The game, by Philip K. Dick

A bad workman blames his tools!

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“Work is lax in many cities.”

This proverb brought to you by the Malagasy, Maltese, and Mandarin languages.

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Many hands make light work?

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Yep c: I just wonder how cities got in.

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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?)

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Fair enough.:smile:

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”. :grin:
And eventually disappeared in the answer. :wink:

Home sweet home? :smile:

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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)

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Is it “a house is not a home”?

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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