Miksi et tullut juhliin?

English Translation

How come you didn’t come to the party?

‘Miksi’ means ‘why’, no good reason to use ‘how come’ in the translation.

I mean, there is a good reason: how come is a synonim of why… Not saying that “why” shouldn’t be accepted as an option, but rather, that both are possible answers for this cloze, aren’t they?

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I think that if you wanted to come up with a more specific translation of “how come”, you would end up with something like “mistä syystä”, “mitä varten”, “minkä takia”, or “minkä vuoksi”, which are more complicated.

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My objection to the translations is that the English could be closer to the Finnish. All Finnish learners know ‘miksi’ means ‘why’ so why use something else in English? We are not trying to teach English here.

I will try to make a habit of being a bit more defensive in my comments, and not say ‘a better translation is…’ but perhaps instead ‘a translation closer to the meaning of the Finnish word is…’. I realise some of my ‘suggestions’ comes across as arrogant :slightly_smiling_face:

My objection to that is people try to learn this sentence because they want to get better at Finnish, not because they want to increase their knowledge of English synonyms. A long time ago I did technical writing for a living, and we were taught always to use the simplest words in order to lose as few non-English readers as possible.

Clozemaster is a bit misleading with the label “English translation”, when in fact most Finnish sentences sourced from Tatoeba are translations from English.

So in this case, the Finnish translator found a sentence using “how come” and decided to translate it using a simpler choice of words. I find that commendable.

Also, if you are an English speaker, you may wonder, how do I say “how come” in Finnish. This sentence tells you that miksi is an option.

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To add onto what @morbrorper said; while it is true that people might not be here to learn about English synonyms, clozemaster’s “thing” is learning “Finnish from English”, so you are expected to have at least some preexisting knowledge of English. With that in mind, I’d argue that you might even do a disservice to the users to which this “course” is mainly targeted, by removing all sentences that contain anything else than simple, basic English.
Say you are a native who uses “how come” with some frequency; by being exposed to this cloze, you can learn that translating it to the simple “miksi” is possible and correct, whereas, if it were not in the coprus, you might have had to serach for it, and find one ot the other translations ( “mistä syystä”, “mitä varten”, “minkä takia”, or “minkä vuoksi”, as mentioned) , that, while apparently not incorrect, might be more complex, and might add unwanted nuance (in a moment of your learning path in which you might still not get around this nuance).
Alternatively, if you are a non-native who is not familiar with “how come”, you can always either skip the sentence completely, or, if you feel that you do not want to fill your head with English alternatives but are interested in the cloze, modify the sentence to fit you interests.


Maybe the issue, rather that the statement in itself, is, as you were saying, the tone. Since these posts appear under the sentences while practising, I feel that, the way you put it, discarded completely “how come” as an alternative to “why” and that it could not be translated into “miksi”, which would be giving, in my opinion, an erroneous impression to the learners.
Just to be clear about it, I’m basing this mainly on my knowledge of English (backed by what I could find on the dictionnary : ) ), because my finnish level is not high enough argue anything further than the basics

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