Translation - Η αγάπη είναι καθυστερημένη. (Grieks)

Question: "Love is retarded" means that love is ... mentally challenged? It is translated in Greek as "Love is late" but no amount of head scratching helps. I mean it IS possible to mean that, it just seems an odd choice of a participle.

CC: ahikamr Chantal dramati IanMegill2 ittaihen kafetzou samanthalee Tantine Una Smith

I don't think it means "late" - I think it means "stupid".

Maybe it is a joke? "retarded" can mean both late and stupid.

Probably really means retarded. Love is blind as well. Probably along the same lines.

David, when you say, "Probably really means retarded," it doesn't help the non-native speakers. They want to know which meaning of retarded it is.

irini, "retarded" is a word often used by children in North America to mean "stupid". This seems to me to be the most reasonable interpretation here.

Just to let you know - the Hebrew translation says: Love is stupid. But then again, the Hebrew translator can't know for sure.

Yup, love is sure crazy all right -- that's what makes it so Wonderful...

OHMIGOD, Ian - you're a hopeless romantic!

Thank you all so much! I think I found the perfect translation in Greek. Η αγάπη είναι καθυστερημένη. Kafetzoy, Mideia what do you think?

I don't think that's correct, irini. It doesn't mean it's delayed - it means it's stupid. Sorry, if I didn't make that clear.

I guess you've been reading the poems on my website...

Nope - just your post above. I'm a pragmatist myself, so I'm afraid it would not be, shall we say, my cup o' tea ...

Aw shucks, ya dont know whatcher missin...What's life without gettin yer heart broken every few years?

Well, I suppose there may be other ways of having a good time...

Roget's New Millenium Thesaurus gives some synonyms for retards as being: backward, birdbrained, defective, dim, dim-witted, dopey, dull, dumbbell, dumbo, dumdum, dummy, exceptional, feeble-minded, gorked, half-witted, held back, imbecile, lamebrained, mentally defective, moronic, numbskull, opaque, pinhead, retardo, sappy, simple, simple-minded, slow, slow-witted, stupid, subnormal, touched, underachieving, weak, yo-yo.

But I did notice that "exceptional" can be used in place of retarded. So you could say "love is exceptional".

NO YOU CANNOT, dramati! That's totally not the meaning here. I don't know if you're messing around or what, but please try not to mislead people. When they say "exceptional" in this list they mean that euphemism that's used for mentally handicapped people sometimes.

Well, maybe another would be "love is lamebrained?" To say love is retarded is really not it either...certainly not politically correct because of a whole spectrum of metally challenged people who have objected to that particular word "retarded". It would also not be in keeping with the general flow of the words to say that love is "mentally challenged" either...so a careful choice of a proper synonym would be in order here. Words can hurt as much as anything we can hurl at a person.

So why not use the Greek: "translated in Greek as "Love is late" to make it Love is always late or love always comes late.

Η αγάπη είναι καθυστερημένη.I agree with that translation,it can cover both meanings, even though it goes more for stupid. And honestly I can't imagine why sb used retarded to caracterize love (I mean as stupid).So let's leave it that way.

dramati, I'd really appreciate it if you'd stay out of this discussion. You're only confusing the issue. The source text is the English, so there's no point in discussing alternative words for the English adjective "retarded".

I have explained the word completely above in my 26 January 2008 22:20 post.

The word does NOT mean "late" in this context AT ALL.