"Duża kaczka i mała ryba"

Translation: A big duck and a small fish

[PolishBagel]

Who will win? Tune in next time to find out!

[LarsGajew]

I don't think we're gonna tune in to a fair fight

[Osyrus]

Plot twist... The duck turned out to be evil and ate the fish...

[Avel704653]

I love the duolingo comments

[Sean136790]

.... walk into a bar...

[Alex608940]

When do you use wielki and when duży?

[Jellei]

"duży" just means "big" or "large".

"wielki" is a difficult word to translate. It's something between "big" and "huge" and yet none of those really seem to be good translations in my opinion. It also means "Great" like in "Alexander the Great" = "Aleksander Wielki".

[Templera]

Would you use it to add emphasis on "duży"? As in "The great big duck"? Would that be redundant or is there a different word/ending that is used to add emphasis?

[Jellei]

Well... what does "great big" mean exactly? To my Polish mind, it makes no sense. A native speaker explained to me that it basically means "very big", but it's rather childish. Well, in that case... although you can translate "a very big duck" literally as "bardzo duża kaczka", "wielka kaczka" is quite close in meaning.

[Alex4.26]

how do you know whether it is "a big duck" or "the big duck"?

[Jellei]

I'd say "context". Or we could go with "well... that's not something any Polish person thinks about", because we just don't have articles.

So when translating, you can use either, unless only one makes sense in English in the given sentence (regardless of the Polish one).