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The Daltaí Boards » Archive: 2005- » 2010 (November-December) » Archive through December 13, 2010 » Who? Whom? « Previous Next »

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Corkirish
Member
Username: Corkirish

Post Number: 278
Registered: 10-2010
Posted on Friday, December 03, 2010 - 09:27 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

I have been ruminated over the words of Lenin "kto, kogo", "who? whom?", which form the basis of his theory that politics boils down to "who does what to whom?" ie, who is the ruling class and who is the ruled class.

Who does what to whom? - I thought I asked this before here, but it is not in the archives, and may have been deleted with a previous username of mine.

Cé a dheineann cad agus cé air?

Is that right?

Cé tá in uachtar ar cé?

Cé tá in uachtar agus cé air?

Is there a proper Irish translation of "who? whom?" I think the deleted posts were before Ailín's time, and it would be interested to see what Ailín made of it.

We could do a huge circumlocution, but is there a pithy way of saying it in Irish?

Cé in uachtar agus cé ar lár?

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Aonghus
Member
Username: Aonghus

Post Number: 10833
Registered: 08-2004


Posted on Friday, December 03, 2010 - 09:31 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

They all feel awkward.

Cé, agus cé air?

Perhaps. But it still feels stilted.

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Carmanach
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Username: Carmanach

Post Number: 726
Registered: 04-2009
Posted on Friday, December 03, 2010 - 11:38 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

I can't think of anything that doesn't involve a circumlocution:

Cé atá in uachtar is cé atá in íochtar?
Cé hiad na huachtaráin is cé hiad na íochtaráin?
Cé aige a bhfuil an chumhacht agus cé air a gcuireann sé i bhfeidhm í?
Cé atá thuas is cé atá thíos?

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Corkirish
Member
Username: Corkirish

Post Number: 279
Registered: 10-2010
Posted on Friday, December 03, 2010 - 12:12 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Ailín, I think the last of these is the pithiest, rendered even pithier by converting atá into 'tá: cé tá thuas is cé tá thios?

Thanks for this, as I have wondered it le fada riamh.

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Peter
Member
Username: Peter

Post Number: 726
Registered: 01-2006


Posted on Saturday, December 04, 2010 - 06:24 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

quote:

"kto, kogo", "who? whom?"



This should be translated as

Cé bhuach? or (when embedded also) Cé bhuachfas?

This very common expression can make a sentence of its own (Кто кого?) or get embedded as in Посмотрим кто кого. The closest English equivalent is something with the Object wh-phrase in situ: Who has beaten whom? or Who will defeat whom? With the finite-verb phrase ellipsed, the temporal information is recovered from the context. This expression presupposes familiarity with the situation and the competing parties. Clearly, if one finds out who the winner is, they can infer who has lost. So, there really is no point in getting both question words translated (cé tá thuas is cé tá thios?) and so I argue that the more concise 'cé tá thuas?' is good enough.

There is a bunch of similar expressions in Russian actually, e.g. кому что or кому как, meaning 'to each his own'. The last one appears in a Runglish joke about translation department graduates as 'for whom how' :)

(Message edited by peter on December 04, 2010)

'Na trí rud is deacra a thoghadh – bean, speal agus rásúr'



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