Don’t believe him. He lies like print!
I feel like this translation misses some of the beauty of the German phrase. Plus the words left nor right appear in the sentence so I am not sure how this kind of translation is useful for learners.
One does not lie like print in English.
I believe that the correct simile is to lie like a rug.
I appreciate this is just my opinion and judging by the translations not one shared by all … but I would rather know the actual words (a literal translation), and then myself understand the underlying meaning, than be told a similar expression with the same meaning but using different words.
I can easily understand that ‘lie like print’ (or something printed) means someone lies a lot, so I don’t need to be told another similie that also means ‘lie a lot’. I just want to know what the actual words being said are. If a note is added to explain what it means (if the meaning is not at all clear, which is often the case), thats great too.
The nice thing about Clozemaster is we can easily edit the translations and add our own notes so this isn’t a complaint at all. I would be interested to know if someone feels strongly the other way, and maybe my approach to learning could be improved.
I see where you are coming from and what you say makes complete sense.
However, incorrect literal translations should not be provided by Clozemaster, i.e. Tatoeba (the original source of the sentences).
Linguists actually have a name for those mistakes: barbarisms.
Since the import into Clozemaster, Tatoeba has corrected the English translation, rightly so. It now reads:
Fine, but I prefer to keep the simile structure with to lie like a rug. Which is rather funny anyway, as is the German simile.