Događalo mi se ponekad da baš moram da prevedem nešto sa srpskog na engleski, i udarim glavom o zid, kako i priliči prevodiocu. Jedan od tih zidova su reči koje ama nikako ne postoje u engleskom, nego mora okolo. Ako umete da pročitate ovaj tekst, onda vam objašnjenje tih reči ne treba - ali treba za anglofone čitaoce, a i da malo proverite jesam li ih valjano objasnio. Oko nekih sam konsultovao te anglofonce, neke su tako i nestale sa spiska, a oko većine pomoći nema.
| Reč koje nema | opisni prevod na engleski |
|---|---|
| beskućnik | Could be "homeless" but that's an adjective. Need a noun. |
| bezumlje | Literally, "mindlessness", but that has the wrong meaning. Bezumlje is total lack of mind, consciousness and reason; madness. Cf Russian "bezumniy" - build a noun from that adjective and that may be it. |
| bolesnik | An ill person, specially when hospitalized or in bed. Not necessarily a patient - that would require a doctor or someone whose patient it would be, and would assume some treatment going on. "Bolesnik" is literally an illee, no more and no less. |
| donekle | up to a certain degree, up to a certain point/place/time |
| dopisati | add to the writing; write more (letters, words, lines) to the existing text. Applies also when one adds to text of another - annotates, scribbles below a paragraph, adds a comment on the margin etc. |
| doček | awaital, reception; expectational party; feast while waiting for, opposite of farewell party. Two most frequent kinds are "doček nove godine" - celebration of awaital of new year, and "svečani doček gosta" - solemn reception of a guest, which happens at debarcation, usually at the airport or railway station. |
| inostranstvo | What is abroad. Set of all the foreign countries as a whole. |
| izuti se | to unshoe (oneself), also means unsock - relieve (oneself) of any footwear. Opposite of "obuti se" |
| kajmak | Thing is regional - see kajmak on Wikipedia. There's no word in English. |
| kakav | what kind of, like what, what like |
| kuda | "where to" as a single word. |
| kvar | A malfunction which wasn't there before. An artifact can malfunction from the beginning, but that's not a kvar; it has to have functioned fine first and then to "pokvariti se" (see below) to develop a kvar. |
| kvašenica | bread fried in a batter, but the batter is just beaten eggs, so it isn't "breaded bread", it's more like "egged bread" |
| kvočka | setting hen - but only of the chicken persuasion, not of any other bird. |
| limar | Sheet metal worker. If anyone knows a shorter one, let me know. |
| najesti se | Literally, "eat (oneself) on". Eat (oneself) up, eat enough, have eaten enough, have eaten to the full. The very frequent phrase is "baš sam se dobro najeo" - "I have just eaten myself on well", equivalent to "this was quite a meal". |
| nedopečen | "Not-quite-well-done", or "not-up-roasted". Means that it should have been roasted more, roasting wasn't finished up. |
| nikakav | "No kind of" but then the "what kind of" was not the question, it was "what like" or "what", but the "what" which requires an adjective as an answer, not a noun. And this is the absolute negative answer to such a question. Something like "none of any kind". |
| nikakav | no such thing as, no kind of, none like, none of |
| obuti se | To don footwear. Any kind of shoes and/or socks, whatever makes one being not barefoot any more. |
| omogućiti | make possible |
| podatak | A piece of data. There's "data", in plural, and there's "datum" but nobody uses it. I would, but who'd understand it? |
| pokvariti | Make unfunctional. Cause to stop working. Spoil. Introduce a malfunction. |
| pokvariti se | Same as "pokvariti" but reflexive. "Pokvario se" - it developed a malfunction, it broke, it stopped working. Also, with milk or other perishable foods, when they become unedible, they "se pokvare". |
| poskupeti | to become more expensive |
| potpitanje | A subquestion. That's the additional question which helps the questioned answer the main question - as during an exam. Subquestion would work as a translation if it was understood in this manner. |
| prolaznik | A passer-by... if there was such a word. If there is, what's the plural, please? |
| promet | Throughput is the most approximate translation so far, but the word actually means all the transactions (sales and acquisitions, payments in either direction) taken as a whole. In Croatian it also means traffic; the derived adjective "prometan" is used in Serbian as well to denote a busy street. |
| prozvati | give a nickname (to) |
| call (somebody) by name | |
| do the roll call | |
| ranjenik | A wounded person, noun. Woundee? |
| rasol | Sour cabbage juice, the salty water between the heads, with all the best products of fermentation. The best hangover cure in existence. Drink cold, not too much, and stay close to the toilet - may need to run if overdone (aka overdosed). |
| razmaći | Increase distance between, move to the sides. |
| rovit | the state the yolk of not-hard boiled egg is in; can be taken to mean unfirm, shaky. |
| ručati | "to lunch" - but I haven't heard that one anywhere, and it may actually have a slang meaning now. |
| sagovornik | Interlocutor - but nobody uses that. The co-speaker, the other party in a conversation. |
| saksija | "flower pot" - but then translating "izmišlja rupu na saksiji" - "invents the flower pot hole" (which is a rough equivalent of "invents the wheel", but at a less useful level) leads to "flower pothole" association which then calls for an explanation... makes one give up in advance. |
| sebe | oneself, himself, herself, myself, anyone-self |
| sirotinja | The poor, as a singular noun, to mean them all in general. |
| sit | Sated, full, stuffed, had enough to eat, not hungry. Also, had enough (of food or enough of it all). |
| svoj | One's own, applicable to any person. Lat. suus. |
| ugasiti (se) |
Stop the fire; extinguish; turn (lights) off. As a reflexive verb, it (fire) stops, extinguishes itself, stops emiting light or flame. |
| usrati se | Literally, "to crap oneself in", i.e. to fill the pants. |
| vest | news (singular) |
| zazubice | imaginary things growing around one's teeth when one's appetite is tickled |
| zbeg | a travelling party of refugees, usually a whole village on foot. |
| zimnica | winter preserves - jam, pickles, dried meat - as a whole |
| šipak (rukom) | sign given by extending the thumb between the index and middle finger through a closed fist. Meaning "nothing to you" - the word šipak means rosehip, and this hand sign. |
| žmuriti | keep one's eyes closed |
| ćutati | keep oneself silent |