Talk:Swahili proverbs

I believe the "idiomatic" translations and the literal translations on this page have been reversed. Unless I'm mistaken literal translations should be close to word for word translations while idiomatic translations should be the meaning. 72.209.29.111 21:38, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Though I am not a native speaker of English, my understanding of those two phrases is exactly same with yours. And eh ... it seems as you pointed out; you understand Swahili, if I may ask? --Aphaia 21:43, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I modeled the format on other proverb pages. A literal word-for-word translation wouldn't really work for Swahili in my opinion. For instance the first proverb translates literally as "He/she-laugh-who scar he/she-not yet-see wound." What I have written is not a literal translation but the best English conversion I could come up with. Perhaps idiomatic is the wrong word but I think literal is also. A better suggestion? I used literal in the sense of "actual", i.e. the intended meaning of the proverb, metaphors aside. --Mwalimu 4 June, 2007