• nottheengineer@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    ich_iel is the worst place to learn german, the running gag is to translate stuff from english literally while actively ignoring the context.

    • WarmSoda
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      1 year ago

      That honestly sounds like it would be hilarious.
      Does it translate well back into English enough to get the joke?

      • Instantnudeln@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Yes, ich_iel mostly just takes English words and translates them 1:1. Doesn’t actually make sense in German, but that’s part of the joke. If you translate it back to English 1:1 again you should understand it perfectly.

        As a native German speaker I often had to translate ich_iel memes 1:1 to English first to understand them myself. Its basically English but in German.

        • Gork
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          1 year ago

          The English idioms must be super confusing. We have some odd ones like “chop a tree down” followed immediately be “chop a tree up”.

          • nottheengineer@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            That’s a good example. The correct way to translate “chop a tree up” would be “einen Baum kleinhacken”.

            einen = a Baum = Tree klein = small (used as in chopping it into small pieces) hacken = chop

            ich_iel would use a translation that fits the individual words, but not the context. “Up” would be translated into “hoch”, which means the direction up.