"Jane is short and skinny."
Translation:Ioana este scundă și slabă.
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This is a mean one to have for the lesson's first question. I had no idea which words were "short and skinny," and one of the options said "Jane" while the other two said "Ioana," so at first I picked the one that said Jane since I wasn't sure if Ioana was the correct translation yet.
Why is the name 'Jane' translated to 'Ioana'? Is this a cultural thing or a Duolingo thing?
It's a Duolingo thing. Though there were times, places and people who would attempt to translate proper names, I doubt the average Romanian speaker would find that natural.
Ioana is a romanian name that roughly corresponds to the name Jane in english-speaking countries. Whether you choose to translate it this way or just stick to the original is up to you.
In this case, I think my answer was marked as wrong because I didn't translate it. That's partly why I asked. But it's not the only reason. The whole thing just feels strange to me. I mean, we have Jane, Joanne, Joanna and Johanna all with the same root and meaning. Then there's Sian (Welsh), Sheenagh, Shona and other variations (Scottish) and Siobhan (Irish)... all in use elsewhere in the UK. So the concept of 'translating' all these names from one language to another makes no sense to me at all! They are what they are and we live with the variations every day without even thinking about it!
Isn't it something to do with people and things? Scund for people and scurt for things?
Very unfair. To me, Ioana is Joanna (as in Polish and English) and I have not yet been introduced to the word for skinny, only fat.
