# v ničemž neporušitedelné



## Kalžběta

"a v ničemž neporušitedelné" is a boilerplate phrase in this 1794 wedding contract I've been transcribing.

I just find it really interesting that in Czech you can have a double negative. 

When you translate, you have to strike a balance between being accurate to the original text as well as being comprehensible to your readers. So, in this case, I would instead of translating it as, "in nothing unbreakable," I would write, "in all things binding" - describing the marriage contract.

"In all things binding" is totally English boilerplate legalese. 

Why do you think that in English it is a double positive while in Czech it is a double negative? I laugh to myself that it has some kind of implication of the pessimism in Czech culture, but is there a grain of truth to that idea? Would you translate this phrase this way?

(if you need more context, I'll provide it)


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## werrr

In Czech, negative pronoun calls for negative verb. That's standard Czech negation.


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## Kalžběta

Yes. Obviously. But this does not work in English, and the idea does not work either. "In nothing unbreakable/incorruptible" means the exact opposite of the idea we want to express, which is that this contract is now binding. So should we translate it either as, "in nothing breakable" or "in all things binding"?


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## cornejo

"a v ničemž neporušitedelné" means that:

there is nothing that can cause it to fail

Sometimes word-by-word translation does not work.

Also I am not a linguist, just a Czech native speaker, and it sounds a bit old-fashioned to me. Today I would say "a v ničemž neporušitelné".


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