"Asidi ni kali"
Translation:Acid is sour
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All acid is not strong, which was an alternate meaning presented. The acid - referring to a particular acid, say, sulfuric acid, should be accepted. Reported/
I don't see why referring to a particular acid should be accepted if it's not in the original sentence. It's generalized in the Swahili sentence and should remain so in the translated sentence
Swahili, like Russian, Turkish, and several other languages, doesn't have articles. Almost any time a noun is presented, a/ an and the should both be accepted. As well as no article as long as it is not required grammatically in the English sentence. So in this instance (using sour instead of strong) Acid is sour. The acid is sour. An acid is sour. All three should be accepted. The Swahili sentence doesn't (and really can't, due to the language structure) indicate whether the word is generalized or not.
I agree. The lack of articles is ambiguous. I don't think naming a specific acid is correct. Even if you interpret it as 'the acid', it's still too generalised to give your own context
I'm guessing that Klgregonis didn't actually intend for "sulfuric" to be part of the accepted translation but was just using that as an example. I think s/he meant that it should accept "the acid" as well.
You're correct. - I was trying to indicate that the acid should be accepted. I don't know what sulfuric acid would be in Swahili, but I certainly wouldn't add the word in a translation.
Kali is a hard word to translate. If it's a knife, it means sharp. If it's the sun, it means hot/fierce. If a person is being kali, we might say short/sharp/fierce/mean/rough. So this is by nature a difficult sentence to translate.