Hi everyone, please can someone help me with translation. jak se rekne cesky " give a girl the right pair of shoes and she can conquer the world "
Dekuji general joy, i thought so too!. I,m still trying to figure out what your signature says in english!
Aha, so you wanted that phrase for your signature, eh? My signature means: "Don't tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." Last line of The Catcher in the Rye. I wouldn't have known how to translate it either, if I didn't have both versions of the book-- Czech and English!
Been looking for ages for something to use as my signature, it was Bette Midlers idea really!!!!!!!!!!!! I am learning czech and would really appreciate some ideas on where to buy some books in english & czech, i think this would be a great help to me. I just don,t know where to start looking for them on the web.
I would translate it slightly differently: czech to english: "Nikdy nikomu o nikom nevypravujte, poněvadž by vám pak začal scházet." "Don't tell anybody about somebody, otherwise you will miss him later/afterwards." english to czech: "Don't tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." "Nikomu nic neříkejte, začnou vám pak všichni scházet." or "Nikomu nic neříkejte, jinak vám pak budou všichni scházet." or "Nikomu nic neříkejte, jinak vám pak bude každý scházet." or "Nikomu nic neříkejte, budete/začnete pak všechny/každého postrádat." Of course, the translation depends on the context, I don't have it... 8)
General Joy, I'm not sure I even understand what that line means in english :shock: Is it like this?... Don't make friends, because when they're gone, you'll just miss them???? Never read the book, but the title is familiar.
Scrimshaw-- the main character of the book, Holden Caulfield, has just told about everything that happened right before winter break, when he left school early to walk around New York City. He's a really unusual character (one of the best in fiction, in my opinion ), so the way he thinks about things is sort of unique. But he's a bit remorseful from having told his story because he misses everyone he just talked about. The novel never really comes right out and says it, but it implies that Holden is in some kind of mental hospital/facility at the end. That's why he's separated from the people he told about. Karel-- I'm kind of glad to know you'd translate it differently. The line as it's translated in my book is pretty unrecognizable to me. I wondered where the word "everybody" is in the Czech translation. Ollie-- The only site I know of really is www.czech-books.com. But I'm sure there are more places to get novels translated into Czech. (Does the UK Amazon have anything??) Maybe some others will know...
You are a big fan of that book General Joy. I completely missed the meaning of the sentence, but it occured to me last night that, since there was a scene in the book where he was playing baseball in a field of rye(right?), that the last sentence might mean 'Pay attention or you'll miss the fly balls that are hit your way.' That completely misses the mark too. :shock: :evil:
Ok, read synopsis on wikipedia. The main character never played baseball in a field of rye. Just a very poor assumption on my part.
I think the keyword is "Nikdy nikomu o nikom nic ..." 8) nikdo (dat. nikomu) means nobody, the opposite of everybody in the czech version, ther is a lot of negations instead of one in english (so called "double negation") nikdy = never nikomu = to nobody nic = nothing o nikom = about nobody
Thanks, Karel, for the explanation. I actually meant the "everybody" in the last part of the sentence ("you start missing everybody"). But you said that you would translate that part as more so meaning "you start to miss him" than "everybody." Once you said that, I didn't feel so bad for not seeing where the word "everybody" could be in the phrase. You weren't too far off, Scrimshaw. Holden does imagine being in a field of rye, but he envisions himself catching children if they wander too close to the edge of the cliff. :wink:
Karel wrote Of course, the translation depends on the context, I don't have it... 8) This, I think, is especially true in this case. Knowing what the main character was thinking when he said the line would really help with knowing what he meant. It is hard to grasp the meaning of sentence out of context. That character had quite an imagination, catching children as they fall off a cliff.
I would have understood the phrase to mean "don't gossip about people or they'll abandon you" (and you'll miss them because they won't want to be around you anymore)
