"En berättelse om två städer"
Translation:A story about two cities
34 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Indeed! Did you submit that and was it accepted? I was tempted to do so, but did not want to be marked wrong, depending on how strictly it is marked.
I don't remember, but I think I did. The course creators have included many literal references in the course, so I am (almost) sure that this one is accepted :).
It seems that they often give only one solution under 'hover'; sometimes they accept other solutions, sometimes not. I imagine this is because this version is still in 'beta'.
I have a feeling that the moderators cannot influence what is displayed when you hover over a word.
We create the hints 'per word'. We can't prevent a hint from being shown in a specific place: if there's a hint on a literal word, it will be shown on that literal word. Ren gets 'clean' and 'reindeer' everywhere.
We want to have as few hints as possible, so we don't want to add all possible synonyms as hints, that would just clutter the system and make it more complicated for users. This is why we didn't add the hint tale on berättelse: story is enough.
I wrote this specific sentence and I know I put the novel title as an accepted answer from the beginning, but not as the 'best' answer. It shouldn't be: we want the simplest and most straightforward translation possible for the main translation, especially since it is always used for translating back into Swedish again.
I am Swedish, so it wasn't much of an exercise in the first place :). Anyway, I just learnt a new English word, caveat. Thank you.
And just a heads up: caveat is another word with a strange pronunciation: it's spoken as 'kaviat' would be in Swedish, not 'kavit'. I wish we used the French tréma in more places, like in the words naïve and noël, where the double dots above the vowel indicate the start of a second syllable where it would normally be pronounced as one.
@Matt Nice! I didn't know diaeresis was the word for that. I might start using it more just to confuse people.
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@Mark: English does have the diaeresis, and a number of American journals, particularly The New Yorker, use it regularly. I agree, though, that I'd love to see its use become regular.
Maybe so. Anyways, I tried the 'A tale of two cities' and it worked. Caveat: responding to answers here when one is part way through the exercise seems to set you back to the beginning of that exercise. Ugggh!
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Yes, "caveat" is Latin:
Let a person beware. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/caveat
Diaeresis is Greek:
diairesis ‘separation’, from diairein ‘take apart’, from dia ‘apart’ + hairein ‘take’.. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/diaeresis
You are much more educated than I! I just thought about this: http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/hmwikia/images/b/b1/Harvest_Moon_The_Tale_of_Two_Towns_Boxart.jpg
berättelse > a story, a narrative, an account
historia > 1. history; 2. A story, plot (of a work of fiction); 3. A joke or anecdote; 4. An event, incident or affair.
Source: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/berättelse#Swedish
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/historia#Swedish
En saga is a fairytale, en berättelse is just any story told by mouth, I think.
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countvlad, instead of using the back arrow, just close the discussion using the X on top. That way you don't have to restart the exercise. Perhaps this would be a good place to unearth another problem, though: when one clicks on a link in a comment (and is transferred to another page) there's no way of returning to where one was in the excercise. Is there a way to sort that one out?
If I want to go to such a link, I right click on it and select "open link in new tab".
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Yes, that what I also do - when I remember. Problem is, sometimes you just click without thinking about it, and then it's all gone.
Thanks for the suggestion. If I am looking for other things, I have several tabs already open in my tabs bar; I can switch back and forth. That is probably similar to using right-click, I think.
oooh, that works? I always ctr+click, which usually also opens a new tab - just not in this case.
Middle-click also usually works, if you don't have a deficient mouse that lacks the middle button.
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This is a very interesting exercise indeed. First, as a translation from Swedish to English, the translator ought to recognize the Dickens novel, and other translations should be rejected as misleading (this may sound a bit harsh, but otherwise the reader of the translated text does not know what book to look for). Then, going from English to Swedish the things get more interesting: the book was apparently translated with two different titles, a 19th century translation "Historia om två städer", and then a 20th century translation "En berättelse om två städer" (I found out this by searching a site of Swedish antiquarian book dealers), and thus we have two acceptable alternatives. So, definitely a good exercise in the cultural aspects of translation.
I do agree that the title of the novel needs to be accepted (and it is), but other variations should also be accepted. It doesn't have to refer to the novel, after all, and a lot of readers will not be acquainted with Dickens.