Ei mă strigă căpitan.

The translation offered for: “Ei mă strigă căpitan” is “They call me captain.” And no-one should call that exactly an error. But I can’t help but think that these two are not quite parallel, and that the Romanian (likely a backtranslation of the common English phrase) is not what is required. We aren’t ‘shouting’ captain. Rather the Romanian could be " Ei mă cheamă căpitan. "

What is possibly a better translation is “Ei îmi spun căpitan” – which was actually first on Tatoeba. But someone has come along a few years ago and added the poorer translation, using the verb “a striga”, which is ‘to shout’ or ‘yell’. I haven’t figured out how to put comments in directly to improve Tatoeba’s translations… and here there seems to be no response. On second thought, i still like my “ma cheama”, or possibly “ma numesc”…

1 Like