Help me translate two phrases into Farsi

April 29, 2007 3:58 PM

Help me speak and write two phrases in Farsi.

I don't speak Farsi, but as part of an ongoing inside joke with a native speaker of the language, I would like to be able to pronounce correctly, and more importantly be able to write, the following two phrases in Farsi:

1) "I don't know the answer."
2) "This is a complete and total mystery to me."

So what I need are translations of the above written (a) phonetically with Latin characters and (b) using the Persian alphabet. Non-literal translations that express the referenced ideas so that they'd sound natural to a native speaker are preferred...

posted by perissodactyl to Writing & Language (2 answers total)

1) javab-e ra nemidoonam

جواب را نميدانم

jav(rhymes with "have")AB(rhymes with "Bob")-eh
ra (rhymes with claw)
NEmi (rhymes with "hemi")doo-nam(rhymes with "ham")

or maybe "ass-LAN nemidoonam," which says "I don't know AT ALL"
اسلن نميدانم
posted by neda at 9:00 PM on April 29, 2007

neda's translation of #1 is too literal for me and doesn't sound like how anyone I know speaks farsi (and it would actually just be 'javab-ra nemidoonam, not javab-e ra). I would just say:

1) "nemidoonam"
and
2) "aslan nemidoonam"

If it's imperative that the word "answer" be included, I would say 1) "javab-ra nadaram" which means "I don't have the answer"
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 2:36 PM on April 30, 2007