mon dieu, que\'se que tu vous dir?
English translation: "My God! What did you just say?" or "My God! What are you saying?"
| 16:47 May 8, 2001 |
| French to English translations [Non-PRO] Art/Literary - General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters | ||||
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|  Selected response from: Fuad Yahya | |||
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| na | Oh God,wha'kan me I you tel? |
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| na | oh god, what did you say |
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| na | "My God! What did you just say?" or "My God! What are you saying?" |
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Answers
1 hr
Oh God,wha'kan me I you tel? Explanation: Not only the character is surprised but is presented as somewhat illiterate through the presence of misspelled words. After the "mon dieu" portion, the first part seems to be be "qu'est ce que". Then things get mixed up. The character instead of coming up with "je peux vous dire" rushes to the end of the sentence and no longer knows whether to address the other party in the informal or formal form. In English we can reproduce the confusion, but we cannot use the informal/formal gimmick. This is why I propose to translate his puzzled speech with him mixing the accusative and nominative 1st person and mis-placing the object pronoun. The misspelling of "can" and "tell", as well as the slurring elision in "wha'kan" completes the language murdering rendition. Hope this linguistic chopping and banging will help you Hoffwell My long gone University years. I had a translation professor who rejoiced in giving us texts where the author had murdered the language of direct speech for a purpose |
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3 hrs
oh god, what did you say Explanation: the mon dieu could be translated a number of ways: oh god; my god, oh lord, my lord, oh lordy (if you want to get really familiar with it) etc. |
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7 hrs
"My God! What did you just say?" or "My God! What are you saying?" Explanation: I am not too particular about the tense in this context. The meaning is transparent, whichever tense is used. Fuad |
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