"Mal sehen, was da drin ist."
Translation:Let's see what is in there.
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It's freely translated as "Let's see..." or "Let's have a look...". If it stands alone, for example as a reply to a question, it can also mean "We will see": Gehen wir morgen aus? - Mal sehen.
(Are we going out tomorrow? - We will see.)
Or I suppose you can translate it here more literally as "(It is) time to see..." :)
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I translated it as "Time to see what is in there" and it told me that I was wrong, but I think that literal translation makes sense in English.
I'm not sure that is true. Mal means time in the sense of an occurance, not in the sense of 'it is time'. That would be Zeit. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure 'mal' doesn't mean what you think it means.
I feel like thinking of "mal" as "once" or "a single time" is helpful for me in understanding its meaning in this example. I takes my brain from something specific and intentional where it's used with a specific number, e.g. "drei mal / three times" to something more casual "mal / a time". As in, "yeah, I guess that's worth a single look at what's inside". It works for me in the other ways I've heard "mal" explained as a softener, or lending a bit more politeness to a command, because it feels like it's more an optional activity than an must-do. I don't actually know if that's correct, it's more just a mnemonic device than anything else.
"darin" is a higher level of speech, "drin" (or here: "da drin" = "in there") is a colloquial short form
I wish I could :(
I'll try to remmember the next time this sentence comes up.
does mal work as a general suggestion word for things other than sehen. mal gehen? mal bestellen? mal versuchen's nochmal?
Mal Sehen seems cognate to the English "Time to see"... as in, "Time to see what's in the box" etc.
Again, I think 'mal' means 'time' only in the sense of an occurance, as in "you can go down the slide 2 more times", NOT in the sense of 'then it's time to go home'. That would be Zeit. Just because we use the word 'time' to mean several different concepts in English, doesn't mean every other language does the same.
honestly, 'inside there' is kind of clumsy too, but probably a correct translation... unless it needs 'inside of there'. The best is probably the suggested one. Though, I would probably just say "Let's see what's inside" and leave the 'there' implied.
Out of curiosity, any idea why 'Check what is in there' is accepted but not 'See what is in there'?
The meanings are slightly different - "check" seems to imply previous knowledge (or at least a guess) of what is inside before you look, whereas "look" has no such connotations.
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Mal has another meaning distinct from time. It can be used as a modal particle to imply a more polite or softer tone to a sentence. Used this way, it has no direct translation into English, because English has no modal particles.
An easier to understand example of how mal can be used this way is, "Du musst mal deine Mutter anrufen." Here "mal" conveys the difference between telling someone to call their mother and urging them to call their mother.
I was tempted to write "See once" - which is probably fairly literal. I have a book written in a manner that gives the illusion that the people are speaking in Low German, although it is written in English, and that is an occasionally used expression.
IMHO ... Idioms need to be separated from general lessons ... they cause a lot of confusion and maintain an arrogance because many learner will invariably get them wrong because they try to literally translate the sentence. In separate sections, the learner is notified ahead that the translation will not be literal.