"It had not always been like this," and a translation challenge!

This morning I started to read a book on relationships. The opening chapter began with a description of a marriage which had deteriorated. The author observed, "It had not always been like this." The idea being conveyed was that a marriage was now bad, but there had been times in the past when it had been good.

As I thought about this phrase, I thought, "I wonder how you would say that in Russian?"

And then I began to think about clarity and ambiguity and how easy it is, in a foreign language, to either 'get the wrong end of the stick' or to fail to convey what we mean, and our hearer/reader 'gets the wrong end of the stick'.

So, the translation into Russian of the phrase, "It had not always been like this," would be four words. These could be arranged in at least the following four ways (the underlined words are emphasised).

Так было не всегда. It wasn't like that always.
Не всегда так было. It wasn't always like that OR It wasn't always like that.
Не так было всегда. That wasn't the way it always was. OR, possibly: It was always wrong. 
Не было так всегда.  It wasn't always like that. 

It is entirely possible that those four words could be arranged in other ways with further meanings - maybe my Russian friends can let me know. 

What is tricky, as a language learner, is to get enough exposure and use of a langauge to be able to catch and convey all these nuances of meaning. Usually this comes from having seen it work in other situations, remembering the word order used then. While this is an academic exercise now, there might well be situations where you would need to be clear. For example, the wealth of tenses available in English (e.g. I was, I have been, I had been) is not available in other languages and other means must be found to make sure the meaning is not distorted (e.g. adding phrases such as "already" or "in the past"). Sometimes the context ensures that the correct meaning is derived from a sentence which might have a different import in another context.

Now, think about the language you are learning and see if you can, unambiguously, translate this sentence: 


"The challenge of this endeavour is to have exposure to best practice and embrace change without compromising the company's legacy."

Yes, I made up this sentence, but it makes sense in English and might need to be expressed in the foreign language you are learning. I would be interested to hear your answers!

Happy language learning!

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My name is Russell Phillips. I give online video language tuition in English, Russian, German, Italian and French.

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