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Comment by nirav72 | Hacker News Reader

yep. the whole "chalta hein" attitude needs to die.

चलता है? (Not a native speaker, learning, just curious) as in walk/do/operate something? The attitude being (having read जुगाड़ means lifehack/bodge) just do it quick and dirty, don't worry if it's 'right'/high-quality sort of thing?

(I don't mean any offence, please don't take it that way, just trying to understand the terms and attitude ypu refer to.)

चलता है literally means walks/moves/works. But in this context it means tolerating mediocrity and not complaining about it. GP is alluding to this widespread mindset.

Directly translated, it means "It walks", or "it'll walk" – a rough translation of the meaning into English would be "Eh, it'll work".

In fact, I could swear I've heard the phrase "I'm gonna let this walk for now" as in "I'm gonna let this infraction pass unpunished" in American English in a movie or something, but Google doesn't seem to be throwing up too many references for that. But you could imagine it in the same way too, as "let it walk".

"I'm going to let this slide" is the closest thing that springs to mind, but I wouldn't be surprised if some regional dialect somewhere uses "walk" like that.

Loosely: Literal translation (syntax): It walks, or, it moves. Meaning (semantics): It is acceptable, or, it is accepted (by people, so no need to do better).

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