A painting of me

What are your favorite culturally untranslateable phrases? ⇒

   6 December 2010, lunch time

Shima sometimes tries to translate her Persian sayings into English, with little luck.

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Comments

  1. I personally like “khordam zameen pedaram dar oomad“ literally translated to “I eat the ground, my father came out”.. which really means “I fell down and really hurt myself bad”.

    Oh and I also like “Az poshte kooh omadi?” literally translated to: “Did you come from back of the mountains?” which I think means “You’ve got no class”.

    I like “chap chap nekhah nakon“.. “don’t look left left”.. I don’t really know what that means, but I like saying.

    and this other one that when translated literally means “Putting watermelons under the persons armpits”..I think it has something to do with giving unwarranted/unnecessary compliments.

    I especially like all the Mullah Nasreddin stories which are hard to translate into english.

  2. screw learning japanese. I want to learn Afrikaan!

    haven’t laughed this hard at a computer screen since season 4 of 30 rock.

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