A bad workman blames his tools!
“Work is lax in many cities.”
This proverb brought to you by the Malagasy, Maltese, and Mandarin languages.
Many hands make light work?
Yep c: I just wonder how cities got in.
Let me try again then. I like the result of this one even though I don’t think it’s too hard.
House is not house.
(Anyone played Baba is You, the video game?)
Fair enough.![]()
Here is what I put in the machine: “A bad workman always blames his tools.”
Funny how “always” became “often”. Another pass and it would have gone “sometimes”. ![]()
And eventually disappeared in the answer. ![]()
Home sweet home? ![]()
Nope, although it’s not too far.
By the way, the languages were Shona and Traditional Chinese. (I find that going away from indo-european roots works better for mangling similar words together)
Is it “a house is not a home”?
Exactly, nicely done.
Initially I wanted to use the French proverb:
Not all those who ride horses are knights
(Tous ne sont pas chevaliers qui à cheval montent)
but I couldn’t find a better English equivalent. I liked this one because I suspected the difference between “house” and “home” could be lost in translation.
Not being native, it’s a bit hard to know which proverbs are well known… I tried to translate classical French proverbs or look at some lists such as https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/proverbs.html.
I guess you could always try book and film titles and things. It can still be tricky to get them far enough from what they started as. Here’s a film title that still somewhat resembles what it started out as
A day when the country is calm
Not all those who ride horses are knights
(Tous ne sont pas chevaliers qui à cheval montent)
I don’t think this quite maps to a house is not a home.
I’d translate it as not all that glitters is gold.