the challenge.
Maybe you could post the text strings and maybe other languages will just upload their translations? Could be a bit of a crap shoot on quality though.
Chris
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