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There is a word used frequently in the Hebrew Bible that is four letters long ויהי that is typically translated into English using 5 words or 19 letters “and it

There is a word used frequently in the Hebrew Bible that is four letters long ויהי that is typically translated into English using 5 words or 19 letters “and it came to pass”. See, for example, the beginning of Genesis 4:3. This makes me wonder, what is the largest difference between letter count in two different languages? This example has a 4:19 ratio. Depending on what translation you go with (I think the consensus is actually the three word answer “nimium saepe valedixit”), the Latin example has a 22:38 (11:19) ratio. Of course, this is just considering alphabetic languages. If we look at SE Asian languages we will find more extreme examples. For instance, a google search led me to: “If we're going the other way, it could be "伥", which Pleco gives as the ghost of a man who fell a victim to a tiger, yet helps the tiger to devour others” https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/6ijiuw/longest_string_of_chinese_characters_to_make_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/6ijiuw/lon...

thaumasiotes 3y ago
Letter count is meaningless. You can change it by just changing the way you spell things, which was already arbitrary. (For example, there is a very real question of whether that final m in nimium is pronounced at all.) Nimium saepe valedixit is 9 syllables and, as frequently noted on the page, does not attempt to translate the entire English source text, which is 10 syllables. It was kind of surreal reading the answers, since none of them attempt to determine what the English lyric means, and it can't be considered fluent English when seen as an isolated sentence. You need to determine what it means before you try to translate it into another language. I just listened to the song (well, the first three verses, which is all of the verses) while looking at a printout of the lyrics, and I can't determine what that line in the chorus is supposed to mean. It's very strange grammar: This love has taken its toll on me She said goodbye too many times before Her heart is breaking in front of me And I have no choice 'Cause I won't say goodbye anymore The line in question, She said goodbye too many times before, stands out like a sore thumb for being preceded and followed by sentences that, unlike it, are both in the present tense. There is no indication anywhere in the song, as far as I can see, of what "before" refers to. So my instinct is to essentially write off the possibility of translating the lyric with the aphorism "garbage in, garbage out".
- irrational 3y ago
  > There is no indication anywhere in the song, as far as I can see, of what "before" refers to. Is English your native language? I’m asking because it is my native language and the entire phrase, including “before”, is clear to me. “Before” is a temporal indicator. You could replace it with another temporal indicator and the phrase would still make sense, For example, “She said goodbye too many times today”. You wouldn’t ask what the antecedent is for “today”. Same with “before”.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    Yes, English is my native language. USA, California and New Mexico. For what it's worth, I qualified for SET by scoring 710 on the SAT verbal section at age 12. > I’m asking because it is my native language and the entire phrase, including “before”, is clear to me. It is a common phenomenon for people to claim that sentences are perfectly clear to them when, objectively, those sentences do not have a meaning at all. On Language Log they occasionally discuss "Escher sentences", with the prototype example being "More people have been to France than I have". > “Before” is a temporal indicator. You could replace it with another temporal indicator and the phrase would still make sense, For example, “She said goodbye too many times today”. You wouldn’t ask what the antecedent is for “today”. Same with “before”. Except I can see what's happening with "She said goodbye too many times today." That sentence will be followed up with some explanation of the consequences of having said goodbye too many times. In the chorus, the intent might have been that the line "she said goodbye too many times before" is an explanation of the preceding line (that's how people are interpreting it here). Or the line might just have been thrown in with no rhyme or reason, completely disconnected from the rest of the song. But regardless of the intent, the line has failed to connect to the sentence before it or the sentence after it, which means that we cannot determine what it's trying to say. > You wouldn’t ask what the antecedent is for “today”. Same with “before”. Moving back to this, it's necessary to ask what exactly "before" is referring to because the question came up of whether and how it should be represented in the Latin translation. It might conceivably refer to "before now" (in which case the suggestion of Latin perfect tense is fine), "before some point identified by the context" (you'd want pluperfect, if the point was in the past, or future perfect if the point was in the future [or of course perfect if the point is "now"]), or "before some specific event" (you'd want the preposition ante, and you'd also need to mention the event).
Chris2048 3y ago
Couldn't you use "thus"?
- irrational 3y ago
  I don’t think so. The first letter means “and” and the rest is the verb “to be”. In this case, the verb is in the Qal Sequential imperfect 3rd Person Masculine Singular form. Thus doesn’t have the same connotation. Other translations are: So it happened in the course of time So it came about in the course of time And in the process of time it came to pass And it cometh to pass at the end of days

thaumasiotes 3y ago

Letter count is meaningless. You can change it by just changing the way you spell things, which was already arbitrary. (For example, there is a very real question of whether that final m in nimium is pronounced at all.) Nimium saepe valedixit is 9 syllables and, as frequently noted on the page, does not attempt to translate the entire English source text, which is 10 syllables. It was kind of surreal reading the answers, since none of them attempt to determine what the English lyric means, and it can't be considered fluent English when seen as an isolated sentence. You need to determine what it means before you try to translate it into another language. I just listened to the song (well, the first three verses, which is all of the verses) while looking at a printout of the lyrics, and I can't determine what that line in the chorus is supposed to mean. It's very strange grammar: This love has taken its toll on me She said goodbye too many times before Her heart is breaking in front of me And I have no choice 'Cause I won't say goodbye anymore The line in question, She said goodbye too many times before, stands out like a sore thumb for being preceded and followed by sentences that, unlike it, are both in the present tense. There is no indication anywhere in the song, as far as I can see, of what "before" refers to. So my instinct is to essentially write off the possibility of translating the lyric with the aphorism "garbage in, garbage out".

irrational 3y ago
> There is no indication anywhere in the song, as far as I can see, of what "before" refers to. Is English your native language? I’m asking because it is my native language and the entire phrase, including “before”, is clear to me. “Before” is a temporal indicator. You could replace it with another temporal indicator and the phrase would still make sense, For example, “She said goodbye too many times today”. You wouldn’t ask what the antecedent is for “today”. Same with “before”.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  Yes, English is my native language. USA, California and New Mexico. For what it's worth, I qualified for SET by scoring 710 on the SAT verbal section at age 12. > I’m asking because it is my native language and the entire phrase, including “before”, is clear to me. It is a common phenomenon for people to claim that sentences are perfectly clear to them when, objectively, those sentences do not have a meaning at all. On Language Log they occasionally discuss "Escher sentences", with the prototype example being "More people have been to France than I have". > “Before” is a temporal indicator. You could replace it with another temporal indicator and the phrase would still make sense, For example, “She said goodbye too many times today”. You wouldn’t ask what the antecedent is for “today”. Same with “before”. Except I can see what's happening with "She said goodbye too many times today." That sentence will be followed up with some explanation of the consequences of having said goodbye too many times. In the chorus, the intent might have been that the line "she said goodbye too many times before" is an explanation of the preceding line (that's how people are interpreting it here). Or the line might just have been thrown in with no rhyme or reason, completely disconnected from the rest of the song. But regardless of the intent, the line has failed to connect to the sentence before it or the sentence after it, which means that we cannot determine what it's trying to say. > You wouldn’t ask what the antecedent is for “today”. Same with “before”. Moving back to this, it's necessary to ask what exactly "before" is referring to because the question came up of whether and how it should be represented in the Latin translation. It might conceivably refer to "before now" (in which case the suggestion of Latin perfect tense is fine), "before some point identified by the context" (you'd want pluperfect, if the point was in the past, or future perfect if the point was in the future [or of course perfect if the point is "now"]), or "before some specific event" (you'd want the preposition ante, and you'd also need to mention the event).

Chris2048 3y ago

Couldn't you use "thus"?

irrational 3y ago
I don’t think so. The first letter means “and” and the rest is the verb “to be”. In this case, the verb is in the Qal Sequential imperfect 3rd Person Masculine Singular form. Thus doesn’t have the same connotation. Other translations are: So it happened in the course of time So it came about in the course of time And in the process of time it came to pass And it cometh to pass at the end of days