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Familiar Idioms, Translated | ||
Tags: Idiom | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| JasonE Groupie Canada Joined 4868 days ago 54 posts - 78 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 4 30 March 2011 at 3:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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I was doing some reading in french tonight and I came across this: "...cinq poids lourds internationaux (Chine,
Inde, Russie, Brésil, Allemagne)...". Now obviously the article is referring to the five international heavy weights of China, etc..., but I just find it odd to see the idiom of "a heavy weight" so directly equivalent in another language. I know that french and English have very close ties, but I just find it to be rather odd to experience old and familiar idioms in a new light. I've experienced this quite often, and I find that the idiom doesn't even have to be very old to elicit this feeling. I was watching television in french the other day and saw a commercial for some Windows product and their "Cloud" websharing product or whatever it is. I've seen commercials for the same product with the phase "to the cloud!", but I was a bit surprised that they use "Nuage" for french version. It is like I expect french to have it's own word for it, one that doesn't translate directly. Anyway, I hope I'm getting my point across, and I was curious to know if anyone else has had this feeling before. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montobello Newbie United States Joined 4795 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 2 of 4 30 March 2011 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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to the cloud is a good one, submarine/sous-marine strikes me as funny as well, it makes
me chuckle every time I pass a restaurant and see "under water" describing a sandwich... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JasonE Groupie Canada Joined 4868 days ago 54 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 4 30 March 2011 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
Exactly! Anyone got any more? Does this sort of thing happen often with languages other than English and french? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5251 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 4 of 4 30 March 2011 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, all the time. In Norwegian "heavyweight" correspond to tungvekter and "the cloud" to (nett)skyen. I have never heard someone say u-båt when they talk about a sandwich though. A long sandwich is sometimes called landgang (=gangway, gangplank). Edited by tractor on 30 March 2011 at 9:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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