English as She Is Spoke

Re:English as She Is Spoke by Blikkentrekker on Saturday January 16, 2021 @04:35PM (#25805726)

> There are dozens of examples I can think of, such as how people refer to themselves and to others (Japanese is especially interesting here), how people communicate spatial relationships/directions, and how people refer to body parts (calf in Portuguese literally translates as “potato of the leg”).

The last one is surely an idiom, and the other parts are the ones that are often hard to translate literally.

I wouldn't say that “the honorable front” as a translation would really do justice to the meaning of /omae/ in Japanese and how it differs from, say, /anata/. “the honorable front” is the literal meaning of /omae/, but it's again an idiom that Japanese speakers scarcely realize the origins of, though Japanese's ideographic spelling perhaps would serve to make speakers more aware of such origins.

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Re:English as She Is Spoke by joshspankit on Monday January 18, 2021 @10:30AM (#25822660)

> The last one is surely an idiom

What about French’s “potato” translating as “Apple of the ground”?

In Canada that’s how bilingual packaging labels potatoes.

This also I suppose raises an interesting question: is the boundary between idiom and word really that clear?

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