It’s Raining Young Cobblers (and Other Helpful Foreign Idioms)
Lonely Planet just printed a helpful guide showing the similarities between English idioms and their foreign-language counterparts.
I was raised in a Spanish-speaking community and still love saying things such as "En boca cerrada, no entran moscas!"
Here are some of my favorites:
For "It's Raining Cats and Dogs" -- German: Es regnet schusterbuben // It’s raining young cobblers
For "Like Father, Like Son" -- Hausa, Nigeria: Barewa tayi gudu danta ya yi rarrafe // How can a gazelle’s offspring crawl when its mother is a fast runner?
For "Once Bitten, Twice Shy" -- Portuguese: Cão picado por cobra, tem medo de linguiça // A dog bitten by a snake fears sausages
For "To Beat About The Bush" -- Spanish: Emborrachar la perdiz // To get the partridge drunk
I also have some favorites that would probably violate the Code of Conduct. But do let us know if you have some good ones to add to the mix.
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Aug '10
Re: It’s Raining Young Cobblers (and Other Helpful Foreign Idioms)
You might also enjoy the Wordsworth Dictionary of Obscenity and Taboo, sadly out-of-print. It includes lots of archaic and foreign terms which would allow one to talk dirty without violating the CoC.
I especially like the Cockney rhyming slang, which allows me to to write that I think President Obama is an elephant and castle.
Jun '10
Re: It’s Raining Young Cobblers (and Other Helpful Foreign Idioms)
"Healthy as a horse" --Norwegian: frisk som en fisk // healthy as a fish.
Jun '10
Re: It’s Raining Young Cobblers (and Other Helpful Foreign Idioms)
Sort of in the same vein; when we say "kill two birds with one stone," Russians use rabbits instead. Not sure why since the Norwegian use of fish is quite obvious. I wish I could have gotten more involved in studying idioms in Russian, but unfortunately, I was having enough trouble with the basics. From what I could tell, the Russian language is a treasure trove of idioms.
And speaking of raining cats and dogs, I had Russians asking me, "Do you really say that?" They were quite amused.
Edited on Sep 28, 2011 at 9:04amMay '10
Re: It’s Raining Young Cobblers (and Other Helpful Foreign Idioms)
When my Dutch husband has a bone to pick with me, he says, "I have an apple to peel with you."
His way of saying he hit the jackpot is, "I fell with my nose in the butter."
Aug '10
Re: It’s Raining Young Cobblers (and Other Helpful Foreign Idioms)
My favourite insult of all time is from Bosnia: "May your house be live on CNN."
Edited on Sep 28, 2011 at 9:43amApr '11
Re: It’s Raining Young Cobblers (and Other Helpful Foreign Idioms)
The Swedes say, "standing in the piano" for "sticking one's foot in one's mouth."
Nov '10
Re: It’s Raining Young Cobblers (and Other Helpful Foreign Idioms)
The French have a saying: "There's lots of people on the balcony".
The translation is left as an exercise for the reader.
Jun '10
Re: It’s Raining Young Cobblers (and Other Helpful Foreign Idioms)
Nice topic idea! Unfortunately, most of the ones I know are similarly too rude to repeat.
I do have a really bizarre one for you, though. In the artificial language Esperanto, there's the phrase, "Estas Volapukaĵo." It literally translates to, "[It's/That's] a Volapük thing." The English idiomatic translation is "It's all Greek to me." Volapük is an even more obscure artificial language that predates Esperanto, so this is an internal joke expressed as an idiom, in an artificial language which is designed to avoid idiom for transparency.
Yes, I know useless things.
May '10
Re: It’s Raining Young Cobblers (and Other Helpful Foreign Idioms)
Here are some Mandarin candidates. Translation is particularly tricky there, because the character vs. alphabet nature of the language often has to use the sound to convey the translated meaning. For example, August 8 is Father's Day in China, because 8/8 is "Ba-Ba", which sounds the same as the informal affectionate term for "Daddy". Disclaimer: I don't speak or write Mandarin, my personal correspondent does:
一箭雙鵰： shoot two birds with one arrow >>>>>>kill two birds with the same stone
不言而喻： it goes without saying (literally, "don't speak but still know")
種瓜得瓜，種豆得豆：if you sow melons you get melons, if you sow beans you get beans>>>>> you reap what you sow
Nov '10
Re: It’s Raining Young Cobblers (and Other Helpful Foreign Idioms)
Cantonese: 鄉薑冇辣 the village ginger isn't spicy. More or less equivalent to "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." But I always thought it had a somewhat, er, spicier connotation. Cantonese has a lot of expressions too colorful for the Ricochet COC.
Sep '11
Re: It’s Raining Young Cobblers (and Other Helpful Foreign Idioms)
katievs, does your husband use "weet ik veel"? Directly translated it's "I know a lot." It's idiomatic use is much like "what do I know" or "I have no idea."
May '10
Re: It’s Raining Young Cobblers (and Other Helpful Foreign Idioms)
Here are a couple more.
1) The slang term in Taiwan for "gay", as in erotic preference, is 同志 - which is also the word for "comrade." My American-born China correspondent once called her language study partner "Comrade Liu!", because he was wearing a hat that made him look like a young Zhou Enlai. He got desperately embarrassed and denied it, telling her not to say such words out loud.
2) My correspondent's favorite is 騎虎難下 - "when you're riding a tiger, it's difficult to get off"- in other words, like Obama and class warfare, you are irrevocably committed.
3) The one that always gets foreigners in trouble is if someone talks about 吃你的豆腐 - which refers to "eating your tofu", slang for sexual harrassment, e.g., either flirting too much or inappropriate touching, etc.
Feb '11
Re: It’s Raining Young Cobblers (and Other Helpful Foreign Idioms)
In a similar vein, do you ever look at sign language in the Telegraph? Often amusing.