King Reza: Hi Reza, I believe you are wrong indeed. Both terms refer to the plot of the movie, regardless of where the movie was filmed/shot.

Artful Dodger: You're right, Dan. That's exactly what it means.

puupia: LOL, it's fun indeed. I typed “What the hell are you talking about, moron?” and it ended up with “Do you like silly stories?”

Milioi, Gouwe gozer: In my opinion, bad translation is always worse than no translation (and the translation of “príjemnú hru” as “enjoyable game” is as bad a translation as one can be). If people want to use Google Translator, so be it, but they should be aware of the fact that they will rarely get a translation of the original sentence, especially in the case of linguistically distant languages.

h657: Hey, today I decided to try this chess variant. Enjoy the game. Štefan.

Google Translator sucks.

King Reza: I may be wrong, but I think that there is no difference between those sentences in terms of their meaning and effect. However, “by” implies some tiresome activity having been performed for some time before the end of the day and emphasizes the end of the day as the time when we were all tired as the result. On the contrary, the sentence with “at” merely states that we were all tired and when we were all tired, irrespective of what caused our tiredness and in particular when the cause of our tiredness occurred. (It was extremely hard to convince the Greenpeace people that the global warming is a hoax and we were all tired by the end of the day. vs We were all tired at the end of the day and none of us wanted to go to the movie theater.)

But I would definitely wait for a native speaker to comment on this. Who am I to interpret the English language? :)

King Reza: That sounds good to me and the answer is: No, there is not. :)

Bwild: Sure. You're definitely more qualified than I am, after all.

King Reza: This doesn't make any sense to me. Your original question did though.

King Reza: I would certainly write “the movie is set in China,” but as far as the meaning is concerned, I think there is no difference at all.

Walter Montego: I think that in the US, a double room is a room with two double beds, while in the UK it is a room with one double bed.

The reason why I was asking: I was told that the omission of “a” in such sentences is "one of those strange and commonly accepted uses of articles." Now that I've read your responses, it doesn't seem that it really is such a commonly accepted use. :) Thank you all.

Carl: Thank you.
Can please anyone else comment on this? I would like to have two opinions at least. :)

In an average hotel, a double room with ??? shower costs 80 pounds a night.

Should there be "a" before "shower" in the above sentence?

Bluefin: It is Czech or Slovak and if it was written to you in a game as a single word, it probably means "at last." Other meanings are "ultimately" or "eventually."

Bwild: I see. Thank you.

awesome, Walter Montego: Thank you so much for your inputs. I was unsure about the use of the two words; in Czech there is only one expression for both of them. It's much clearer now.

Bwild: Could you please elaborate on that?

What sounds better to the ear of a native speaker of the English language?

"in the shade of the tree" or "in the shadow of the tree"

PaoloRus:

AlliumCepa: I believe the purpose of this forum is not to "be nice" to each other. Yes, we can keep thanking each other for nothing here and smile at each other and be satisfied even with incorrect and incomplete answers. But that is not the course I am willing to take. I would like this forum to provide as accurate answers as possible. Now in the case of Bwild's "spectacular", I asked him to provide more details about the context, since without the context, it is impossible to translate the word correctly.

In general, I would like to ask only those people who are familiar with the languages in question to provide answers here because otherwise their answers only lead to confusion and misunderstandings.

AlliumCepa: Again, a completely useless post. Now what exactly do you expect Bwild to do with your list of words, of which you're not even sure if they are Russian? Trying to help is fine, but if you don't know what you're talking about, your help is actually the opposite of help.

Gouwe gozer: Well, if you really want to help somebody with a translation, you need somewhat more extensive knowledge of both source and target languages than just the knowledge of finding a word in a dictionary. If Bwild meant a game, you cannot use "эффектный" to refer to a game, because "game" is a feminine word in Russian, while "эффектный" is a masculine adjective. As for the word "впечатляющих", I'm wondering why you are suggesting an adjective in a plural number when you say that Bwild is talking about "a game".

Bwild: And what are you trying to say? WHAT is spectacular?

Bwild: There is no "i" in Russian.

Gouwe gozer: So at least we know now that you don't have a slightest clue about Russian.

rod03801: Well, I can imagine that if you have a text translated from, say, Spanish into Portuguese, you might get some quite meaningful results, in which the target text corresponds to a large extent to the source text.

You say you can get a decent idea of what is being said. Well, how do you know? The text provided by the translator might make some sense to you, but if you don't know the language, you can never tell if what you think is being said really matches what is actually being said. Let me give you an example. A Czech sentence "Dáme to dohromady?" generally means "Wanna date me?" However, Google Translator translates it as "Put it together?" Now there you can see that the machine-translated text does not precisely mean what the original Czech sentence does. :)

If you want to understand a foreign language, you have to start learning it.

rod03801: There is no such thing as a machine translator one can rely on.

Rose: Yes, the person is probably telling you that he thinks you're lucky. "Lucker" is just a transcription from the cyrillic, I'm sure the word doesn't even exist in that person's language.

Rose: lucker

yoyudax: I forgot this was/is Cloning Backgammon.

awesome: Proč si vždycky z mých výzev vybereš ty hry, ve kterých hraješ jako bílý, a nikdy nehraješ jako černý?

I would like to ask native speakers of the English language to tell me what difference in terms of probability they feel when they use the following words: MAY, MIGHT and COULD. To be more specific, let's think about these sentences:

1. He may be late.
2. He might be late.
3. He could be late.

Is it more probable that he will be late if I use MAY, for example? And to what extent? Thanks in advance for any answers.

Rose: I apologize for those invites, I've just tried it for the first time.

"Snoopy": MOHLI BYCHOM TU PROSÍM MÍT ANGLICKÝ DISKUZNÍ KLUB?

"Snoopy": I'd say that thanks to Snoopy this tourney will be quite long.

"Snoopy": I will translate it, but for 33 pounds.....................

King Reza, Rose: Thank you both. Every day one learns something new...:)

I have just come across the following sentence: "But for Duncan to be here he would have had to have been on the same flight as us."

Is it proper English? I would say just "...he would have had to be on the same flight..."

"IceCold": "Neumím anglicky..smůla." = I don't speak English. You're out of luck.

EatTurkeynotHam: How about "Zdravím i Tebe" (Hi back atcha)...:)

EatTurkeynotHam: Nazdar lidi = hi people. :)

EatTurkeynotHam: Ráda bych Ti koupila členství Brain Střelec nabízené Pěšcům v rámci listopadové akce, abys tak mohl (or mohla, if it's a woman) po dobu jednoho měsíce bezplatně vyzkoušet a využít všechny možnosti a funkce BrainKingu.

playBunny: The text I provided below is the only part of the document I was translating where these expenditures of efforts were mentioned. In the end, used quite a general term to tranlate it. Thanks for the link, I think I already understand the sense of the term, the problem is (for me) that there is absolutely no equivalent for it in Czech.

vic: Yes, that's (to some extent) what I'm thinking it is as well. The problem I have now is how to put in a similarly beautiful Czech version of the Legalese. LOL

voldemort: Let's play and may the best get a nice prize.

Walter Montego: Thank you for your effort anyway. :)

Walter Montego: OK, here is some context. :)
-----------------------------
XX shall keep for three (3) years from the conclusion of each year complete and accurate records of its expenditures of efforts from payments received by it from YY under Section 3.2. The records shall conform to good accounting principles as applied to a similar company similarly situated. YY shall have the right at its own expense during the term of this Agreement and during the subsequent three-year period to appoint an independent certified public accountant reasonably acceptable to XX to inspect said records to verify the accuracy of such expenditures of efforts, pursuant to the Development Plan. Upon reasonable notice by YY, XX shall make its records available for inspection by the independent certified public accountant during regular business hours at the place or places where such records are customarily kept, to verify the accuracy of the expenditures of efforts. This right of inspection shall not be exercised more than once in any calendar year and not more than once with respect to records covering any specific period of time. All information concerning such expenditures of efforts, and all information learned in the course of any audit or inspection, shall be deemed to be XX's Confidential Information, except to the extent that it is necessary for YY to reveal the information in order to enforce any rights it may have pursuant to this Agreement or if disclosure is required by law. The failure of YY to request verification of any expenditure of efforts before or during the three-year period shall be considered acceptance by YY of the accuracy of such expenditures of efforts, and XX shall have no obligation to maintain any records pertaining to such report or statement beyond such three-year period. The findings of such inspection, if any, shall be binding on the parties.
-------------------------------

I have no idea what the "expenditure of efforts" is. *shrugs*

EXPENDITURE(S) OF EFFORTS FROM PAYMENTS.

I'm completely lost....

Rose: The dictionary.com server has a very good dictionary and translator, if you want to translate just single words. This is what it says:

strength - 힘
harmony - 하모니
energy - 에너지

http://dictionary.reference.com/translate/text.html

Ebru: Thank you for the explanation, Ebru. How about the Y letter? I noticed it's almost always followed by a vowel. That suggests me it's probably pronounced as the Y in "yellow". Is that correct?