"Nice and" expression question.

[zanooda2]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboyminn at ...> wrote:


> In your first example, of a sweater described as 'nice and warm'.
> If we break it apart, we see a 'nice sweater' and a 'warm 
> sweater'. In this case, a nice sweater could be 'nice' by any
> one of several measure. It could be nice and expensive. It
> could be nice and comfortable. It could simply appear pleasing
> to the fashionable eye. 

> But in the context, of 'nice and warm', I don't think 'nice'
> has any of those meanings. It just expands and intensifies the
> description. 


zanooda:

But that's exactly the point :-). Most translators don't seem to know
about "nice and", so when the twins say their mother's sweaters are
"nice and warm", they usually translate it as "beautiful and warm".


> Steve wrote:

> While Ollivander find his wands 'nice and supple', I suspect
> Gregorovich find those wands unpleasantly bendy. But that's
> another discussion.

zanooda:

Yeah, Ollivander doesn't call Krum's wand "nice and rigid", he calls
it "quite rigid" :-). BTW, Olly's description of wands is difficult to
translate, because he uses synonyms all the time, and other languages
may not have enough synonyms :-). For instance, "supple", "flexible"
and "pliable" basically mean the same thing, right? And so do "whippy"
and "swishy" :-).