"Lo spirito è forte ma la carne è debole."
Translation:The spirit is strong but the flesh is weak.
30 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
1793
'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.
1670
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.
158
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"...
1335
I LOVE IT! God bless computer translation programmes. Always good for a laugh. Have a lingot
2477
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 ;)
1624
I knew when I saw a unit titled, "Spiritual", people couldn't resist dragging their own dogma into the conversation. This is supposed to be a discussion about language pertaining to spirituality. Not spirituality, itself. There's a time and place for everything and this isn't either. I just don't understand this compulsion people have to tell others what they should and shouldn't believe. I'm here to study language, not Christian dogma.
1624
Is this a set idiom in Italian? As mentioned, the English phrase is, "The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." It seems to me, a closer translation is, "Il spirito sta volendo, ma la carne è debole."
Of course, our English idiom is based off of the King James translation of the Bible. I wonder if the Italian translation uses, "forte"?