"Never say never"

Question

Since there is apparently no literal translation for "never", how would you translate this idiom ?

What periphrasis would you use to express the same meaning ?

Or you could take the katakana route and use ネヴァー・セイ・ネヴァー. — Golden Cuy, May 20 '12 at 03:29

bdonlan · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-27T19:59:07.943

7

How about something like 「絶対なんて絶対にない」? It has the same self-contradictory nature as the English original, and seems to have some use as well. The meaning is slightly different, however. You could also go with something like 「ありえないなんてありえない」 or something...

edited Aug 27 '11 at 19:59

answered Aug 27 '11 at 19:45

bdonlan

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If I may, you should use quotes in your google requests to actually match a strict pattern, 15,900 matches is still high and makes your point anyways. Well done! – Aki Aug 27 '11 at 19:56
quotes added :) – bdonlan Aug 27 '11 at 19:59
@Aki - This is completely off-topic, but what do you mean here by "periphrasis"? – rdb Aug 27 '11 at 21:01
@rdb Seems to me like the ordinary meaning is fine. – Karl Knechtel Aug 27 '11 at 21:15
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Do you mean to say the OP wanted a phrase free of inflected words? – rdb Aug 27 '11 at 21:25
This is the definition I had in mind: "use of a longer phrasing in place of a possible shorter form of expression". Which may not be 100 % correct. Check out Wikipedia's article on Circumlocution. – Aki Aug 27 '11 at 21:46

"Never say never"

1 Answers1