Can you help me understand the meaning of this sentence?
Asked by
wsxwh111 (
2464)
July 25th, 2015
“Only an Albanian would call me a gypsy.”
It’s from “Power”, a bunch of criminals were torturing and interrogating this another bad guy, suspecting him for stealing their stuff. He denied, and the torturers said this. Not sure what it means.
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8 Answers
Translation is fine. Meaning without more context is murky.
@gailcalled Okay copy that, just making sure it wasn’t a slang or something,
@Mimishu1995 Yes, I’m on a non-profit online translation group and we are doing this show from English to Chinese.
@wsxwh111 Now I’m confused. Do you need help with translation of that sentence from English into Chinese, or do you want to understand why that guy says that? Because according to Wikipedia that movie is in Telugu, a language native in India, and not Enhlish. Is what you are translating already translated into English?
I have never watched the movie so I don’t understand the context and I can’t tell you the meaning of the sentence (not to mention it may contain some reference to the Indian culture), but if you only ask for pure translation without the context, then I don’t see anything so ambiguous about the sentence. You can translate it like you always do with normal texts, word-to-word. It’s not like that whole thing is a slang or an idiom or something (as I have never seen an idiom or a slang like that).
Albanian
Gypsy (can be offensive)
@Mimishu1995 Oh I’m sorry it’s not that one, it’s an American TV show on season 2, but still I think you are right.
My GUESS is the person doesn’t identify as a Gypsy, but that in his experience Albanians use the word Gypsy as a slang for certain behaviors, or maybe Albanians are more likely to call out a Gypsy when they are dealing with one.
Without more context it’s hard to know for sure though. That’s why I put guess in all caps.
I think the sentence has a few nuances related to relative “class”.
To me it suggests that the speaker would expect respect from most people, but the Albanian insults him(her) by calling him(her) a gypsy. Clearly gypsy is a derogatory term in this context.
Everybody else, but an Albanian, would call the person something else.
Or it just means that an Albanian is the only type who would use the word, that anyone else would have called the speaker a different word – but I don’t think so, because gypsy is a common derogatory term throughout Eastern Europe especially.
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