"Ona jest niepełnosprawna."

Translation: She is disabled.

[Fedec24]

what about 'she is handicapped'

[Jellei]

Yup, works.

[EGcnM3pM]

No handicapped does not work. It would be very offensive to say this in English. In fact 'she is disabled', although used by some, is also not really acceptable. The appropriate way of putting it in English is 'she has a disability'.

[Jellei]

I see your point, and "She has a disability" is accepted, but the direct translation is still "She is disabled" and we'd prefer to keep it as the main answer. And two English native speakers from our team weighed in on this matter and decided to keep it this way. I also added "She has disabilities".

For those who strongly dislike the term "niepełnosprawna", the usage of "osoba z niepełnosprawnością/niepełnosprawnościami" (a person with a disability/disabilities) seems to become more and more common nowadays.

[babbeloergosum]

How is this word composed? It seems to have nie- (not) in the beginning, so it's literally a negation of "abled"?

[RobinB896941]

To better remember this surprisingly long word, I dissected nie-pełno-sprawn-a|y to:

• nie – not

• pełny – full(y)

• sprawny – functional, intact, mobile

Not fully functional (Ger.: nicht voll funktionsfähig), not fully intact (Ger.: lädiert) and not fully mobile all work well for me, though I'd not use them publicly in either in the UK or Germany where, as in a few other countries, the concept is a pc (political correctness) minefield...

[10 Feb 2019 13:06 UTC]

[Jellei]

not fully... fit? I can't find a good translation for 'sprawny'.

[babbeloergosum]

Thanks man for answering all my questions so quickly! Having such eager moderators makes the course even better!

[Jellei]

Thanks for your kind words :) Just to specify more: "pełno" is not a direct translation of the adverb "fully" (which would be 'w pełni' or 'całkowicie'), but this is what this part means.

[Lukjasz]

Maybe "not fully efficient"?

[Jellei]

Could be, although my first thought would be "wydajny".

[EwaPink]

I think a literal translation of not fully able is closest, although a fair bit of Polish is contextual, so the same word or a variation of it might be used in a considerably different way elsewhere.

[Jellei]

Well, a British native told me that "not fully able" wouldn't really be used in this context...