# القردة المحترفون للتقليد



## Huda

would you please help me translate the following underlined sentence:

فهل يجوز لأي منا أن يردد هذه المقولات كالببغاوات، ويسير في طريق التقليد لهذه المواريث الغربية وردود أفعالها، كما يصنع القردة المحترفون للتقليد؟!.


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## shafaq

"... like the pro mimic apes do." may fits there.


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## Huda

shafaq said:


> "... like the pro mimic apes does." may fits there.


  what's meant by pro mimic? It's the first time I've seen this expression.


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## shafaq

Huda said:


> what's meant by pro mimic? It's the first time I've seen this expression.



مقـلّد محترف 
كثيرالتقليد
 مُفْرط فى التقليد


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## Huda

shafaq said:


> مقـلّد محترف
> كثيرالتقليد
> مُفْرط فى القليد


]

Thank you. One more question: Are you sure that "pro mimic apes" would mean القردة المحترفون للتقليد ?


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## Absconditus

شخصيّاً مارح استخدم pro mimic
professional/unoriginal imitators/apers
إلا إذا بدك ترجمة أكثر حرفيّة
as do those professional imitators, who are incapable of originality
as do those professional imitators, who, like machines/automata, are incapable of originality


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## shafaq

Huda said:


> ]
> 
> Thank you. One more question: Are you sure that "pro mimic apes" would mean القردة المحترفون للتقليد ?


I think it is just one of the ways expressing it.


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## jack_1313

Huda said:


> what's meant by pro mimic? It's the first time I've seen this expression.



It's the first time I've heard it too. If I read that in a text, I wouldn't have a clue what it meant.

Maybe the best way to translate the author's meaning would be "like apes, which are experts in imitation" or "like apes, which are skilled in immitation"? I didn't know that apes were known for their skills in mimicking :S

PS: why has the author used the sound masculine plural (محترفون) here?


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## abdulwahid

The sound masculine plural is used here describing the apes because the apes represent humans. Looking at the words only it should be muhtarifah, but considering the meaning it would be ok to use muhtarifun.


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## إسكندراني

محترفون is a mistake, and a commonly made one.
And I'm with jack's suggestions.


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## Tracer

القردة المحترفون للتقليد  = 

....that are master *mimics.*
....that are adroit mimics.
....that are virtuoso mimics.

OR

....that are master *imitators
*....that are skillful imitators........etc

(In both folklore and science, apes and monkeys have long been seen as master imitators.  See  http://www.sciencemag.org/content/325/5942/824.summary )

Also note the very common English parable:  *"Monkey see, monkey do"*


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## إسكندراني

I still think words like 'adroit' and 'virtuoso' are too weird.


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## Tracer

إسكندراني said:


> I still think words like 'adroit' and 'virtuoso' are too weird.



I agree that "virtuoso" and "adroit" are inappropriate here.  A primate may be *adroit* at *climbing*, but not necessarily so at *mimicing, *(although "adroit" wouldn't be necessarily "wrong".....it's  just not the best word available).  This is actually true of ALL the words suggested so far above.

Fact of the matter is that if the passage provided by the OP above were originally an English text, what the writer would have written would be the following:

_*...that are clever mimics.*_

"Clever" is the only adjective that sounds "natural" to a native English speaker in this instance/context and therefore that's what he would use.  Those translators that are "strict reconstructionists" (stick to the original text as much as possible)  however, would of course, disagree.


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## Huda

Tracer said:


> Fact of the matter is that if the passage provided by the OP above were originally an English text, what the writer would have written would be the following:
> 
> _*...that are clever mimics.*_
> 
> you mean "like apes that are clever mimics" ?


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## Huda

Tracer said:


> القردة المحترفون للتقليد  =
> 
> 
> Also note the very common English parable:  *"Monkey see, monkey do"*



what if I want to use this parable? would you please contextualize it?


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## Tracer

Well, what I'm saying is if you use the word *APES* (or monkeys or primates)  and you want to suggest that they are very good *MIMICS, *the best adjective to use would be *CLEVER.
*
How exactly you want to translate your original Arabic sentence into English and which syntactic approaches you would take is another matter entirely.


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## Tracer

Huda said:


> what if I want to use this parable? would you please contextualize it?



I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "contextualize" here, but I assume you want an example of how it's used.

MOTHER:  Why did you hit the cat?

TOM:   Because DICK (older brother) hit him.

MOTHER:  So it's* Monkey See, Monkey Do *with you?  Do you have to do everything DICK does?  What if he jumps out of a window?  Are you going to do that too?
_(So you're a copy-cat?)_


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## Huda

Thank you all. Special thanks to Tracer


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