Romulan ambassador, holding a rod
Kurn, his memory, wiped.
What? We’re as comprehensible to outsiders as ever, right Kevin? Uh… Kevin?
As a non-trekkie… yes, absolutely.
But keep it up, y’all are the only real memers on lemmy
To be fair I’ve tried. All we can do is beans and star trek. (With some Star Wars tossed in)
The fkn picard jacket uniform is absolute peak trek swag
Klingons, their bloodwine raised.
Riker, on his way to the holodeck.
Riker at rest.
The holodeck, in need of cleaning.
Mariner, her stomach upturned.
Drex, his d’k tahg lost
What I found most interesting about this episode was how real it actually is.
Russian proverbs are well-known to often be incomprehensible to someone who didn’t grow up there.
Translating across most languages is difficult just for this reason. Sayings can be difficult to grok even between British and US English.
Have ya got any more of those untranslatable Russian proverbs?
I know that in general, proverbs are difficult to translate because they assume a lot of cultural knowledge to convey their idea.
Like if I say to you “bird in the hand”, you’ll understand that I’m referencing the notion that there’s value to a sure thing that can outweigh the value of potentially having more.
If you ever watch a UN speech, the translators sometimes pause for a bit to figure out how to convey not just the literal words, but also the meaning and the meaning in context.
- onion sorrow
- the horse did not roll
- There are elderberries in the kitchen garden, and your uncle in Kiev
There’s a pretty good Nicole Kidman thriller called ‘The Interpreter.’ Kidman plays a UN translator. There’s a cute little throwaway scene where some of her colleagues are chatting. One says the the American used the phrase ‘pie in the sky’ and she had to change it to ‘castles in Spain.’
Not Russian, but 35 years ago there was a widely repeated translation joke: The slogan “come alive with the Pepsi generation” was translated into Chinese, but it literally meant “Pepsi revives your dead ancestors.”
That example may be apocryphal, but translations are interesting. It’s something to be mindful of when talking with otherwise fluent ESL people.
I had a very intelligent and fluent coworker who knew the English phrase “to shag” from the Austin Powers movies. She completely misinterpreted the meaning of “a shag carpet,” though. It was so funny (and came up so infrequently) that no one ever corrected her.
Not OP but I got curious and found a whole section on Wikiquote devoted to Russian proverbs. Here’s one example:
Transliteration: Artelnyi gorshok gusche kipit.
Translation: Artisanal pots boil (things) more thickly
English Equivalent: Many hands make light work.
It’s kind of hurting my brain.
I checked out a different site, with similar results.
May your goat cart fly to St Petersburg on a road lined with beets! [just made that one up]
I didn’t say “untranslatable”. Please don’t put words in my mouth.
Though there are sayings that are virtually untranslatable between cultures because their conceptions of the world are so different.
It’s often very difficult to translate sayings across cultures, because there’s no one-to-one mapping of words, let alone ideas/concepts.
Take a look even at the difference between French and English, where how you count isn’t even close to the same. Then read some Moliere and Shakespeare, seeing how their wordplay is different because of language differences. And these are two countries with a long relationship, with French spoken by the upper classes in Shakespeare’s time.
I have several books of sayings/proverbs collections, and it’s fascinating to read things translated by people with extensive understanding and knowledge. Even then, sometimes the best translations are just incomprehensible to me, since I grew up in a culture that’s vastly different from the origin.
Very old sayings are especially interesting (e.g. Things written in something like Sanskrit). It can be so difficult to connect to a culture that hasn’t existed in so long (or has an existing great-great-great grandchild that’s quite different).
Again, even from US English to British English can be surprisingly opaque, sharing a common language but unique environs.
It was a play on a famous meme.
Take for example sayings like “my cross to bear” and “good Samaritan”. Those are both from the bible, but they’re oblique references to saying that require a LOT of explanation themselves, but they’re so ingrained you can just reference the full saying to get the message across.
If I were to say, reference “one thing which never dies”, pretty much everyone would be guessing at the meaning. Basically nobody knows it’s a reference to a saying about the reputation people leave behind after death, based on the Norse Edda’s.
The lesson seems to be that how people know you is the most important thing in life, beyond family and your life. And that explanation doesn’t cover it, because none of us have the correct cultural background to interpret it. (If you happen to be a scholar, I’ll happily be corrected).
Are you saying our memes are impossible for casual Lemmy users to figure out?
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Reverse Flash, his goals incomprehensible.
Kamelåså.
“Kolanaki, his posting ceased.”
Means I died.
Zinda, his eyes red.
Kiazi’s children, their faces wet.
Picard, holding his head in both hands
https://youtu.be/Zs13fJuP0F4?t=3050
Neil degrasse Tyson, hands in air!
Riker, his beard shaved.
The shark, jumped by Fonzi
Gowron, awarding the order of the Bat’leth.
Gow’ron, being a shit.
Why can I actually see it in my minds eye?!
So how is the Spice Pudding?
Is this loss?
No this is Patrick
Keep your shirt on litigant
