le compassate parole
English translation: staid expression/words of decorum
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| 17:00 Mar 14, 2020 |
| Italian to English translations [PRO] Art/Literary - General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters / Book On Explorations And Discoveries | |||||||
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|  Selected response from: Michael Korovkin Italy Local time: 17:12 | ||||||
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| Discussion entries: 6 | |
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Answers
36 mins confidence: 
Measured Explanation: Honestly, I think the adjective you used, measured, is the best you can use in this context and I can find it in many contexts for example: Measured response https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/measured You can say: to ponder words or to weight words He pondered his next words thoroughly https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ponder weigh your words https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/weigh-yo... But you'll use Only the expression 'measured words' (with 'measure' as an adjective), therefore I think what you wrote is perfect in this context. -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 38 min (2020-03-14 17:38:49 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- weigh words* https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/measured https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ponder; https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/weigh-your-words |
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2 hrs confidence:
the suitable/right/adequate words Explanation: The suitable/right/adequate words with which he greeted Livingstone in the middle of that remote village... |
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2 hrs confidence:
the understated words Explanation: An option. -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 2 hrs (2020-03-14 19:37:39 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- When Stanley came across the explorer, he uttered the now-famous understated words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” https://books.google.com/books?id=vupkAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA271&lpg=... |
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22 mins confidence:
restrained words Explanation: forse? -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 16 hrs (2020-03-15 09:36:03 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- qui "misurate", secondo me, si riferisce al fatto che le parole sono effettivamente solo quattro. Si tratta di un breve saluto, non di un discorso o testo dove le parole possono essere "misurate" nel senso di "ponderate". Penso che il suggerimento di Phil postato ieri nella discussion e ora scomparso, "laconic" sia corretto. Laconico ... Riferito al modo di parlare o di scrivere, breve, conciso (in quanto si attribuiva agli Spartani l’abitudine all’espressione sobria e sentenziosa): stile l., una risposta l.; anche di persona che si esprime concisamente, che è di solito o in singoli casi di poche parole Avv. laconicaménte, in modo laconico, concisamente, con poche e asciutte parole: parlare, rispondere laconicamente. http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/laconico/ |
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18 hrs confidence:
staid (or even stiff/prim)... pls. see: Explanation: I don't see anything "measured" or "understated" here. Quite the opposite: granted the circumstances of their meeting, such a greeting was outrageously out of place. "Understated" what? It was prim-and-proper to the point of being tongue-in-cheek. Whether Stanley intended to be flippant or simply was irrevocably stiff and repressed (wouldn't surprise me, at that period and in his social class), it's subject to further research and anyway irrelevant here. The point remains that I think there is absolutely no need to render the term clearly meaning "staid" into something that is influenced by our own – no matter how well-informed – opinion of the action under consideration. Somewhat hyperbolically, for it's not an accident report, shall we say, the text says "the vehicle went off the road". Even if you know that it was a drunken-driving episode, would you translate it "the vehicle was driven off the road by a drunk driver"? I hope not. So, albeit in a literary text here, how much interpretation may we legitimately afford in this translation? |
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