Translators
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@thomthom said:
Well Dan - you make a better judge of Norwegian than I.
Naw... I'm just playing with the Google Translator:
http://translate.google.com/?hl=en&tab=wT#en|no| -
Says something about my own grasp of my own language...
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@unknownuser said:
a quasi miracle
English : French
face : face
facet : facette
surface : surfaceNot really a miracle, Pilou.
All 3 words came into English, from the French (probably after the Norman conquest,) and originally came into French from Latin.
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Advantage of the invasions
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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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