I live my life two fifths of a kilometer at a time.
this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
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I live my life two fifths of vodka at a time.
I live my life two fifths of a rock of crack at a time.
Serious answer, in italian it still uses miles
As a kid, I thought mile, inch, and ton were all fake units of measurement that didn't have any actual distance attached. Just used metaphorically.
- An inch is a distance you can measure using your thumb and index finger (from the same hand)
- A mile is a distance you could walk, but would probably rather use a vehicle
- A ton is too much weight to even fathom lifting.
Then there's cup, ounce, and pint, which I thought were just words for containers that have an approximate size. Yard and foot to a lesser extent. Acre must've been a plot of land of indeterminate size.
Getting into cooking, I'm hating that teaspoon and tablespoon are a thing (along with a pinch and a dash). They don't even seem to line up at all with my tablespoons or teaspoons...I need to own special spoons that are labeled "tablespoon" and "teaspoon", otherwise the measurements will be wrong!
And given the unit conversions of all this junk, I'm not convinced my former understanding is much worse than reality.
Once upon a time we weren't as concerned about accuracy as we are now. Woodworkers used to use surprisingly few graduated measuring tools; you'd make a thing called a storey stick which is a small board with notches in it. That notch is the overall height of the cabinet, that one is the overall width...who cares exactly what the number is, as long as it's always the same distance? I don't need a desk that's 43 7/8" wide, I need a desk that fits between those two windows.
Same happens in the kitchen; until the 1950's the average American housewife didn't have much in the way of measuring tools, but you could rely on her to have some teacups and some spoons, so that's what recipes were written for. A given woman would learn from experience that her spoons were a little small so use a slightly heaping spoonful when the recipe calls for 1 teaspoon.
In the modern day a set of measuring cups and spoons are such common kitchen equipment that finding yourself without them is either one of those sweet coming of age stories filed alongside calling mom to ask how you tell when canned soup is done.
Then the Europeans show up, smug in their complete inability to handle it.
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Wait till you learn that when cooking 'pinch' is measured in how many fingers you use, ie: two-finger pinch, three-finger pinch, etc.
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Wait until you learn about Hogsheads its a quarter of a tun which is different from a ton
Oh also agricultural measurements are local and item specific
The movie I saw in Australia had the quote exactly as is. I'd like to think most of us recognize that a mile is a bit longer than a kilometer and that those distances are common in drag racing, so they're referred to as is. If we were measuring distance from driving to another city it's in kilometers and miles aren't used.
Tape measures have centimeters and inches on them. If I'm using approximations I might use inches and Subway has probably been the main reason Aussies know of inches and a foot.
If I'm doing any scientific measurement like building a cabinet etc, it's mm and cm.
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In Malaysia we use both metric and imperial even though we only learn metric in school, so ehh it's still quarter mile
I think since it was a reference to a drag strip it was translated as a quarter of a mile everywhere else. At least where I live we use metric and we still call it eight mile, quarter mile and half mile when it comes to drag events
402.335 meters. Just round it down. 400 meters at a time.
Most US tracks are 4 laps to a mile, or about 400 meters.
Nah most US tracks are 400 meters, but everyone says quarter mile due to rounding
1319 doesn't quite roll off the tongue the same.
The 400 sounds sweet.
Offtopic: The expression "Give someone an inch, and they'll take it a mile" is 得寸进尺 in Chinese. 寸 is Inch, 尺 is Ruler. So I guess its "Give someone an inch, and they go the distance of a ruler"? Its either 12 inch / 30 cm? Or is it 1 meter / 1 yard (ya know, those big rulers)?
Or maybe we should just say "Give someone an inch, and they'll steal your ruler?" 😆
But anyways: I think most movies just literally translate the words so they don't have to do conversions.
In French it's "On lui donne un doigt et il nous prend le bras" "We give a finger* and he** takes an arm"
* literally "finger", I suspect it might come from a translation from "inch" which is translated as "pouce" in french, meaning "thumb"
**French has no non-gendered pronoun apart from first person
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It alternatively:
"Give someone an inch and they'll take over your kingdom"
(I know I'm misrepresenting but at least in my experience... it has happened quite a few times)
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The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.
It wasn't, not really important to the plot? If it was half a mile or mile nothing would have changed. I have no idea how many bananas is it.
I guess it being a 1/4 mile isn't directly relevant to the plot but the 1/4 mile is a standard measurement for a drag race.
It does have meaning.
It does have a meaning, but not knowing how long is the race track changes very little.
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Haven't seen the movies in German so I can't tell you what exactly he says. But distances in miles are generally kept in miles for German localisation (except for VERY rare cases), using the German word "Meile". Especially when it's not actually about a physical distance but vibes. We may not use miles to measure anything but we still have expressions like "meilenweit gehen" (to walk for miles, i.e. a very long distance) so it's not like we don't know what a mile is.
There is a modern-style (awful-UX) site that gathers phrase translations, via opensubtitles.org and other sources. Examples for German:
Ich lebe sowieso immer nur für die nächste Kurve.
"I always only live for the next curve anyway"
ich lebe meinen Leben in Viertelmeilenschritten.
"I live my life in quarter-mile steps."
Ich lebe mein Leben in Halb-Kilometer-Abschnitten
"I live my life in half-kilometer sections."
Żyję szybko i nigdy nie patrzę dalej, niż na pół mili.
"I live fast and never look farther than half a mile."
Przeżywam moje życie w niesamowitym tempie.
"I live my life at an incredible pace."
Moje życie to te krótkie chwile na trasie.
"My life is those short moments on the road."
żyję od wyścigu do wyścigu.
"I live from race to race."
Which ones are official? Dunno, it doesn't say. The more literal ones are probably subs as opposed to dub CCs.
15 more languages are available but I don't understand them enough to check an automatic translation. It's not needed now but you need desktop mode to see the "view in context" button and instead of an account, I use a custom CSS file to unblur the bottom examples.
A lot of those miss the original point though. Drag racing strips are traditionally a quarter mile long. Converting it to kilometers (or changing it to a half mile instead) destroys the drag racing reference.
As a European: What's a drag race?
Imagine the 100m dash at the Olympics. But for cars.
Just a short straight line. Head to head race, first one to the end wins.
it's tractor pulling without a counterweight and with dinky little cars
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Could say, "I live my life 9 seconds at a time."
I wonder if gas efficiency is still called mileage
Can't say about other countries, but here in general you just say "n liters" dropping "per 100 kilometers". Another metric that conveys the same thing.
Interesting-- does the word exist at all? Can you talk about a reliable appliance as something you can "get a lot of mileage" from?
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Yes.
Dang, I was hoping you had another word like kilometrage
There is "metráž" ("metrage" with French pronounciation) and "kilometráž" in my language. The former is used for items sold by the meter (carpets, film stock) while the latter is very rare and refers to the little numbers between pin-marked intersections in road atlases. Both are falling out of fashion and so is the literal translation of "footage" (stopáž), now replaced with délka ("length") and meaning duration, never the footage (recording) itself.
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Lots of people call it the 1320. So just call it the 402. It doesn't have the same linguistic rhythm but that is just semantics.
I live my life 400 meters at a time. For those 10 metric seconds or less nothing else matters.
I live my life 400 meters at a time. For those 91,926,317,700 ΔtCs or less nothing else matters.
This guy Systèmes
Club 133
I live my life 400 meters at a time. For those 12 .beats or less, nothing else matters
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