Translating Finnish idioms into English is also always fun.
Translating idioms from one language to another rarely ends well 🙂
I have a funny story of a Finnish-speaking Indian friend who showed a slide show he had done to his colleague and asked whether it would do for the presentation they were preparing for. The entire reply he received by email was “toimii kuin junan vessa” = works like the train’s toilet.
According to him, his reaction was essentially utter confusion.
And honestly, if you actually stop and think about it from a foreigner’s perspective, it’s not instantly obvious that the colleague meant that the slideshow was great.
Arctic Ape
8 years ago
It’s funny how some words and phrases can be overused in certain contexts, making them seem way more common than they really are in the language.
Many kids like me who grew up in Helsinki area (officially bilingual, Finnish strongly dominant in social life) first knew Swedish as the Language Of Alternative Public Instructions And Food Product Labels.
Later on we were actually taught Swedish (as a non-optional subject) in school, and most made at best a half-hearted effort of learning it (compared to English), only to forget most of it afterwards.
(Uh oh, hopefully I’m not further derailing this into Finnish language education politics!)
Leda Atomica
8 years ago
The entire reply he received by email was “toimii kuin junan vessa” = works like the train’s toilet.
I have to admit I was a bit confused too when I heard that for the first time, with all of our complaints about VR (=Finnish public railroad system)! As a child I also never understood: “Aika aikaansa kutakin, sanoi pässi kun päätä leikattiin” (“There’s a time for everything, said the goat while their head was being chopped”). I now understand the meaning but it did take me a while. I realise I may be in a minority with this but it was a personal hangup.
I’d also be interested in how regional some expressions are, because when I said to my friend from Kemi “Nonni sanos vares ku nokka katkes” I think she took the longest pause we’ve ever had in a conversation.
ETA: Someone better and less vodka’d than me translate the vares thing. 😀
opposablethumbs
8 years ago
You can talk about grammar without talking about grammar
(Imaginary Petal)
That made me kind of want to say that the first rule of grammar is you don’t talk about grammar, but then I thought that would make it look as if I don’t like grammar so I decided not to say it.
I haven’t actually seen Fight Club. But I do like grammar.
Skiriki
8 years ago
Verily Baroque:
Translating idioms from one language to another rarely ends well 🙂
I remember this one doc about Finnish army’s fighter plane acquisitions, and how one of the reasons (there were others, more important ones, but this surely contributed) why Sweden did not manage to sell their fighter planes to us.
Their presenter did not speak Finnish too well, and whoever had written the spiel for it (possibly the presenter himself?) didn’t quite grasp some mismatches in language use.
“Flies softly like a cat’s paw.” — “Lentää pehmeästi kuin kissantassu.”
Ummm. Yeah. Cats are known for that quality. Right.
There were other mistakes as well, but that stuck to my mind.
Leda Atomica
8 years ago
I’d take the cat’s paw reference as ‘flies smoothly’, because precision and swiftness. 😉
It’s actually helped me with my English too. It’s funny, when you learn a foreign language teachers launch into stuff about participles and perfect/imperfect, but no one has ever first explained what that means in your original language (which presumably you pick up intuitively by mimicry).
At least some places actually do; I am given to understand from acquaintences who went to them that French instructors actually do go over those things, even in schools in France.
@Verily Baroque
And honestly, if you actually stop and think about it from a foreigner’s perspective, it’s not instantly obvious that the colleague meant that the slideshow was great..
See, I, an American, would have assumed the opposite. I guess it depends on what the local trains are like.
@Arctic Ape
(Uh oh, hopefully I’m not further derailing this into Finnish language education politics!)
Language politics can be as complex as languages themselves, and even as interesting. Also, often a lot bloodier.
Skiriki
8 years ago
Leda Atomica:
I’d take the cat’s paw reference as ‘flies smoothly’, because precision and swiftness. 😉
Or “feather-light flight”. Yes, the intention was to convey smoothness and ease of control, but it came across as completely wrong simile, since there are better points of comparison already involving flight. 😀
Arrows, hawks, etc.
Cat, despite landing on four legs most of the time, still lack that aerodynamic property associated with planes. 😀
Dalilama:
See, I, an American, would have assumed the opposite. I guess it depends on what the local trains are like.
In the past, from where that saying originates, the train toilets were sort of idiot-proof — they just dumped everything right on the rails once you finished your business. No fuss, no muss, it just works.
In modern trains, it is collected (as it bloody should!) and this introduces complications. Such as that time when I had four hour travel so close to a malfunctioning train toilet…
Yet, the saying lives in its positive sense.
Leda Atomica
8 years ago
RE: Language politics (sorry sorry sorry). The other day a finnish guy was making the argument that Estonia abandoned Russian as an official language once they were outside the Iron Curtain, so Finns should have abandoned Swedish once we were out of their rule. To which I said that then we were under russian rule so we should have russian as a second language or only Finnish. And that it was a massive benefit to Finland to have Nordic connections so therefor we kept speaking Swedish.
However, in modern day I’m not sure if it’s such an important thing for a native Finn to speak Swedish, outside of the fact that our Swedish-speaking population live among us and we *will* need it in certain jobs, such as customer service or perhaps hospital staff etc. The attitude towards learning Swedish is understandably non-enthusiastic, but we do have everyday situations here in which we wish we could speak decent Swedish.
Also, I’m all about learning languages. Next mandatory ones: Sami and sign language. 😉
guy
8 years ago
Personally I think it would be rather convenient if there was a designated language everyone in the world learned so we could all communicate easily. And I think it should be American English because I’m selfish.
Skiriki
8 years ago
Personally I think it would be rather convenient if there was a designated language everyone in the world learned so we could all communicate easily. And I think it should be American English because I’m selfish.
Convenient, for sure, but it would deprive us from insights gleaned from other languages and modes of thinking.
Differences do make us stronger. Understanding differences? Even stronger.
…besides, we are kinda communicating right now, in various versions of English. 😉 It just happens that some of us understand English + extra. 😉
Leda Atomica
8 years ago
I think languages are a richness. Because expression, no matter how much we would protest it, is always at its most powerful in the language we use. Be it spoken language or otherwise, I think we communicate different when we use different tools for communication. Some even said that bilingual people have more than one expressed persona.
And variation like that means variation of the ways we express humanity.
That said, american English is kind of the new lingua franca because so many of us hear it so much. It’s nice to be able to communicate with people that have completely new and different things to say because of the place they have lived in. I mean, BF Atomica is Belgian and I’ll be using English with him until I learn acceptable Dutch.
Imaginary Petal (formerly dhag85, trying out pronouns - they/their)
8 years ago
@opposablethumbs
I heard someone make a Fight Club joke the other day and it made me laugh. It wen’t something like:
Just got home from my first night at fight club – loved it! Showed up a little bit late and missed the guy explaining the rules, but I strongly recommend it to anyone who might be interested!
Verily Baroque
8 years ago
@guy
Personally I think it would be rather convenient if there was a designated language everyone in the world learned so we could all communicate easily.
Have you heard of Esperanto? If not, you know why it failed. 😉
And I think it should be American English because I’m selfish.
I guess I should explain to you how insensitive that comment was but it’s past-midnight o’clock here and I’m currently not up to writing an essay. Can we agree that you’ll google “cultural imperialism” and ask me again in ten hours if you are unsure of why I’m side-eyeing you?
Nothing personal against you, though: I know you are trying to joke. It’s just not really all that well-chosen a joke for an American to make.
@Skiriki, Leda
Agreeing with you that with their own quirks etc. knowing several languages can give one such insights that would be challenging to achieve otherwise. How useful such insight would be outside communication with that specific culture, on the other hand, is a separate question (as is whether learning foreign languages even needs to be useful).
Skiriki
8 years ago
Leda Atomica:
Some even said that bilingual people have more than one expressed persona.
Confirmed, I’m much more talkative and open in English than I am in Finnish. Also, I can think in English, I don’t need to translate back and forth. I can analyze my feelings and distressing/anxious things more accurately in English, mostly by being able to give them room I cannot while I think in Finnish.
How useful such insight would be outside communication with that specific culture, on the other hand, is a separate question (as is whether learning foreign languages even needs to be useful).
Example: When I was in uni in 2000, I picked up Japanese as my fifth language. (I’ve forgotten almost all of my French and never studied it in our highschool-version; I can read and understand spoken Swedish, but writing my own stuff is no-go.)
Our teacher, who was a Finn and had lived in Japan for couple of decades, on-and-off-again, also made sure that we understood a lot of stuff besides simple grammar and vocabulary; she gave us a language-related crash course to Japanese culture, including gender differences in language use.
When she explained how haiku works, it all of the sudden clicked in my head, and finally made sense and suddenly I just felt “wow, that is so freakin’ brilliant, and I can totally use that outside Japanese language too”.
The story she told was how she was in Kyoto with a friend of hers, and he was suddenly struck by inspiration; he wanted to write a haiku for this very specific moment in time. Translated, it began “Today in Kyoto…”
But.
Instead of using the usual kanji for “Kyo” in Kyoto, her friend used kanji for “today” which is also “kyo”, combining Kyoto and today into one word, creating something ambiguous and fantastic in that moment he wanted to remember in form of haiku. It probably isn’t an original idea, but the explanation, along with the story that went with it, suddenly just opened fresh new ideas in my mind.
And that’s the power of other languages. On that principle alone, I can heartily recommend learning completely different language from your native one, because you might be surprised how it can change you.
Skiriki
8 years ago
Slightly back to topic: Bad news for Trump — Antonin Scalia has popped his clogs.
Is there a limit to how many embedded links can be present? I have a bunch of named troll strategies (16 as of now) that link to FS’s comments. This is pretty fun and I have been needed to turn patterns of social conflict into things analogous to martial arts “forms”.
Imaginary Petal (formerly dhag85, trying out pronouns - they/their)
8 years ago
Wow, Scalia! Does anybody know what happens now? Does Obama appoint someone?
opposablethumbs
8 years ago
Showed up a little bit late and missed the guy explaining the rules, but I strongly recommend it to anyone who might be interested!
I think if there are too many links in a post it’ll go to moderation. David would approve it, I’m sure, but how long it would take I couldn’t say. Maybe break it down into 3 or 4 posts?
Just checked my prediction market. They haven’t officially closed it, but no one’s selling and the last one went for 99%.
Alan Robertshaw
8 years ago
A really good book on the intricacies of Supreme Court Justice selection is “The Renquist Choice” by John Dean. It focuses on the Nixon years obviously but it gives some real good background on the process generally.
This Scalia thing is really bringing out the worst in me. I know it’s wrong to be happy that someone died, but I kind of am. He was truly a terrible person and the right wing majority on the Supreme Court has done so much harm to my country. Harm that will take decades to undo. The only way to stop the 5 horrible – 4 not horrible configuration was for one to die because there was no chance of any of them except maybe Kennedy retiring while a Dem is in the White House.
So yeah, this is really testing my morals.
I don’t even know.
David, sorry if this violating the comment policy. I’ll understand if you delete it. I just had to get it off my chest.
1) “Microaggression via Criticism”: Troll criticizes you without an actual reason other than a dominance display. There is nothing wrong with your position/claim, but they criticize something anyway. This is meant to keep people compliant and unconfident, or to simply associate a sense of worthlessness with your position. Example. Paradoxical Intentions’s point about in-group political language differences was perfectly fine. Instead of offering extra information (that was actually obvious), it was formed into a criticism.
2) “Reflected Social Momentum”: Troll takes beliefs, thoughts, actions, communications or words socially advantageous or important to you and tries to preemptively direct or redirect it back at you by using it on you. This is meant to render strategically threatening things harmless by forcing you to defend yourself from your potential attack. It also redirects audience perceptual filters for that phenomena. Example.
By accusing Imaginary Petal of sexism Fifth Sibylline attempts to make them defend against and accusation that FS could or would have to defend against.
3) “Vague irrational bragging”: Troll non-specifically references something substantive elsewhere to attempt an irrational increased reputation in another place (irrational due to irrelevance and/or lack of substance in the relevant issue). May be pre-planned. Example. Fifth Sibylline’s first post cited religious information, and was the only thing they actually linked prior to this claim that they have supported something substantively.
We Hunted The Mammoth
Translating idioms from one language to another rarely ends well 🙂
I have a funny story of a Finnish-speaking Indian friend who showed a slide show he had done to his colleague and asked whether it would do for the presentation they were preparing for. The entire reply he received by email was “toimii kuin junan vessa” = works like the train’s toilet.
According to him, his reaction was essentially utter confusion.
And honestly, if you actually stop and think about it from a foreigner’s perspective, it’s not instantly obvious that the colleague meant that the slideshow was great.
Many kids like me who grew up in Helsinki area (officially bilingual, Finnish strongly dominant in social life) first knew Swedish as the Language Of Alternative Public Instructions And Food Product Labels.
Later on we were actually taught Swedish (as a non-optional subject) in school, and most made at best a half-hearted effort of learning it (compared to English), only to forget most of it afterwards.
(Uh oh, hopefully I’m not further derailing this into Finnish language education politics!)
I have to admit I was a bit confused too when I heard that for the first time, with all of our complaints about VR (=Finnish public railroad system)! As a child I also never understood: “Aika aikaansa kutakin, sanoi pässi kun päätä leikattiin” (“There’s a time for everything, said the goat while their head was being chopped”). I now understand the meaning but it did take me a while. I realise I may be in a minority with this but it was a personal hangup.
I’d also be interested in how regional some expressions are, because when I said to my friend from Kemi “Nonni sanos vares ku nokka katkes” I think she took the longest pause we’ve ever had in a conversation.
ETA: Someone better and less vodka’d than me translate the vares thing. 😀
(Imaginary Petal)
That made me kind of want to say that the first rule of grammar is you don’t talk about grammar, but then I thought that would make it look as if I don’t like grammar so I decided not to say it.
I haven’t actually seen Fight Club. But I do like grammar.
Verily Baroque:
I remember this one doc about Finnish army’s fighter plane acquisitions, and how one of the reasons (there were others, more important ones, but this surely contributed) why Sweden did not manage to sell their fighter planes to us.
Their presenter did not speak Finnish too well, and whoever had written the spiel for it (possibly the presenter himself?) didn’t quite grasp some mismatches in language use.
“Flies softly like a cat’s paw.” — “Lentää pehmeästi kuin kissantassu.”
Ummm. Yeah. Cats are known for that quality. Right.
There were other mistakes as well, but that stuck to my mind.
I’d take the cat’s paw reference as ‘flies smoothly’, because precision and swiftness. 😉
@Alan Robertshaw
At least some places actually do; I am given to understand from acquaintences who went to them that French instructors actually do go over those things, even in schools in France.
@Verily Baroque
See, I, an American, would have assumed the opposite. I guess it depends on what the local trains are like.
@Arctic Ape
Language politics can be as complex as languages themselves, and even as interesting. Also, often a lot bloodier.
Leda Atomica:
Or “feather-light flight”. Yes, the intention was to convey smoothness and ease of control, but it came across as completely wrong simile, since there are better points of comparison already involving flight. 😀
Arrows, hawks, etc.
Cat, despite landing on four legs most of the time, still lack that aerodynamic property associated with planes. 😀
Dalilama:
In the past, from where that saying originates, the train toilets were sort of idiot-proof — they just dumped everything right on the rails once you finished your business. No fuss, no muss, it just works.
In modern trains, it is collected (as it bloody should!) and this introduces complications. Such as that time when I had four hour travel so close to a malfunctioning train toilet…
Yet, the saying lives in its positive sense.
RE: Language politics (sorry sorry sorry). The other day a finnish guy was making the argument that Estonia abandoned Russian as an official language once they were outside the Iron Curtain, so Finns should have abandoned Swedish once we were out of their rule. To which I said that then we were under russian rule so we should have russian as a second language or only Finnish. And that it was a massive benefit to Finland to have Nordic connections so therefor we kept speaking Swedish.
However, in modern day I’m not sure if it’s such an important thing for a native Finn to speak Swedish, outside of the fact that our Swedish-speaking population live among us and we *will* need it in certain jobs, such as customer service or perhaps hospital staff etc. The attitude towards learning Swedish is understandably non-enthusiastic, but we do have everyday situations here in which we wish we could speak decent Swedish.
Also, I’m all about learning languages. Next mandatory ones: Sami and sign language. 😉
Personally I think it would be rather convenient if there was a designated language everyone in the world learned so we could all communicate easily. And I think it should be American English because I’m selfish.
Convenient, for sure, but it would deprive us from insights gleaned from other languages and modes of thinking.
Differences do make us stronger. Understanding differences? Even stronger.
…besides, we are kinda communicating right now, in various versions of English. 😉 It just happens that some of us understand English + extra. 😉
I think languages are a richness. Because expression, no matter how much we would protest it, is always at its most powerful in the language we use. Be it spoken language or otherwise, I think we communicate different when we use different tools for communication. Some even said that bilingual people have more than one expressed persona.
And variation like that means variation of the ways we express humanity.
That said, american English is kind of the new lingua franca because so many of us hear it so much. It’s nice to be able to communicate with people that have completely new and different things to say because of the place they have lived in. I mean, BF Atomica is Belgian and I’ll be using English with him until I learn acceptable Dutch.
@opposablethumbs
I heard someone make a Fight Club joke the other day and it made me laugh. It wen’t something like:
Just got home from my first night at fight club – loved it! Showed up a little bit late and missed the guy explaining the rules, but I strongly recommend it to anyone who might be interested!
@guy
Have you heard of Esperanto? If not, you know why it failed. 😉
I guess I should explain to you how insensitive that comment was but it’s past-midnight o’clock here and I’m currently not up to writing an essay. Can we agree that you’ll google “cultural imperialism” and ask me again in ten hours if you are unsure of why I’m side-eyeing you?
Nothing personal against you, though: I know you are trying to joke. It’s just not really all that well-chosen a joke for an American to make.
@Skiriki, Leda
Agreeing with you that with their own quirks etc. knowing several languages can give one such insights that would be challenging to achieve otherwise. How useful such insight would be outside communication with that specific culture, on the other hand, is a separate question (as is whether learning foreign languages even needs to be useful).
Leda Atomica:
Confirmed, I’m much more talkative and open in English than I am in Finnish. Also, I can think in English, I don’t need to translate back and forth. I can analyze my feelings and distressing/anxious things more accurately in English, mostly by being able to give them room I cannot while I think in Finnish.
Being bilingual may delay onset of Alzheimer’s, too!
Verily Baroque:
Example: When I was in uni in 2000, I picked up Japanese as my fifth language. (I’ve forgotten almost all of my French and never studied it in our highschool-version; I can read and understand spoken Swedish, but writing my own stuff is no-go.)
Our teacher, who was a Finn and had lived in Japan for couple of decades, on-and-off-again, also made sure that we understood a lot of stuff besides simple grammar and vocabulary; she gave us a language-related crash course to Japanese culture, including gender differences in language use.
When she explained how haiku works, it all of the sudden clicked in my head, and finally made sense and suddenly I just felt “wow, that is so freakin’ brilliant, and I can totally use that outside Japanese language too”.
The story she told was how she was in Kyoto with a friend of hers, and he was suddenly struck by inspiration; he wanted to write a haiku for this very specific moment in time. Translated, it began “Today in Kyoto…”
But.
Instead of using the usual kanji for “Kyo” in Kyoto, her friend used kanji for “today” which is also “kyo”, combining Kyoto and today into one word, creating something ambiguous and fantastic in that moment he wanted to remember in form of haiku. It probably isn’t an original idea, but the explanation, along with the story that went with it, suddenly just opened fresh new ideas in my mind.
And that’s the power of other languages. On that principle alone, I can heartily recommend learning completely different language from your native one, because you might be surprised how it can change you.
Slightly back to topic: Bad news for Trump — Antonin Scalia has popped his clogs.
Is there a limit to how many embedded links can be present? I have a bunch of named troll strategies (16 as of now) that link to FS’s comments. This is pretty fun and I have been needed to turn patterns of social conflict into things analogous to martial arts “forms”.
Wow, Scalia! Does anybody know what happens now? Does Obama appoint someone?
Imaginary Petal, I love it. Thank you!
Brony, SJC (is that an acceptable shortening?)
I think if there are too many links in a post it’ll go to moderation. David would approve it, I’m sure, but how long it would take I couldn’t say. Maybe break it down into 3 or 4 posts?
IP: Yes, but…
https://twitter.com/JohnFugelsang/status/698635130865369088
GOP has already reared and said they’ll block anyone President Obama is trying to appoint.
@Skiriki
Just checked my prediction market. They haven’t officially closed it, but no one’s selling and the last one went for 99%.
A really good book on the intricacies of Supreme Court Justice selection is “The Renquist Choice” by John Dean. It focuses on the Nixon years obviously but it gives some real good background on the process generally.
Confession.
This Scalia thing is really bringing out the worst in me. I know it’s wrong to be happy that someone died, but I kind of am. He was truly a terrible person and the right wing majority on the Supreme Court has done so much harm to my country. Harm that will take decades to undo. The only way to stop the 5 horrible – 4 not horrible configuration was for one to die because there was no chance of any of them except maybe Kennedy retiring while a Dem is in the White House.
So yeah, this is really testing my morals.
I don’t even know.
David, sorry if this violating the comment policy. I’ll understand if you delete it. I just had to get it off my chest.
1) “Microaggression via Criticism”: Troll criticizes you without an actual reason other than a dominance display. There is nothing wrong with your position/claim, but they criticize something anyway. This is meant to keep people compliant and unconfident, or to simply associate a sense of worthlessness with your position.
Example. Paradoxical Intentions’s point about in-group political language differences was perfectly fine. Instead of offering extra information (that was actually obvious), it was formed into a criticism.
2) “Reflected Social Momentum”: Troll takes beliefs, thoughts, actions, communications or words socially advantageous or important to you and tries to preemptively direct or redirect it back at you by using it on you. This is meant to render strategically threatening things harmless by forcing you to defend yourself from your potential attack. It also redirects audience perceptual filters for that phenomena.
Example.
By accusing Imaginary Petal of sexism Fifth Sibylline attempts to make them defend against and accusation that FS could or would have to defend against.
3) “Vague irrational bragging”: Troll non-specifically references something substantive elsewhere to attempt an irrational increased reputation in another place (irrational due to irrelevance and/or lack of substance in the relevant issue). May be pre-planned.
Example. Fifth Sibylline’s first post cited religious information, and was the only thing they actually linked prior to this claim that they have supported something substantively.