Original text - English - You forget me, don't you? Can I call you Mert?

OK
Do you confirm the present tense or should it be as Kafetzou suggested:

"You forgot me, didn't you?"?

Please, also make clear the meaning of the second line.

Lilian, please read what I said above. This translation should not be done at all. The original is incomprehensible.

She cannot "confirm the present tense" - "You forget me" is meaningless in English.

ice_beauty, please write your translation requests in your own language. This is not correct English.

As I said before, the translation has already been done. That's why we need a solution.

It cannot be evaluated. Francky, can you help here?

CC: Francky5591

It was evaluated and accepted, therefore I think the best to do now is rejecting the translation without rating and removing the request. Or...perhaps Ian can find a better solution.

CC: Francky5591 44hazal44 IanMegill2

Ian is not an administrator. I don't understand.

P.S. The translation is good, and it includes the other possibilities, so maybe we should just let it stand.

I already tried to edit the source-text with "You're forgetting me, aren't you?" (and also "May I call you Mert?" , but I got a notification that says : "Problem - Text - The size of the text must not exceed 56 characters"

That's weird, but I wouldn't do that anyway, because it isn't clear what the writer intended. She is a Bulgarian speaker, so her text should have been submitted in Bulgarian.

By the way, the problem isn't with the word "can", it's with the verb tense of the first line, which should probably be present continuous, as you tried to change it, but could be past, and the ambiguity of the second line, which has two possible meanings. The more likely meaning would need a comma: "Can I call you, Mert?"

When I was a kid, at school, my teacher in English told me the difference between "may" and "can". (may : permission, eventuality) and can : ability, possibility) So I thought when I have to ask someone permission for calling her/him by name, I have to use "may".

But if you tell me now it is not important, I'm willing to believe what you said!

I know the problem came from the verb tense of the first line.

But, in my preview post, I gave some more context I randomly found here, as I think it was posted by the same person.

And yes, you're right, "both" ice_beauty and merian86 should post requests written in Bulgarian, not in English, that would avoid confusion.

Yes, in those days such differences were more important . Nowadays "may" is rarely used except to express possibility ("I may not be there on time" ).

In one of merian86's requests, there seems to be something about the unreliability of Bulgarian-to-Turkish translations, but I don't know if s/he is talking about .

Hi guys,

Well, this seems to me to be a non-native speaker's version of either

You're forgetting about me, aren't you?
As in, there is something going on, and "Mert" is forgetting to include the writer in the activities.

or (more probably)

You've forgotten me, haven't you?
As in, it's been a long time, and you don't remember who I am, do you?

The second sentence in the original is an easier call, because there is no comma. If the writer meant to say

Can I telephone you, Mert?

there would have to be a comma between "call" and "Mert".
Without a comma, in written English there's only one option: the sentence has to mean

Is it okay for me to call you by the name "Mert" when I'm speaking to you?

(This is in grammatically-correct native speaker writing, of course: just what wild & wonderful things some people may have in mind when they write in English is another story...)
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Couldn't resist putting in my 2 cents!
English: Speak of the Devil and he appears.
French: We speak of the wolf and we see his tail.

Guys, why are you argueing so much All thing is that the meaning of the phrase is depends of situation/context it's used. For the model verbs - ok "may" is more suitable than "can", but "can" can also be used in a situation/context. Don't you think so?

@ Ian : Thanks a lot for your input! Yes, you're right saying : ""...just what wild & wonderful things some people may have in mind when they write in English is another story..."

@ ice_beauty : No, we don't.

Yeah, "it depends on the situation/context", as you said, but if you don't mention this context in the remarks field, no one except you will know exactly what it is about. When a text is possibly translatable with two different meanings, the requester has to mention which meaning is to be used in the target language, eg : "call : call by phone" or "call : call by name".

This way there would be no ambiguity at all in the text that is to be translated, so that you won't have to send the addressee a second message afterwards, eg : "You didn't understand me right - I didn't mean to call me, I wanted to know if I can call you by name ... "

And as we said above, please submit texts in your mother-tongue, this way there will be no ambiguity at all.

BTW, which one of your accounts do you want me to remove, ice_beauty or merian86?

As we've got a rule here about users, it is based on "1 user, 1 account". No matter if you've got two personal computers, one user can have only one account here, it's just a fair rule, don't you think so?

I understand.
you can remove merian86
thank you

Hi everyone,

I know there's a little ambiguity, here. That's why, before validating the translation, I added in the remarks field the other possibilities. So, don't worry about the translation, it's ok.

1) Ian, if you look at my comments above (right under the translation, 31 July 2010 02:08 ), I said exactly what you said.

2) ice_beauty, we are not arguing about can/may - that issue has been resolved.

The problem here is that you made a grammar mistake in your first sentence. In English, you canNOT say "You forget me, don't you?" - that tense does not work. Because of that, we had to GUESS which tense you wanted, and Lilian even thought you might have chosen the wrong verb.

That is why we want you to make your translation requests in a language you know well (Bulgarian).

Because of the first mistake, we weren't sure that you had written the second sentence correctly, as the addition of a comma would completely change the meaning.

That is why 44hazal44 gave the alternative meanings in her translation.

Basically, we don't know what you meant to say!

Hi kafetzou,
Well gosh darn it, you did!
Guess I should check out the depth of the pool before I go and jump in feet first!
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Lord, let my Words be Sweet and Tender today, for I may just have to Eat them tomorrow...