Translation for "glatt".

70Augsburg

70Augsburg

In 21.4  
 
Toll, da kann ich doch glatt ein wenig Italienisch hier lernen.
Great, so I can learn a bit of Italian here.

Why is there no translation for "glatt"?  Does it mean here something like smoothly or easily?
sfpugh

sfpugh

Yes, I think you are right. smooth/smoothly is one of the meanings of glatt, but "easily" seems like a better translation here.
There is quite a lot of this kind of thing in the rocket translations - they seem to prioritise natural sounding English when a more literal translation would be better for learners and still be OK English.
Liss-Rocket-Languages-Tutor

Liss-Rocket-Languages-Tutor

Hallo 70Augsburg und sfpugh!

This is a great question - and a very tricky one to answer!

Glatt does sometimes mean "straight" or "smooth" when talking about a surface, hair, etc., but in this instance glatt is a modal particle - that is, it's a type of word that is used in colloquial sentences for emphasis. Modal particles can be extremely hard to translate, as sometimes (like with glatt) there just isn't really an English equivalent. 

So here, the glatt doesn't mean "smooth" or "easily"; instead, it's working more to emphasize toll - to emphasize how awesome it is that they will be learning some Italian.

I hope that this explanation has been helpful. An entire new lesson on modal particles is planned and should appear in Level 3 in the future; in addition, we are currently working on style changes for our translations in our German lessons and hope to be able to reflect the meaning of words like this better once we have those changes in place.

Tschüss!

Liss
sfpugh

sfpugh

It's great to hear that a lesson on modal particles is planned as they appear so frequently in the course. They can be the cause of great confusion, at least they were to me!

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