"Không có lửa làm sao có khói."

Translation: There is no smoke without fire.

[NhanTran1]

I think the proper translation for this is "Without fire how can there be smoke" since "làm sao" / how is present

[ingochris]

This should be a question: "There is no fire, how can there be smoke?"

[JCMcGee]

Would this idiom be understood the same way in Vietnam?

[StewartMM]

Google has this "No fire, no smoke". This is almost idiomatic and shouldn't be here but should be in an idioms/phrases section. I miss it EVERY TIME I make a pass through this module just because I can't remember what the exact English wording DL accepts, even though I know what concept is being implied.

Or you could allow the literal translation of Google. Also 'No have fire, how have smoke?", the most literal translation, gives more indication of the meaning.

[StewartMM]

Mods--could you accept:

"Without fire how to have smoke?"

Because I can't remember the English wording accepted, even though I understand the meaning, and the literal translation is the best I can do. The Vietnamese sentence has 'fire' before 'smoke', yet if I say, say "If there is no fire, there is no smoke" I'll probably be marked wrong. The object of the course should not be to zap students for failing to remember an arbitrary English rendering.