Because it feels like an important distinction

[tcepsa]

Was talking with a friend today about language and translation, and the trickiness that comes with it, because you've got both what the individual words mean, and then what the speaker actually means when they say something. For example, I can say that the phrase "chotto mate" in Japanese means "wait a sec" in English. But it doesn't actually mean "wait a sec." What it really means is the same thing that a person means when they say "wait a sec."

Perhaps this is more of an English-specific problem. The problem is that we often don't mean what we say--by which I mean that what we say can have several different meanings, the literal one of which is often not the one that we mean.

~grin~ Or maybe this is just me being mean-spirited...

Comments

[museclio]

Idioms are always hard. You have to decide between literal meaning and functional meaning.

Literally translating pendejo is silly, it effectivly means asshole.

A literal translation of puta is whore... a functional transliteration is almost impossible, as there is no way to convey the clurtural meaning of calling a woman a whore in a culture where it not only reflects on her but on her family, and has a much stronger feel, but I'd use something like cunt to convey the insultingness.