Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 April 30

= April 30 =

translation Italian-English
What is the English for "Ad avercene in Italia persone come te"? —Stephen (talk) 00:47, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure its "For getting together with Italian people like you..." Avercene gives google translate fits, but "averci" means "joining" or something like that.  I don't know a lick of italian, but I can use Google Translate, and that's my best attempt.  The rest of it is pretty plain; I speak passable French and the rest of it seems close enough to French to seem like Google Translate gets the rest right.  -- Jayron 32 03:12, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I think averci is only subtly different from avere, and I wouldn't know how to define the subtlety. Se ti scappa un sorriso, ti si ferma sul viso, quell'allegra tristezza che c'hai &mdash; a lyric from Francesco De Gregori.  "That cheerful sadness that you have", but maybe it's a more concrete sort of "having", something that you have in a particular time and place?  Maybe?  It's a nuance; it's hard to nail it down.
 * Anyway, it's hard to be sure without the context, but I'll lay plenty of seven to five that the phrase is ironic &mdash; "too bad we don't have people like you in Italy", but really meaning, good thing we don't. --Trovatore (talk) 03:19, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * That's why machine translations coupled with non-native speakers screw things up horribly; idiom is totally lost in those cases (in this case my attempts at translating through a combination of Google Translate and second hand through French missed the idiomatic meaning of the phrase). -- Jayron 32 03:40, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Just to nerd out a little more, the ne in avercene is a partitive pronoun, here used pleonastically to refer to persone come te. The ci changes to ce when followed by another pronoun.  Most likely ci is being used in the sense of "there", but it's also conceivable that it could be intended in the sense of "for us". --Trovatore (talk) 21:40, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * My knowledge of Italian is also zero, but how could google be so dumb as to translate in Italia as "Italian"?  I would guess that the word for that would be italiano or something similar. 92.23.52.169 (talk) 14:24, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, it could, in that particular context, be the Italian idiomatic way of saying "Italian". Those who admit to knowing nothing should not be judging or guessing in a place like this, where only references have value.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  00:05, 2 May 2016 (UTC)


 * It seems to be only part of a sentence "...that we have some people like you in Italy". Is there any more context, Stephen? --15:43, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
 * That was initially my feeling as well, but no, there is no more context. —Stephen (talk) 09:24, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The query originates from Romanophile, who may be able to fill in more details. 92.23.52.169 (talk) 11:11, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Question about brand translations
Why many companies never translate their company and product names? Example my iPhone in Chinese but many English words like App Store, even Apple never translate to 苹果公司 (that most Chinese call Apple) and iPhone also never translate. Makes harder for Chinese to use the product. Same for Facebook Chinese version. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.66.136.117 (talk) 04:55, 30 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Proper nouns are given names, so to "translate" them is rather meaningless. An apple is a fruit; Apple Inc. is what someone has decided to call that company, regardless of where it is trading. In any case, many proper nouns, such as Google and Snickers, have no "equivalent" in other languages. Some brands are presented under different names in different countries, but that is for marketing purposes, they are rarely literal translations.--Shantavira|feed me 08:16, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It's simply a branding choice. Keeping a brand foreign may have certain cachet in the destination market, as Apple appears to have decided - there may also be an element of avoiding confusion with the fruit, which Shantavira pointed out (you can't capitalise in Chinese to differentiate between common and proper nouns). By contrast, Google was happy to translate itself as 谷歌 and Snickers has translated itself as 士力架. There are several reasons for choosing to translate: it makes the brand more accessible to average consumers in the destination market, it gives the company a degree of control over translation, and sometimes the translation itself can give added value to the brand - e.g. Coca Cola translated as 可口可樂 is a classical example of a successful translation that arguably works even better in Chinese than the original does in English.
 * I imagine Apple decided that, as an expensive high-end product in China, it is better off not being accessible to the average consumer. Most of the consumers who actually buy Apple products probably know enough English to fully understand "Apple", "iPhone" and "App Store" anyway, even if they mispronounce "App" as "Ay-Pee-Pee".
 * This has worked well for Apple, whereas clothing brand Burberry, which has also chosen to use English directly in China, faces the problem that it has also used up to three different transliterations in different official contexts, which arguably dilutes the brand. This is partly because for some official contexts in China (e.g. litigation, trade mark registration, trading licence) you do need to choose a Chinese transliteration of the company name. Presumably Apple always uses "蘋果". Even if you choose not to translate, you may be forced to translate/transliterate in some contexts and you need to take care to be consistent. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:24, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Translation from Arabic? to English
What is the meaning of 'Merhaba Habibi' in English? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sahil shrestha (talk • contribs) 04:51, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * From this it basically means "Hello, darling". Merhaba means "hello" and habibi is a term of endearment in Arabic, roughly equivalent to "darling" or "baby" or "honey" in English.  -- Jayron 32 05:23, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * More precisely, "Hello my darling" (or my dear). The final "i" in "habibi" is a possessive. --Xuxl (talk) 11:21, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The Arabic words habibi (m. sing.) and habibti (f. sing.) for "my dear" are widely used in Hebrew as a cordial, even jocular-slangy salutation, like "Mah nizzle," "Bro," "Homie," or "Sistah", rather than actual endearment. I can't say whether that's true in local Arabic usage as well. Hebrew has an equivalent word pronounced differently: havivi and havivati respectively. -- Deborahjay (talk) 16:55, 30 April 2016 (UTC)


 * &lt;grumble&gt; Merhaba Hababi has no meaning in English. &lt;/grumble&gt; —Tamfang (talk) 19:44, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Whereas, 'Merhaba, Kebabi' does, if you are in a Turkish chippy. KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( もしもし！ ) 08:28, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Language used in Minion (film)?
I saw the 3D animated film Minions but I couldn't understand the language. So which language is that? sahil shrestha (talk) 14:34, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * As Despicable Me (franchise) says, "The Minions speak a language that Coffin created by mixing gibberish with words from many languages, including French, English, Spanish and Italian. Although seemingly nonsensical, the English-sounding words are dubbed for every country, in order to make them recognizable." Deor (talk) 15:40, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Language used in Minions (film)
Duplicate moved from Entertainment desk:

Minions is a 3D animated film and the characters in this film use a weird sort of language. So which language is that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sahil shrestha (talk • contribs) 02:32, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
 * According to Minions (Despicable Me) it's "Minionese". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:03, 1 May 2016 (UTC)