Rejecting, of course, the myth of formal equivalence in favor of some notion of dynamic equivalence in terms of translation, I must share two humorous expressions from Turkey of which I've been recently apprised. Can you guess what they mean?
1) Should you be tempted to be satisfied with appearances, or prone to take things at face value, let me remind you that "not every bearded man is your father."
2) I'm sorry, I can see that I've just offended you, though that was not my intention. Here I am trying to back track out of it, but it's only making things worse. I should just stop while I'm ahead, and own up to the fact that I seem to be "stepping sideways on my penis"
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M'kay y'all, the phrase in quotes is the Turkish expression, the rest is just context I made up to give you a clue. Lemme see your best guesses. They do translate (again, roughly) into expressions in English. Prize for the winner.
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4 comments:
Dude, what!?
I truly wish I was competent or astute enough to comment here. I keep coming back and biting off small pieces and losing them on the way back to my own place. But the Turkish seem to be really good at saying things I understand but can't define.
K,
Re: this site. You're losing the pieces you bite off b/c they are as good as thin air. All farce, smoke and mirrors.
Re: the Turks. This was my first encounter (as far as I can recall) with the wisdom of the Turks, but yes, you are right. I think it has something to do with that switch from Constantinople to Istanbul, but not a full switch, and maybe back again, and reverse and redone and flipped and re-traversed. All that subversion of identity, that play of signs, must have made them masters of nuance. But, hey, I say, go ahead and hazard a definition; it's part of the fun. Plus, who's to say I have the right translation, yours might be better!
I think that you should ... CITE YOUR SOURCES, AKA ME! But I won't ruin your riddling, riddle-master of headasophilus.
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