web babble
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“It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions.” —Thomas Jefferson (1808)
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Huh?
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
Oh, right. I understand completely. 🙄
If you could kindly explain to the rest of us, I'd appreciate that.
Thanks in advance.
I'm guessing that must be a word-for-word translation from, say, Chinese to English.
I remember seeing a McDonald's ad on a billboard in Germany that read:
"Hanchen wie nach nie!" (I think)
I got out my German/English dictionary and translated it word for word, which turned into:
"Chicken how then never!" Again, huh?
So I went and talked to a German friend of mine about it, who laughed and said that the translation I would understand, what it meant to Germans, was:
"Chicken like never before!"
Much is lost in translation.
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
That’s what I was thinking.
Did you ever hear
Ich verstehe nur bahnhof
I only understand train station?
It's been so long. I've forgotten so much.
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
Word for word yes but it’s their version of “it’s all Greek to me”
That’s what I got too. Im Himmel giebst kein Bier.
Und so wir trink es hier...
Or something close to that
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
Genau!
Didja notice the eyes rolled skyward, indicating sarcasm?
I knew all those hours and hours of "cultural studies" in the beer tent would pay off someday!
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
I called those art appreciation sessions. Also seemed the farther north you went in Germany, the prettier the girls became.
I was out on the tractor, mowing, when this suddenly made sense to me. I imagined a couple of Germans using the phrase, and it came to me that a German to American translation should sound like "All I got was train station".
Now, I don't know if every unit did this, but before shipping to Germany our company had to go to 2 weeks of classes in basic German. Two of the three things* that virtually every G.I. remembered were how to order a beer, and how to ask for directions to the train station. If you can get to the train station, you can find your way home.
So, how many Germans must have endured having a bunch of G.I.'s come up to them and mangling their language with bad grammar, syntax, and accent, and one German turns to the other and asks "Did you understand that?", to which the obvious reply is "All I caught was train station" (Bahnhof).
Makes perfect sense, now.
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
My biggest hang up with German is the different cases
Took me a couple years to get the sentence structure worked out.
No joke it gets tricky.
Buddy I spent my 3 years in Bremerhaven. The girls there were NOT pretty!
I've thought about this awhile, don't ask me why, and I think it's a low budget AI translation of a post by a Chinese businessman that should read something like:
"Embarassingly enough, the whole deal fell through because some dumbass South Korean businessman stuck his thing in the wrong hole without a condom. Nothing is happening, it's a dead deal."
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
Shoulda tried Wilhelmshaven & Flensburg up in Neidersachsen. They have that whole Scandanavian influence going on. I wish they all could be Neidersachsen girls....🎶🎶