rachelk

Ah, so did I until I read your post above. I must have misunderstood the hes and hims and yous.

JLFS

I think my English has let me down with this post. It is unclear what I am saying.

A Spanish friend of Chulos translated a phrase and it was bad (highlighted in red).
Agoreira posted that the guys English was crap , and Chulo answered that his English is fine, and that basically she did not understand the request.

My reply to Chulo, was to say that I agree with agoreira, that his English is not good, and that she had a valid point.- I hope that makes sense to you, cos it is not easy to explain.

Cheers,

chulo

Its no good stating that after I posted the request you made.

I have no idea why you asked for the direct translation

It made no sense to either of us, but you asked and we answered.

I`m afraid the Spanish phrase you wrote, translated makes little sense in English.

The closest phrase to it would be "It never rains, but pours" my friend isn`t here right now, so I`m guessing that phrase would make no sense in Castellano. either.

JLFS

Maybe it was my fault for asking for a "direct translation" but that was the only way that I knew how to phrase the question, so my English let me down and apparently I wrote a load of nonesence.

All I wanted was for that phrase to be translated into Eglish in a grammatically correct way, nothing more, nothing less.

I said at the time that, my own translation was better, but it did not look right to me. so I asked for a better one. Henc your friends reply.

A translation should be correct in the language it is translated into, not just badly connected words.

After he took the effort to reply, I did not want to make a negative comment on this forum, after all he tried his best.
I would have let it rest (because it is not that important), if it were not for the fact that, you gave agoreira a bit of a snotty reply when she critisized your friends level of English.

Nobody is saying that he has to have a perfect level of English, but unless you are up to the job, it is best not to post, and leave the translating to someone more qualified. If not, it can cause a lot of confusion, and sometimes as in this case, bad feeling.

The translation of "it never rains but pours" is totally wrong. I dont think you understood the meaning of the original sentence.
Anyway lets not go into that, that is a whole new saga.

Cheers.

Carol&John

"It never rained that might not stop." However, in english, there isn't the double negative. So, would "It never rained that might stop" be of any help in your translation?
lol

Fortaleza

This reply on page one was the closest:

..... however I'd be inclined to clean it up a bit with:

"There's never been rain that wouldn't stop"

However, not what the OP originally asked for but by using poetic licence we could have something like:

"Even in the fiercest of storms, the rain eventually stops"

agoreira

Agree, hence my previous comment. It's absolutely pointless giving a translation that makes no sense whatsoever. It's a bit like translating something like "pero no se me van a caer los anillos" as "but on me the rings aren't going to fall" or something equally silly.

agoreira

I still think "nothing lasts forever" would do the job. It's the meaning that you are trying to convey, the word rain doesn't have to appear.

Fortaleza

I don't agree. The orignal Spanish phrase uses 'rain' to symbolise gloomy times, so its meaning is that even gloomy times have an end.

'Nothing lasts forever' can have both an optimistic and pessamistic meaning. If you are in bad times and someone comforts you by saying 'Nothing lasts forever' then yes, in this instance it can work.

But if you are enjoying a particular run of good fortune, someone may advise caution by saying 'Nothing lasts forever' and in this instance it does not work in the 'Nunca llovio que no parara' sense.

I answered JFLS in the spirit of his original request ie translate it word for word but so that it makes grammatical sense in English. He specifically said (I think) that he didn't want an English equivalent saying as I understood that he just wanted to make sense of the words in the grammatical sense. My poetic licence version was just taking it a stage further and not meant as an equivalent saying - as my suggestion is to my knowledge not a popular saying at all

Someone suggested earlier as an equivalent saying in English 'Every cloud has a silver lining' - again not perfect (because of the conotation of turning a bad situation to ones advantage) but as near as damn it as I think we're going to get.

chulo

OMG.

What a pile of rubbish.

Next time somebody asks a stupid question, I guess I`ll ignore it and move on.

JLFS

Good

Lorna at Vicenza

Sticking my nose in here and getting back on topic .... are there any words in Spanish that cannot be translated in anyway?

I translate from Italian to English and even though I might have to read a certain sentence 3 or 4 times I can always find a way to make a sentence make sense. I have to swap them around sometimes as well. I do find though that 20 pages in Italian often end up as being 17 pages in English as the Italians go all around the mulberry bushes just to say something simple like "press the red button to stop the machine."
Perhaps it's the same in Spanish. I don't know. Just curious.

chulo

Lost in translation is well known by anybody bi lingual.

Lorna at Vicenza

I am bilingual and I don't let anything get lost in my translations. I swap bits around sometimes but I make sure that the end product makes the same sense as the original.