5 ms·
syllable count english 10 - She said goodbye too many times before latin 6 - nimium valedīxit polish 7 - Zbyt często się żegnała german
by alcover 3y ago
syllable count
english
10 - She said goodbye too many times before
latin
6 - nimium valedīxit
polish
7 - Zbyt często się żegnała
german
10 - Sie hat sich schon zu oft verabschiedet
french
11 - Elle a dit au revoir trop souvent avant
italian
12 - Ha detto addio troppe volte prima
portuguese
11 - despedira-se demasiadamente (user tail_exchange)
14 - Ela despediu-se demasiadas vezes antes (deepl)
nb: the target sentence has 'before', which is lacking in some submissions.
- self_awareness 3y agopolish 7 (8) - Zbyt często się (już) żegnała Although it's possible to drop "się" if we don't care about the response to the woman, so i.e. she could write a letter with goodbyes, not caring/not receiving the response back: 7 - Za często już żegnała
- sznio 3y agothat's more like "she's been saying goodbye too often" the "before" at the end throws me off. I don't think there's an correct tense to properly get this across in Polish. "Kiedyś żegnała się zbyt często"? "Często" also kinda applies to frequency in time, not count, so a literal "zbyt wiele razy" feels better.
- self_awareness 3y agoI feel like "she'd been saying goodbye too often" is "zbyt często żegnała", but adding "zbyt często już żegnała" is like "she'd been saying goodbye too often, but now she's fed up with saying goodbyes, and doesn't do that anymore". Of course "Kiedyś żegnała się zbyt często" is more explicit and understandable, but not as efficient for this competition :)
- puzzlingcaptcha 3y agoIt doesn't really capture the intent of the original sentence either. To convey the same idea you'd have to say something like "Za wiele razy mówiła żegnam"
- self_awareness 3y ago"Say goodbye" doesn't necessarily mean "to speak the words 'goodbye'". I'm not an English expert, but I think that waving with your hand is also "saying goodbye". And if that's true, then "żegnać" is the same as "saying goodbye".
- ajuc 3y ago"Często" sounds way more natural here than "zbyt wiele razy". Nobody says "zbyt wiele razy" :)
- erremerre 3y agoSpanish: Despidiose excesivamente. 10
- alcover 3y agoDoes this not lack the 'before then' nuance ?
- flobosg 3y ago“Despidióse excesivamente antes”?
- GonzaloQuero 3y agoIt doesn't. "Despidió" is already past tense. That said, "despidiose", while valid, is quite archaic. If it was me, I'd say "se despidió demasiado" or even "se despidió de más" Edit: Reading the meaning of the song, I'd say "dijo adios demasiadas veces", as it stays closer to the original meaning.
- jiofj 3y agoThat's too lossy, and "despidiose" is trying too hard.
- flobosg 3y ago> is trying too hard Maybe, but still a valid pronominal verb.
- grokkedit 3y agoyou can remove the `prima` from the italian version: it's implied by the use of past tense and it sounds really bad in italian. if you want to emphasize the `before`, you can use: `ha già detto addio troppe volte` instead
- tail_exchange 3y agoYou can reduce "demasiadamente" to just "demais". I realized later that I was being silly. That would be 7 syllables.
- dejj 3y agoLiteral Code Golf.
- oblio 3y agoRomanian: 11 Ea și-a luat adio de prea multe ori (înainte = before, optional). 9 Ea și-a luat adio excesiv. 8 Ea și-a luat adio prea mult.
- vladb38b 3y agoSi-a luat ramas bun deja adeseori.
- niyaven 3y agoI mean technically I would translate "nimium valedīxit" into "elle faisait trop d'adieux", which is also 6 syllables (with the advantage to keep the she). If you want to keep before, which is skipped in this latin transaction, then it would be 2 extra syllables.
- r0b1n 3y agoIf you cheat a little, you can get to similarly low numbers in German: "Zuviele Abschiede von ihr" - 8 "Ihre zuvielen Abschiede" - 8 "[Sie] verabschiedete sich zu oft" - 8-9 If you accept "trennen" ("separate") for "saying goodbye", you can do "[Sie] trennte sich zu oft" - 5-6 If you accept "[weg]gehen" (go [away]) for "saying goodbye", you can also do "[Sie] ging zu oft [weg]" - 3-5 The "Sie" (she) is optional, but leaving it out sounds hurried and informal. The literal translation also isn't very idiomatic imho, I'd rather expect to hear one of the latter ones if it was really about separations and going away, the former phrasing suggests more something of literally saying too many greetings.
- bitcurious 3y agoIf you cheat a little you’d say “she said goodbye too many times” and leave before implied in English also. But then the song wouldn’t sound as good.
- hnbad 3y agoMore like "Sie verabschiedete sich zu viele Male zuvor" (literally, "she farewelled too many times before", but acceptable to a native speaker). And no, you can't omit "sie", German is not a Romantic language and the pronoun is required even if the verb has to match it by case anyway. I'd say your examples are more than "a little" cheating. Most of these are incomprehensible or completely fail to deliver the same idea as the original. You can truncate sentences in poetry but at some point you just end up with disjointed fragments.
- hashar 3y agoThere is surely multiple alternatives for any given language, similar to Draconis compressing the latin form, in french instead of the literal: 11 - Elle a dit au revoir trop souvent avant You could replace: * "dire au revoir" by "saluer" (which used both for greeting and farewell so you get a bit of data information lost) * "trop souvent" which uses the "trop" adverbe when there is a word for it: "excessivement" Which got me: 11 - Elle salua excessivement avant Still as many syllable (4) but less words (from 8 to 4) which might be easier to read.
- bambax 3y ago> Elle salua excessivement avant That would not mean anything to a French speaker I'm afraid. "Saluer" is seldom used. It tends to mean "saying hello" or saluting someone in passing, more than "saying goodbye". Elle a dit au revoir tellement souvent would work. Better: Elle a dit adieu tellement souvent. Not the exact same meaning, but confers an undertone of dishonesty, as "adieu" should typically be said only once (it means you don't expect to see the other person ever again, except maybe in some afterlife). Even better IMHO: Elle dit adieu si souvent. Present instead of past. A little farther from the original, but shorter and with a little more punch. It now implies it's something she does all the time.
- seszett 3y agoThat doesn't really have the same meaning, and sounds very awkward though, especially because "saluer" needs an object. I'd say (considering the context, the meaning is that she "told me goodbye" too many times before): Elle m'a trop dit au revoir. That's 6 syllables (7 if you pronounce the schwa) and I think that's close enough to what Maroon 5 mean in their song. Elle m'a trop quitté could work as well, with 5 syllables. I don't think you can get shorter than that, each word here seems necessary and as small as can be, to me. If you can spare a few syllables, "déjà trop" or "trop souvent" would make these sentences much more natural.
- nicolaslegland 3y agoIn the version from Google Translate, "trop souvent" adds a notion of frequency like "too often" would, "avant" is shoehorned as a misplaced compulsory match for "before" when "too many times before" already felt like a ready-made phrase at this point. In yours, "salua" would likely pass as a greeting, while "excessivement" would rather refer to the silly moves she made. Definitely harder to read for me. I agree the "before" is the hard part to get right, I process "too many times before" as "too many times already", emphasis on reaching that number of times, given the song's context. Maybe we should treat "said […] before" as a smoothest form of "had said […]" to sing. I'd go for "Elle a tant de fois dit au revoir" (9 syllabes). Change my French mind.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- School-Cotton 3y agoI don’t think it’s meaningful to compare syllables, since not all languages take the same amount of time to say a given number of syllables. English for example is an stress-timed language, not a syllable-timed one, so the number of unstressed syllables is basically irrelevant.
- oneshtein 3y agoIn Ukrainian: 9 - «прощавалася забагато»
- tragomaskhalos 3y agoHowever, English will usually come out at or near the top in terms of "syllable efficiency" due to its high incidence of common monosyllabic words, and the feature that inflectional suffixes will often not add a syllable (e.g. dog-s, love-d).
- marcodiego 3y agoThe most natural translation in modern Portuguese is "Ela disse adeus vezes demais antes."
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ajuc 3y agoI'd skip "się" and reverse the word order. "Żegnała za często" sounds better and more poetic ;) If you want to include "before" (which Lating skipped): "Żegnała już za często"
- TheMatten 3y agoslovak 7 - Priveľa sa lúčila 8 (with "before"/"already") - Priveľa sa už lúčila