Re: ANNOUNCE: First longer sentence in S7

Hi!

Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...> writes:
> I didnt't analyze the whole thing, but I'm afraid I
> have to disagree about your translation of "Once upon
> a time". As I said in a former message, this is a
> conventional, frozen expression, and it doesn't really
> mean "very very long ago, yet unknown when", as you
> suggest, but "what follows is a fiction, a tale, it
> didn't really happen, but we shall pretend it did"
> (like when children play).
Hmm.  The original Icelandic has 'einu sini', which is about 'once',
yet I think it also marks fictional stories.  Therefore, I translated
in into English as 'once upon a time', which, as an idiom, would
become past+very:very+unknown+hearsay in S7.  This construction is
supposed to be just as idiomatic for starting tales.

In the close translation, I did not re-translate the idiom as an
idiom, but what its structure is, just like you did in the Russian
translation.

But I'll further think about it.  This particular story is not
marked clearly for a tale in many languages and maybe that is
the main problem.  I'd drop 'very:very' in that case, since that
would make it non-idiomatic, meaning 'once + past tense'.

> I'll try to look closer at your semantic interpretation of the
> original sentence, because I find it very interesting.
Thanks!  I'm excited when I get feadback. :-)

**Henrik