Translation - Danish-English - Man må satse for at vinde

This seems to me to be another way of saying "hvo intet vover, intet vinder" (a Danish proverb) which translates into the equivalent English proverb "nothing venture, nothing win"

I agree with Anita.

It looks like the saying:

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

oh, that sounds better (I think my dictionary is just getting too old!)

Hi Anita_L.. and lilian c..
hm.. I don't know about your proposal, since I thought that we shall translate it just as it is, and not how we think that the source should have been. I'm sure that you are right about that there is a "saying" like that in Danish..

but here?

Pias: I don't know...

Your translation is, literally, absolutely correct, but imagine if it were the opposite...and you have to translate a saying that exists in your language. How would you translate it?
Word by word from the original, or would you rather "adapt" it, so it could be perfectly understood by a swedish native speaker?
I mean not only the words, but the exact meaning.

I don't know...I guess you (as an expert) can make that clear to us, so next time we face a similar situation , we'll know what to do.

Hi lilian c..
You are absolutely right about that the translation shall be done in a way so it could be understood...for sure! And if a "saying" from one language can be translated to another one..yes it should be.

But (to me) here the source text doesn't sound much like the Danish "saying" Anita_L mentioned, well I can also see that the meaning is about the same..but

So if I get it right ?? we have to figure out first how the sourse was suposed to be...and NOT assume that the requester know what he/she is doing? It sounds a bit like "overdoing" to me since pallesen is a native Dane.

But..maybe I'm wrong here.

Hey, Pias...what about including in the note a comment about the existence of the saying?
something like:
there is a saying in English which represents the meaning of this sentence...."Nothing....
The requester can choose and both versions would be correct, the literal and the "interpreted" one.

PS. Please, call me just Lilly.

hm..I don't want to be stubborn or unreasonable here lilian c.. maybe you are right.

Oh.. I guess I post my message above just "about" the same time as you did. To make my message above clear..I know that I can be a bit obstinate..some times, but I do like when people argue and we can came up with good solutions!


Yes that's a good idea, to write something in the notes.
Thanks Lilly.
btw, my "real" name is just Pia, without the "s".

dramati,
hope that you don't mind?

Hello everyone.

thank you for your comments. Actually I had forgotten all about the danish saying "hvo intet vover, intet vinder" - it sounds much better than what I wrote in the first place, so I like the tranlation "nothing venture, nothing win" and "Nothing ventured, nothing gained". But which one is correct?

Thank you

(Mie) Pallesen

Hi Mie,
according to what Anita_L and Lilly wrote above, I assume that it's "Nothing ventured, nothing gained"

So..thanks Anita_L and Lilly for your helping hand here!

well, since everyone has been introduced properly now, please do also just call me Anita :-)
I think that "nothing ventured, nothing gained" is probably the most commonly used version of the proverb.... my English dictionary (Gyldendals Røde ordbøger) says "nothing venture, nothing win" BUT it´s from 1988, so it´s not exactly the most up-to-date version you can find :-)

Ah, and about the discussion between Pia and Lilly, to me it seemed quite obvious that the requester (Mie) was looking for a translation of the proverb (or a similar saying in English) since "man må satse for at vinde" and "hvo intet vover, intet vinder" to me means exactly the same. Or in other words: I personally think it should indeed be translated in order to "adapt" the message to the target language. There is no such thing as a "faithful" translation, one can only attempt to make it sound as fluent and natural in the target language as it does in the original version while, at the same time, trying to maintain the "meaning" - you can change the wording, but the message should convey the same thing/feeling/meaning after having been translated.
Not that I want to write terribly much about this subject (I don´t want to bore anyone!), but it´s one of the main issues we studied during my master degree in Translation Theories: that no translation can ever be considered "faithful" because it will always and inevitably be a re-writing, an interpretation, like a new text, influenced by the person translating the text. The only thing that we, as translators, can do is to translate the text according to our own interpretation of the text and try to convey the same meaning in the target language and - quite importantly - try to make it sound like an "original" and not like a translation.

Hi Anita!
You don't bore.. It's interesting and just good to hear your point of view, at least I think so. And "at the end" it seems like Mie is happy about the outcome of this discussion.

Yes I am happy for the translation, so thank you everyone : )