Re: help with translations

Bart Mathias wrote:
Jim Breen wrote:
Bart Mathias wrote:
Cindy wrote:

How do you say "Kuwabara, kuwabara!" in English?

まあ、"Land sakes alive!"でしょうかね。

That's 米語; not English. 8-)}

"Touch wood", or "knock on wood" travels a bit better.

GG5 also has "Heaven forbid!"

But are those really humourously quaint expressions? In 米語, the
latter is a perfectly natural expression substituting for actually
knocking on wood to avoid a bad outcome.

Rare the person who says "Land sakes alive!" or "Kuwabara, kuwabara!"
and isn't sort of kidding around.

Well, I've never heard anyone using "touch wood", or "knock on wood"
seriously. It's sort of: "Grandma won't get drunk this Christmas,
touch wood."

--
Jim Breen http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia
ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学
.

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