Al la enhavo

Question about translation

de s.hofius, 2007-januaro-29

Mesaĝoj: 12

Lingvo: English

s.hofius (Montri la profilon) 2007-januaro-29 21:54:27

Saluton!

I was watching the move La Haine and at the begining of the movie one of the main characters is talking about a man that jumped off a sky scraper, on the way down he kept telling himself "so far so good, so far so good, so far so good", the point of it is that, it's not how you fall, it's how you land. I was trying to translate the last part "it's not how you fall, it's how you land." and i came up with this: estas ne kiel vin falin, estas kiel vin surterigxin

i'm still a beginner in esperanto and i was just wondering if this is correct? i had to look up the words fall and land and i'm not sure if i have my -n's in the correct place, can anyone help me? thanks ;]

scavengist (Montri la profilon) 2007-januaro-29 22:05:53

estas = is, there is

you want to put in ĝi. Ĝi ne estas kiel vi fali; ĝi estas kiel vi surteriĝi.

I think that might be right. I don't know why you're putting the -n on verbs and why you're putting it everywhere but where it should be... not there. Remember ĝi. I have a hard time with that because of spanish, thinking that there is no 'it'.

-n's are for direct object. not used when dealing with esti. "I eat apples" would be "Mi manĝas pomojn." the verb is happening to the apple directly. (japanese uses a similar particle that signals the direct object, so i can't really see why people are having such a problem with it.

s.hofius (Montri la profilon) 2007-januaro-29 22:16:54

scavengist:estas = is, there is

you want to put in ĝi. Ĝi ne estas kiel vi fali; ĝi estas kiel vi surteriĝi.

I think that might be right. I don't know why you're putting the -n on verbs and why you're putting it everywhere but where it should be... not there. Remember ĝi. I have a hard time with that because of spanish, thinking that there is no 'it'.

-n's are for direct object. not used when dealing with esti. "I eat apples" would be "Mi manĝas pomojn." the verb is happening to the apple directly. (japanese uses a similar particle that signals the direct object, so i can't really see why people are having such a problem with it.
haha, well i'm not sure why i have such problems with that either, i've struggled with -n ever since i started learning esperanto. i understand english really well but i'm not really familiar with the names of the different parts of language (verb, noun, etc.) since i have not taken any english courses past 5th grade, and most of what i know is self taught. thanks for your response ;]

Frankouche (Montri la profilon) 2007-januaro-30 00:24:07

Haaa, The most famous sentence of this movie :

"Jusqu'ici tout va bien, jusqu'ici tout va bien, jusqu'ici tout va bien, mais l'important c'est pas la chute, c'est l'atterrissage"

Directly from french, I would translate it as : "ĝis ĉi-tie, ĉio bonas...sed la gravo ne estas la falo, estas la surgrundiĝo".

The translation difference english-french-->EO is funny. Your use of "kiel" is very well.

Don't matter with the 'n, it will come (i use it when i remember it).
without it, your are still understood.

I hope you will have a better "landing" with EO okulumo.gif

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2007-januaro-30 01:30:20

scavengist:(japanese uses a similar particle that signals the direct object, so i can't really see why people are having such a problem with it.
Haha well if Japanese has it, it must be obvious and easy!

Not meant as a dig at you, scavengist, it was just a funny way of wording it ridulo.gifrido.gif

RiotNrrd (Montri la profilon) 2007-januaro-30 02:13:49

I don't actually think the "ĝi" is necessary, as it doesn't really refer to anything definite. Kind of like the hard-for-me-to-remember construction "It's raining" translated simply as "pluvas".

The "vi", I think, wouldn't ordinarily make it into the Esperanto translation either, as in cases like this (I think) it is customary to use the word "oni" instead.

So, my translation of it would be:

"Ne estas kiel oni falas, sed kiel oni surteriĝas."

Or, possibly:

"Ne gravas kiel oni falas, sed kiel oni surteriĝas."

I am perfectly open to being corrected. ridulo.gif

T0dd (Montri la profilon) 2007-januaro-30 02:56:08

RiotNrrd:
"Ne gravas kiel oni falas, sed kiel oni surteriĝas."
That's the way I'd do it. As always, the trick is to resist the temptation to try to translate the English *phrasing*. When we say "It's not how you fall..." the "It's not" is just an idiom for "What's important is not..."

You might also consider "Kiel vi falas malpli gravas ol kiel vi surteriĝas."

T0dd (Montri la profilon) 2007-januaro-30 03:02:01

s.hofius:i understand english really well but i'm not really familiar with the names of the different parts of language (verb, noun, etc.) since i have not taken any english courses past 5th grade, and most of what i know is self taught. thanks for your response ;]
I think Zamenhof assumed that everybody would be familiar with the parts of speech--and assumption that certainly doesn't fit the reality in modern USA, where these things are hardly taught anymore. I remember having to parse sentences in junior high school, but I'm *old*. And even at that, the real meaning of the grammatical terms didn't sink in until I studied French and I needed to understand them. "Ce que" or "ce qui", which one do I use? I couldn't get it right until I understood the whole transitive/intransitive direct object situation.

RiotNrrd (Montri la profilon) 2007-januaro-30 03:41:47

The parts of speech are actually pretty easy, because there aren't too many of them and they're related. Not counting articles and prepositions, there's really only four main parts of speech, and they come in pairs:

Nouns represent things (of any sort - physical or nonphysical).

Adjectives add additional information about a noun.

Verbs represent actions.

Adverbs add additional information about a verb (I think of it as "add verb").

So, "ball" is a noun, because a ball is a thing. In Esperanto, ALL nouns end in -o. "Pilko" is the Esperanto word for "ball".

In the phrase "red ball", "red" is an adjective, because it tells you a little more about the ball (i.e., that it's red). In Esperanto, ALL adjectives end in -a. "Ruĝa pilko" is the Esperanto phrase for "red ball".

"Go" is a verb, because it describes an action. Due to various reasons, in Esperanto verbs can have any of five endings (-i, -is, -as, -os, -us, -u), but they will always have one of those five. "Iri" is the Esperanto word for "to go" (listed as an infinitive).

In the phrase "go quickly", "quickly" is an adverb because it tells you a little more about the act of going (i.e., that it was quick). In Esperanto, ALL adverbs end in -e. "Iri rapide" is the Esperanto phrase for "to go quickly".

What if you have a "quick ball" (whatever that might be)? In that case "quick" would get an -a ending, because it is describing a noun (a thing), rather than a verb (an action). So that phrase would be "rapida pilko". The root "rapid-" on its own is neither an adjective nor an adverb - what it is describing in a sentence will determine what ending it gets.

If you just think about what a word is doing in a sentence, the correct ending is usually pretty clear. English tends to confuse things a bit, because some English adjectives have exactly the same form as the equivalent adverb, and you can't tell just by looking at the word in isolation what function it's playing. When I was in school I learned that English words ending in "-ly" are adverbs. That's a simple rule, and is true MOST of the time, but, in fact, there are some adjectives that also end in "-ly" and there are many adverbs that don't. So from a practical standpoint it's a terrible rule that can lead you to easily misidentify a word, and thus is one that should be forgotten. Always look to what the word is supposed to be DOING in the sentence, and what ending it's supposed to get will become pretty obvious.

Mythos (Montri la profilon) 2007-januaro-30 04:34:15

RiotNrrd:The parts of speech are actually pretty easy, because there aren't too many of them and they're related. Not counting articles and prepositions, there's really only four main parts of speech, and they come in pairs:

Nouns represent things (of any sort - physical or nonphysical).

Adjectives add additional information about a noun.

Verbs represent actions.

Adverbs add additional information about a verb (I think of it as "add verb").
That is amazingly helpful. Thank you. Everyone is right, these sorts of things are hardly taught in the US anymore. I can remember in high school coming to a question that mentioned the word verb, I had to go look it up. I still have trouble with them, but it is getting better since I have started studying EO. Too bad those adverbs still give me so much trouble.

Reen al la supro