Jan 31, 2020 13:28
4 yrs ago
16 viewers *
Arabic term

كل معلومة يمكن أن تحدث فرقاً

Arabic to English Art/Literary Linguistics
Hello everyone,

I have this part of a video that I have to translate and subtitle it for my Media Translation course as a translation student.
The video is the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7yWsUX5TLY , where it's about a question that will save your life, and how we should tell the doctors everything we know from allergies to what medicines we are taking and stuff like that.

so I have this two sentences that i translated them as:

- Every piece of information could make a difference, كل معلومة يمكن أن تحدث فرقاً،

- Every piece of information could save a life, كل معلومة يمكن أن تنقذ حياة

so here if we used could we can interpret it as it may save our life, but it’s not 100% a fact that should happen; as we know our lives is between Allah’s hands, from that side I was convinced to use Could instead of Can.

But then when I asked my colleagues and other sources, they encouraged using Can instead, since it’s more general and suits the tense of the sentence.

What do you think is the best way of translating it? should I use Can or Could?

Thank you so much for your time!
Proposed translations (English)
4 Can/Could
Change log

Jan 31, 2020 13:28: changed "Kudoz queue" from "In queue" to "Public"

Jan 31, 2020 13:53: Murad AWAD changed "Term asked" from "كل معلومة يمكن أن تحدث فرقاً، كل معلومة يمكن أن تنقذ حياة،" to "كل معلومة يمكن أن تحدث فرقاً"

Jan 31, 2020 13:53: Murad AWAD changed "Vetting" from "Needs Vetting" to "Vet OK"

Proposed translations

7 hrs
Selected

Can/Could

Can: express what the speaker believes is a general truth or known fact, or a strong possibility.
Could: does not express a general truth. The speaker is only expressing a weak possibility.


--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 7 hrs (2020-01-31 21:00:40 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Every piece of information can make a difference and every very piece of information can save a life.
A general truth or known fact.
Example sentence:

It can be dangerous to cycle in the city.

It could be dangerous to cycle in the city.

Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Thank you so much for your answer, it enlightened me! "
Term search
  • All of ProZ.com
  • Term search
  • Jobs
  • Forums
  • Multiple search