"Η νταλίκα περνάει τα διόδια."
Translation:The truck goes through the tolls.
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OK, that's a really weird cognate but a talika is a horse drawn carriage in Thracian dialect of Turkish. However, that's not a word in standard Turkish.
Does the same word have a Bulgarian cognate? Weird Thracian-only vocabulary in Turkish generally tends to have Bulgarian roots.
I've added "is passing" as well as "'s passing" to the 130 variations we have for this sentence. But let's keep in mind that we are teaching Greek and it might not always be possible to cater to everyone's personal preference for expression as long as the main idea is conveyed.
I understand. The problem in fact is not the Greek, but the English translations which we are asked to write. The Greek language, exactly as the Italian, is much more free and with so many more possible variants than English. It's really difficult to put all that in a computer program.
No, the problem is prevalent in many translations. We very often do not have exact equivalents of the source language and have to resort to paraphrasing in which case the translation may seem odd since it is not a word for word translation. That's the reason we add as many variations of the translations as possible.
Truck is, I believe, an American version of lorry.What is the difference between «φορτηγό» and « νταλίκα»?
A Νταλίκα is much bigger we would call it a trailer truck a φορτηγό is a "truck" or "lorry". Try googling each word and checking the images.
Even the stones know that, Greek journalists are "experts" in everything, only they don't know how to speak Greek. So they have imposed on the citizens some expressions that drive the specialists of various disciplines mad. The good knowledge of the Greek language is why the presenters of the 8pm news reports are so overpaid.
All vehicles intended to carry loads of up to 3.5 tonnes are called "ημιφορτηγά", all larger are called "φορτηγά". If the truck is a combination of vehicles there are two groups, "επικαθήμενα" and "συρόμενα". The part of the combination that doesn't have an engine is called a "νταλίκα". But a "νταλίκα" is also the platform where the farmer loads his tools behind his tractor to get to the field. A "νταλίκα" is also the platform where we load our boat when we go to sea by car.
As you can see from the above, it is more appropriate to say "το φορτηγό" or το βαρύ φορτηγό" than to say "η νταλίκα".
Your friend Kleanthes
This is so well explained that I'm bookmarking it to use later...with your permission. Thank you.
Kleanthes insights involving linguistic issues as well as regulation indeed are worth diffusion! May I suggest, jaye16, that issues about translation are very tricky, and that David Bellos's "Le Poisson et le bananier" (French translation of his "Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything") which he deems as relevant as the original, is a book you should recommend to any duolingo alumnus and collaborator? (As a former general linguist, publisher, I enjoyed a lot David Bellos, when I discovered his work — somewhat too late!)
Thank you as a translator myself I can use all the help I can get. This sounds like something I'll get good use out of and enjoy at the same time.
Just watched a tiny video and am convinced this is a "must-have".
Yes, φορτηγό is a more generic term for trucks/lorries that includes smaller vehicles, while νταλίκες are (big) trailer trucks, as jaye explains above (also known as tractor trucks, semi-trailer trucks).
- 1954
But "the semi passes the tolls" was rejected today in a web strengthening review exercise.
"to cross" means to go from one side to the other as in "cross a street" "cross a river". It doesn't work for tolls.
The truth is that your proposal seems reasonable, but I have never heard of it anywhere in Greece. Not the drivers, not the traffic wardens, not the tollmen.