Languages

[Curtis, baby]

https://twitter.com/shockproofbeats/sta ... 8114475010

This is LITERALLY the greatest thing I've ever seen

[greennui]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk

[rischka]

[sally]

LOL! i tried learning danish for a few months once, (by total coincidence the same year my mum went to live there for a while) it didn't stick

[greennui]

It's just vowels...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI5DPt3Ge_s

[Curtis, baby]

Changing my Tinder to Berlin was the best thing I ever did for my German language studies

[niminy-piminy]

i got a PM on KG about a subs POT.
the film is Slovak (usually, i don't check Slovak POTs), i never heard about this film before, but it is GREAT!
https://letterboxd.com/film/be-sure-to-behave/
so, gonna make the subs.
and as i watched it, there is a thing i need to take a bit of advice from English native speakers.
it is an ongoing internal monologue of the heroine and at one point she recalls her childhood.

here kids, when they don't want to eat, adults use to tell them, "Take this spoon (of food) on behalf of (to please) mommy, one spoon on behalf of (to please) daddy, one spoon on behalf of (to please) auntie, etc., etc."

so, if the subs will go...
— Take this spoon on behalf of mommy, this one on behalf of daddy, this one on behalf of auntie..."
will it make sense???
if not what phrases can substitute this???

also, i need the subs to be short, so will it make sense even if i will shorten it this way (this is a literal translation of what is said here)???...
— Take this spoon for mommy, this one for daddy, this one for auntie...
if this would be comprehensible, it would be ideal???

[MrCarmady]

I think the shortened version is fine and comprehensible, and actually sounds better than the literal translation. But I'm technically not a native speaker so I dunno.

[sally]

the shortened version ('for' instead of 'on behalf of') does make more sense, but would 'have' be better than 'take'.....take implies more passivity, have is more about co-operation here, if you're asking a child to participate in opening their mouth (please have, entreaty), rather than have the food smeared all over their face (take it bitch)....hmmm


but on the other hand take 'sounds' better than have and to be honest people usually just say 'one spoon for mommy, one spoon for daddy (plus stupid baby noises) - is there anything visual that would show context of food and babies? if there is, i'd go with that, if there isn't then someone else needs to weigh in with have/take

[niminy-piminy]

there are no visuals of baby force-feeding.
heroine is in prison and recalls all kinds of snippets from her prior life (speaking to herself).
i am glad to hear it is said to kids abroad the same way.
i guess i will go with "one spoon for mommy, one spoon for daddy, etc." (without any verb — because she utters everything very short, there is not much time to fit in).
or eventually, will use "have/take".
thx a lot!

btw. that film is a MASTERPIECE (as wba would say).
i can't still grasp how i could miss it.
soon in Res. (it is only 20+ min long — so i hope subbing won't take ages).

[sally]

there are no visuals of baby force-feeding.

in that case the short 'one spoon for....' might also sound like you were distributing family heirlooms.

we need another opinion! i could never be a translator, i would never ever get beyond the first sentence, and the 2000 ways of interpreting it.

you are a hero jiri!

[niminy-piminy]

there must be a bit of simpleton in a person to display heroism!
normally, i would not dare to translate.
but there are (for some reason) no other ppl willing to subtitle some films.
and i feel whatever subs (i can deliver) surpass the non-existent (absent) subs.

BE SURE TO BEHAVE (1968)

upload picture

[Umbugbene]

I concur with the final shortened version: "One spoon for Mommy, one spoon for Daddy...." You're right to drop the verb, and absolutely right to use "for". "Spoonful" would probably be the most literal translation for "spoon of food", but "spoon" is more natural and is completely understandable.

[flip]

i think "one spoon for mommy, one spoon for..." is the best solution

but if you were worried it sounded like someone was distributing cutlery to family members, you could say "spoonful" instead of "spoon". i don't really like that personally though.

with no visuals, it might sound like one spoon is going to each member of the family, instead of what i gather is meant: that the baby is eating each spoonful to please one member of the family. "one spoon to please mommy, one spoon to please daddy, ..." would resolve that (it sounds much better to me than "on behalf of") but i think it's hard to judge what will work best out of context.

edit: or just adding one verb once, at the start, also solves it: "have one spoon for mommy, one spoon for..." or 'eat' or 'take' but i think 'have' sounds best

translation is hard!

[niminy-piminy]

she actually says "one spoon for sister, one for grandpa, one for nursery teacher".
is there a single word for "nursery teacher"????
(the general example with daddy, mommy was just to figure out if the phrase is used at all.)
then she (a political prisoner) starts to make knots on her fallen hairs while saying (within her mind) "one knot for fresh air, one for a sugar cube, etc. etc."

while she says the phrases about spon/spoonful (i will try to use spoonful if there will be enough time for a phrase) it looks like this (it is her inner voice soliloquy).



when she makes knots on a hair (and saying the other replicas) it looks mostly like this (close-ups on her hands, her face, her hands again, etc.).

[brian d]

for nursery teacher, you're probably good with nanny. sounds like using just "spoon" would be fine, nobody's going to confuse the context there.

[niminy-piminy]

fine, thanks!

[Lencho of the Apes]

'Spoon' is fine, 'bite' might be clearer. ("One bite for daddy...")

[niminy-piminy]

mhm, you might be right!
"bite - knot" rhymes better than "spoon - knot".
but i already lured "spoon" to the spooning party and now i am supposed to say, "Spoon, get lost — this gonna be spoonless!"?!
poor "spoon".
translating is cruel to (many) words!
(leaving them aside.)

[sally]

yeah get rid of spoon! i'm sick of spoon (although the sound 'spoon' seems perfectly matched to what it's describing, soft but firm at first, then the basin of the oo....)

since this is the language thread i am reminded of the time a polish friend once wrote out the 16 different ways of saying 'spoons' (of varying number) in polish and that was when i decided i wasn't going to learn polish.

[niminy-piminy]

but my main dilemma now is as follows...
if i get rid of "spoon" do i enhance/impair my prospects of publishing my translations in "Twisted Spoon Press"???
https://www.twistedspoon.com/about.html

Twisted Spoon Press is an independent publisher based in Prague. Founded in 1992, it is focused on translating into English a variety of writing from Central & Eastern Europe and making it available to a global readership.

[brian d]

one of the best presses, that unfortunately doesn't publish very often

[niminy-piminy]

and now the question is...
do they publish seldom because translators bring them texts full of "spoon/spoonful" (and they are already sick of it) or devoid of "spoon"???

once, i shipped abroad as a gift bilingual (English/Czech) "A User's Manual" by Jiří Kolář (the book was very nice!).
https://www.twistedspoon.com/users-manual.html

[brian d]

well it's probably got something to do with amazon, but maybe it's amazon's monopsony on books working out the distinction between spoon and spoonful.

[niminy-piminy]

Amazon and its spoon-baits!

(btw. i finally reached the spot in the film and decided to go with "spoon" and avoid "bite".)

[Holymanm]

But I'm technically not a native speaker

? do tell!

[MrCarmady]

But I'm technically not a native speaker

? do tell!

as the name (not the username, my real name) betrays, i'm russian and didn't move to the uk until i was 14. so i'm fluent and use english more than all my other languages combined, but i didn't grow up speaking it at home which means i do sometimes catch myself with syntactic or pronunciation-based faux pas

[Holymanm]

0__0 very cool! yeah i bet there are sometimes little things you don't know 100% native-ly and intuitively, which you might miss... but at the same time, i bet you know 'proper english' better than most native speakers, from learning it deliberately. ...like conrad and nabokov (no pressure). if i had to learn english as a second language, i would never trust native speakers for teaching me grammar

and you're still fluent in russian (and other things!) too...?

[Curtis, baby]

but at the same time, i bet you know 'proper english' better than most native speakers, from learning it deliberately
...
if i had to learn english as a second language, i would never trust native speakers for teaching me grammar

"trust to" for verbs, "trust for" only for objects

i trust you to pay

i trust you for the payment

etc

[Holymanm]

exactly my point! i can teach basic spanish grammar fairly well, but ask me about the "english" and i'll say never heard of it! is it a new lawncare company? fights ticks?

but "trust you to teach me english" sounds like trusting that they actually will teach me it (rather than take my money and run)... maybe just "entrust you with my english education"