"Lo spirito è forte ma la carne è debole."
Translation:The spirit is strong but the flesh is weak.
26 Comments
'The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak' is an English idiom and should be accepted. I will report. Love the comment about spongy and bruised. I can relate to that.
369
Yes, this is the actual idiom in English, and it still isn't accepted. If one gave Duolingo's answer when working as a professional translator, it would be a signe of incompetence.
There is an old story (which I fear is far too good to be true) that this sentence was fed into an early English-to-Russian translation program. The result, literally translated back into English, was "the vodka is good but the meat is rotten"...
- 70
I remember that one. Apparently they did the same with the saying "Out of sight, out of mind" and got back "Blind and stupid".
I remember a similar one - don't know what the language was, but it come back, "the whiskey is good but the meat is spoiled." Probably from the same source. It was in the early days of electronic translations. Of course, you can still get some real howlers.
- 51
I LOVE IT! God bless computer translation programmes. Always good for a laugh. Have a lingot
I read that in a particular Chinese translation “The Grapes of Wrath” was called “The Angry Raisins.”
My last sentence on 'the tree' - ...e adesso questo è il mio destino - 'The reverse tree.' :)
- 1311
Aren't we all sinners in one way or the other? I want to lose some 5-7 kg and this sentence describes my personal attitude accurately ;)
At the time the KJV was translated, "meat" would not have meant the same as "carne." It simply meant food, and if you meant "meat" as we think of it today, it would have to be "flesh" - so, yes, "la carne" can be used for both meat and flesh.
