Meet false friends!
Forming / / December 19, 2019
In other languages, there are words that can be administered interpreters astray and make them texts imprecise, ambiguous or punning. In this article you will learn about the 10 most common mistakes.
Translators - the most mysterious and all-powerful people on the planet. Only they can drastically change the meaning of the replicas of heroes favorite movie or text books. Suffice it to recall translations of novels about Harry Potter, over which experimented translators as they could.
Legend has it that the publishing house "Rosman" published edition of the translation the name of the main villain of the novel Rowling's Voldemort like Lord Voldemort in order to carry out a mysterious parallel with Bulgakov's Woland.
Here are just interpreters often they go to such experiments against their will: misleading them are "false friends." What words are called false friends?
Most often it is the words that are similar in sound and writing in different languages, but have different values. For example, Aborigine in English - a native of Australia, Russian - native, native. At first glance, these words sound familiar and understandable, but in fact they can change the text beyond recognition and make the meaning of words spoken or written chaos.
Top 10 false friends with English
- AGITATOR - instigator (no agitator). The word may be translated incorrectly as "agitator" and "instigator" in a certain context it may be used as synonyms. Yet it must be remembered about the differences: "instigator" has a negative connotation.
- BEHEMOTH - monster, a giant. The value of "behemoth" is deprecated usage examples are found only in the biblical texts. Though in a computer game Heroes of Might and Magic name of one of the creatures, too, is often translated as "hippopotamus".
- BRA - bra. It would be desirable to translate this word as "bra", do not do it. Just imagine what could happen proposal.
- DIAMOND - rhombus; Diamonds, of diamonds card suit. Translators often forget about these senses of the word, using only the obvious "diamond", "diamond", not to mention the outdated "diamond."
- COLLABORATION - any cooperation. We are accustomed to thinking of the word in the sense of "aiding the enemy, the enemy."
- NOVELIST - novelist. This word is never translated as "novelist". Confusion with the values could be more because the division of literary genres in our country is different from the Western Europe. In foreign literature, no stories, just stories or novels: all the works that are on the volume, the development of the plot and the number of characters more stories are considered novels. A novel often works with multiple storylines.
- PRINCIPAL - head teacher. Sometimes the word may be confused with the word "principle» (principle) even native speakers, since words have the same pronunciation.
- PROFANE - blasphemous, obscene. This word is never used in the sense of "layman", for this there is another word - ignoramus.
- ROUTINE - the established order, the usual mode. Sometimes it can be used with a negative shade in the sense of "routine", but is never used in the sense of "stagnation, stagnation." And with a negative shade word is used infrequently, what may forget translators.
- URBANE - polite, urbane. As we would have liked to translate it as "urban, urban", it should be remembered that there is a word for this urban.
Linguists do not exclude the possibility that many of the words were once common to different languages, easy way of their development and dispersed in different languages, words have acquired different meanings or shades. False friends - is the best masterminds to create puns and linguistic puzzles. Just need to be used wisely and more often to check the meaning of words in the dictionary.
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