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Comment by bmcfeeley | Hacker News Reader

The literal translation of “Ça va” is neither “it is” nor “it goes well”, right? The literal translation is “it goes”. “It goes well” would be “ça va bien”, which is also used for both question and answer parts of a slightly longer standard greeting.

This isn’t a big distinction because I agree with both of you about the relative meaninglessness of the content of such a greeting in either language.

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As a question it does literally translate to “How’s it going?” and then as a response it’s like “It’s going”, but translating common idioms like this completely literally word-by-word doesn’t really make sense. It’s sort of interesting to think about for the same reason that all idioms are interesting, but it’s not very helpful when it comes to translation.

Am I the only one that answers, "how's it going?" With "it goes."?

Because I definitely do that. I'd expect that to be a common idiom in any language. Somewhat surprised to read this exchange seeming to suggest otherwise.

But the above commenter is saying it doesn't translate 'literally' to that, but rather, that is the equivalent meaning.

The 'literal translation' would be translating word-by-word, which by definition isn't going to work for idioms:

> idiom > > A group of words established by usage > as having a meaning not deducible from > those of the individual words

Oxford Dictionary

I don't disagree with you, and in fact I believe the point of the GP to be exactly this -- these idioms' literal interpretations are a bit nonsensical. I was merely trying to point out that I think you two agree.

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