| I don’t think that’s an accurate translation at all! Skinning a cat is not a common thing. It’s not a normal food for English speakers, so the phrase carries some sense that what you’re doing is unusual. It’s usually applied to a situation completely unrelated to skinning or otherwise preparing food, so it carries some sense of absurdity. Most people using the phrase have never skinned anything, so there’s (usually!) a sense of ignorance on both sides. Your translation brings none of that. If I were to translate that idiom back to English and aim for accuracy, it would be something like, “what you’re doing is unusual, and neither of us have experience doing it, and the way you’re doing it is different than the ways I have heard of, but I suppose there’s more than one valid way to do it.” Which, I think, fits the spirit of the other examples - a very short expression that carries tons of unspoken cultural context with it, to the point that there isn’t a direct translation. |