Thread: Articles

I'm curious. The phrase is "of number four, Privet Drive".
No word - house, building, cottage. No word - street, road, highway, alley, a dead end.
"Privet Driave" proper name. What does this mean.
Translation is impossible. How to write in Russian. "улица Привет Драйв", "Дурсли or Дёрзли".

Originally Posted by lexxalex

Translation is impossible. How to write in Russian. "улица Привет Драйв", "Дурсли or Дёрзли".

It depends on the translator's preferences, and there are different oppinions on this matter.

In fiction it's not uncommon to "translate" surnames and proper names, if they actually mean something or hint on something. There are translations of the Lord of the Rings, in which Baggins is called Торбинс, Сумкинс, and even Котомкинс. Famous Пятачок was "translated" and his character would have made less impact on children minds as "Пиглет".

In non-fiction proper names are usually transliterated as they are, without any changes, and a traditional transliteration is used if it exists, for example Thames = Темза. It's also considered a good form to add an original spelling in brackets, when possible: "Темза (Thames) - река на юге Великобритании."

Originally Posted by lexxalex

I'm curious. The phrase is "of number four, Privet Drive".
No word - house, building, cottage. No word - street, road, highway, alley, a dead end.
"Privet Driave" proper name. What does this mean.
Translation is impossible. How to write in Russian. "улица Привет Драйв", "Дурсли or Дёрзли".

of number four, Privet Drive => проживающиe в доме номер четыре по Бирючинскому проезду

Дурсли or Дёрзли => I'm inclined to say Дурсли since they serve an exaggerated example of the so-called "normal" or "simple" in a sense of stupid and narrow people, and hence Russian "дур" serves pretty well here.

Originally Posted by lexxalex

I'm curious. The phrase is "of number four, Privet Drive".
No word - house, building, cottage. No word - street, road, highway, alley, a dead end.
"Privet Driave" proper name. What does this mean.
Translation is impossible. How to write in Russian. "улица Привет Драйв", "Дурсли or Дёрзли".

"Number X" in addresses in English means "house number". Houses are almost invariably numbered consecutively along a street, so people will know it is house number 4, but they won't know what kind of house it is, single family home, block of flats, whatever. "Drive" is a word like "street", as in "Mulholland Drive", kind of like проспект. I am not entirely sure whether "Drive" implies any size in relation to "street", though. It is clearly a street intended to drive along with a car, that's all I can say for sure.

Originally Posted by bitpicker

"Number X" in addresses in English means "house number". Houses are almost invariably numbered consecutively along a street, so people will know it is house number 4, but they won't know what kind of house it is, single family home, block of flats, whatever. "Drive" is a word like "street", as in "Mulholland Drive", kind of like проспект. I am not entirely sure whether "Drive" implies any size in relation to "street", though. It is clearly a street intended to drive along with a car, that's all I can say for sure.

Drive, street, lane, way, square, avenue, boulevard, terrace, and road are all pretty much used interchangeably. Court and circle are the some of the few that seem to make sense (they are Cul-de-sac or Dead End Streets). They let you know that once you enter it, there is only one way out, the way you came in.

As for the house numbering system, usually one side of the street is even and the other side odd and they usually are consecutive. Now they don't always start with ONE. They can start in the 11000 block or whatever number and then go 11002 on the even side and 11001 on the odd.

Depending upon the area the streets might all be named for that certain area. Like all the streets might start with the letter S or B. There are also themed residential areas inside a city or town like Sherwood Forest and all the streets are named something like Nottingham Road and Robin Hood Way. So you could tell someone, "Oh, I live in Poolesville, in Sherwood, on Nottingham Road." and they would know exactly where you live. Or if they are familiar with the area you might only have to say "Oh, I live in Sherwood, off Nottingham."

In Washington, D.C., each of the 50 U.S. states has a avenue named after it (such as Pennsylvania Avenue, which runs from the Capitol to the White House). The state avenues cross diagonally through the alphabetic streets (East-West) and numbered streets (North-South) in a grid.

But Bitpicker is correct, unless you are REALLY familiar with the area... you will NOT know what type of structure is there UNLESS it has Apt, apartment, suite, office, unit, # or something else in the address to give you a clue.

I read the book a while ago, but I think it was a private two-storey detached house (with a cupboard under the stairs to the upper level).

Originally Posted by Crocodile

I read the book a while ago, but I think it was a private two-storey detached house (with a cupboard under the stairs to the upper level).

Oh, you mean the one on Privet Drive? I think Harry lives there. Rather odd little chap.

It seems to me the phrase "thank you very much" gives of irony.
I understand that Privet Drive - road crosses village and at night is well lit.
I translated the phrase correctly.
"Мистер и миссис Дурсли из дома номер 4 по Привет драйв всегда с гордостью заявляли, большое спасибо им за это, что они совершенно нормальные, не то, что некоторые."
Thanks, you helped me a lot.

Originally Posted by lexxalex

"Мистер и миссис Дурсли из дома номер 4 по Привет драйв всегда с гордостью заявляли, большое спасибо им за это, что они совершенно нормальные, не то, что некоторые."

I'm inclined to translate the "thank you very much" part somewhat closer to the original:

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

=> Мистер и миссис Дурсли из дома номер четыре по Бирючинскому проезду всегда гордились своей замечательно нормальной жизнью, на том и спасибо.

I do not agree with "Бирючный проезд". Бирюк that's ascetic, he leads a lonely life, boring. There's not a wilderness.

I think "и на том спасибо" does not fit here at all. It's a "false" gratitude for something that it less than adequate, while Dursleys are sincerely proud of their way of life and are sure that this is the only way.
"Большое спасибо им за это" is not good either. Do you thank Dursleys for being normal?
Не нужно это дословно переводить, ерунда получается.

I do not agree with "Бирючный проезд". Бирюк that's ascetic, he leads a lonely life, boring. There's not a wilderness.

It's from "бирючина" ("privet", a plant), but I agree that 99% don't know of this plant. I also wondered why they translated "Privet" as "бирюк" until I checked 'privet' in the dictionary.

Бирючина колючая, может перевести это как "Колючий проезд" или каким-нибудь другим производным от слова "колючки"?

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

I think "и на том спасибо" does not fit here at all. It's a "false" gratitude for something that it less than adequate, while Dursleys are sincerely proud of their way of life and are sure that this is the only way.

You're right, it's probably not that good. I think, however, there is an adequate equivalent in Russian, but it eludes me. My first guess was: "уж спасибо" which I think was the closest in the emotion of the original, but it didn't fit well into the whole structure. What can I say, the humanities is not my forte, really. What's your take on that?

I think, however, there is an adequate equivalent in Russian, but it eludes me. My first guess was: "уж спасибо" which I think was the closest in the emotion of the original, but it didn't fit well into the whole structure.

Согласна. Наверняка есть хорошее выражение, нужно его просто найти. "Уж спасибо" выражает подходящие эмоции, как бы его еще понатуральнее вписать сюда?
Свой вариант я на предыдущей странице предложила. Something along the lines "Дурсли с гордостью заявляли, что уж они-то, слава богу, совершенно нормальные"...

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

Something along the lines "Дурсли с гордостью заявляли, что уж они-то, слава богу, совершенно нормальные"...

Yes, that is not bad at all. It's just that "thank you very much" sounds to me something like "if you say that being 'normal' is not just enough, that would definitely be wrong, but we would formally nod along."

Help my! what does it matter?
1. little - не много, маленький
2. a little - (?)
3. firm - фирма
4. a firm -(?)

As for little, the difference is this: if you say that I helped you a little, then what I said was useful, but did not completely solve the problem. If you say that I helped you little, then I did not help you enough, you would like me to help you more. In so far I would say that "a little" = немного, "little" = недостаточно.

"Little" as an adjective means малый, маленький and various others. Whether it then has an article or not depends on the grammatical role the noun it belongs to fulfils.

"Little" in the dictionary: little : Englisch » Russisch : PONS.eu

"Firm" as an adjective means a lot of different things: firm : Englisch » Russisch : PONS.eu

Фирма is "firm" only as a noun. And the noun again can take articles depending on the grammatical context.

If you would not mind i would like to return to the subject of this thread - articles.
The paragraph below compasses three original sentences. As you can see from the bold words the first phrase has a determiner while the second one does not have. If it was vise versa I could think of 2 reasons to explaine this. But it is not. So I would be glad to hear your thoughts.

If within thirty days after the receipt of a party's notification of the appointment of an arbitrator the other party has not notified the first party of the arbitrator he has appointed:
(a) The first party may request the appointing authority previously designated by the parties to appoint the second arbitrator; or
(b) If no such authority has been previously designated by the parties, or if the appointing authority previously designated refuses to act or fails to appoint the arbitrator within thirty days after receipt of a party's request therefor, the first party may request the Secretary-General of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague to designate the appointing authority.

In legalese the two uses are the same, often legalese drops the articles. We had a thread about articles used or not used with the words defendant and plaintiff recently. You will not be generating this kind of text, so just be aware of this usage.

Use Google to find these phrases in other documents for more examples.

Timon,

Each lawyer has their own style of writing. You will also see this reflected in corporate publications too. At one company I worked for the marketing department spelled the company name in all capital letters but the legal side spelled it upper and lower case. And Legal always used "The" in the company name and yet marketing did not. It was a battle of wills every time a document was created.

Looking at your example, "the" is used in the 1st sentence, so it is not needed in part "b" as it is implied. It could be there. It is simply a style choice by the lawyer.

Originally Posted by rockzmom

Timon,
Looking at your example, "the" is used in the 1st sentence, so it is not needed in part "b" as it is implied. It could be there. It is simply a style choice by the lawyer.

I did not take the sentence with "the" from another text but from the same one with no article. And you can see that it is the solid paragraph. So the author's style is quite changeable

Does someone have a tip that could help distinguish a mistake from an author’s style.

P.S. Thank you rockzmom
P.S.2. Thank you chaika, that thread is mine