Let's Talk About the Rain

Imagine yourself watching your favorite TV series on a rainy day, drinking a cup of coffee or tea while the rain patters against your window.  Seems nice, doesn’t it? The whole picture changes completely if you have to run around the city to get all the job done, especially without an umbrella. In a situation like this, even a cup of coffee “to go” can’t help.

The reason we love rain is the refreshment it brings during hot summer days but the stereotypes related to it are reflected differently in each linguoculture. Associating rain with different terms/phenomena inspires the creation of idioms – common phrases or expressions that should never be taken literally.  They are commonly used in everyday speech and they are usually funny.

Translating idioms is one of the most demanding translation tasks, despite the fact that it can be incredibly interesting. The greatest problem in the entire process is that idioms mustn’t be translated literally as well the necessity to look for an idiomatic equivalent in the target language, which requires great skill and proficiency in both languages.

Let’s see which idioms about rain are used in different languages.

There are several idioms in English language used to describe heavy rain such as “it’s raining cats and dogs”. Its idiomatic equivalent in Russian language would be the following expression “дождь льет как из ведра“, which literally means that the rain is pouring as if it was falling from a bucket. On the other hand, Spanish people use the expression “está chovendo canivetes”, which could literally be translated as “it’s raining knives”. The Serbs usually say “lije kao iz kabla”, which has almost the same meaning as the Russian expression, while the French came up with the most creative expression – “il pleut comme vache qui pisse”, which literally means that it’s raining as if a cow is pissing. We can only guess where did they get this cow association.

Here are some interesting idioms about rain:

• English idiom “to rain on someone’s parade”, meaning “to spoil someone’s pleasure/plans”;
• Turkish expression “Gök ağlamayınca yer gülmez” has positive connotation and it means that if the sky doesn’t cry, the soil won’t smile;
• Swedish idiom “Det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder” has similar meaning to the Turkish expression – “There’s no bad weather, only bad clothes”;
• An idiom form Afrikaans language “As dit pap reën, moet jy skep” literally means that you should set a plate if it’s raining porridge, which actually means that you should use any chance/opportunity you get;
• When they want to highlight the transition from one bad situation to another, the Germans say “Aus dem Regen in die Traufe kommen”. The idiomatic equivalent in English would be “to jump out from the frying pan into the fire”.

We can keep adding idioms to the list but let’s see which idioms about rain you know/like.