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Mon 17 Jan, 2005 01:18 pm
It's interesting when you try to translate things from Czech to English, you end up which should be correct, but you hardly ever come across such expressions in real English. For example, we have the right for happiness. Does it sound strange? In Czech it sounds normal, very common, but when i try to find such expression on Google, it finds like five of them, so what is wrong?
Anyway, here is a paragraph I tried to translate from Czech into English, but it sounds very weird. Do you have an idea how to polish it so it sounds natural English or it will never be natural unless it is totally rewritten?
The series is a love story, a family story and a story about looking for happiness. Apparently, nothing new. What is new is the way the story is told - the perspective on ordinary things as well as fatal events.
We have the right for happiness. The situations in which the characters find themselves, take the opposite direction very often. They have a hard time, which helps us to relate to them. How they find solution is also familiar. All of them are strong individuals. Nobody gives up. The story's background is an insurance company.
Not a lot needs changing, in my view.
First sentence fine. Then I suggest, "That is nothing new." Further on, "We have the right TO happiness, but the situations in which the characters find themselves often have the opposite effect. They have a hard time, which helps us to relate to them (or 'identify with them'). How they find solutionS is also familiar." The rest is fine.
Ewood27, thank you very much.
How about this:
Life often plays games with us.
Love is the only way how to insure love.
We all look for it.
Because whoever finds it, they don't lose. (they mean When you find love, you win).
stupid cliches, but there must be a way how to say it in natural English
oh. and the word "insure" must be used, as the series is called Insuring Happiness, it is about ppl who work at an insurance company...looking for love.
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