Oh it was very funny one I got it! Plus I had just woken up from an intense dream and was perhaps in a more somber frame of mind! The way I initially took it was like- "I die before them ("in their presence)".
Turns out I'm BLB...don't know how many times I've commented only to later realize I missed the sarcasm of a meme (no idea how many times I missed it and didn't realize it) :)
Sorry, this is a quote from "The Meistersinger of Nürnberg" (I forgot the " "). Operas are always perfomed in their original language. And the German word thereafter cannot be translated and refers to it. So what do you want me to do? Forget a whole universe of non-English language art treasure (so wie go to "gute nicht" ("good ones not")? Wouldn't it be more adequate that people learn how to google translation? It is not that difficult. I am thinking about operning my own multilingual sub-page at IMGFLIP.
You'll note that when you submit a meme that imgflip requires English only. It's not that using google translation is difficult. I've used it many times in conversations with you. But I can see why they ask for English only. And I'm just asking that you do that on my pages. The average viewer has no way to know that was an opera quote. It would have been better to provide the translation in or beside the meme. But maybe that seemed like too much work? If you see what I mean. Plus the fact that google doesn't always translate clearly. We're here to have fun, and using English as the primary language simply facilitates that. Good luck with your subpage!
(Sorry, I forgot the upvote, done now.) No, it's not too much work - I almost am a professional at it. But most people here aren't interested in my stuff anyway, so I thought the ones who are will know how to get this. But if you wish, I will translate my foreign language quotes for you in future, because at least you seem to be interested. I don't want to lose the only friend I have here for some dogmatic reason.
Well as one who enjoys etymology, I am inclined to look up a phrase in foreign language more than most. But you are right in that 99% of users would not do that. Imgflip knows this too, which is why they require an exclusive language. People want the memes to hit them fast, or they will move on to another site. You seem to really enjoy this site. I appreciate your willingness to stick to English while you are here. Just remember to keep it light and upbeat ( that's true even for the rest of us). Avoid sarcasm - it's too easy to muddle the translation and offend someone. And they won't tell you what you did wrong, you just won't hear from them again. Be generous and playful with the compliments. Always leave someone feeling better about themselves after having interacted with you. And hey, while nobody is here to learn a foreign language, the occasional phrase of interest can be funny and enlightening (just provide the translation because google may not say what you had in mind anyway!) ;-)
Thank you for your advice. I try to follow it, but sometimes it's hard to be generous and playful, when people post extremely narrow-minded or even dangerous stuff (like the gif SubjectMatters once posted - that was before your time - that made me really mad at him so that I forgot all playfulness and generosity towards him, since it almost got me in real danger. But I realize that my reaction was nevertheless a mistake).
"Mich schmerzt das Lied, ich weiß nicht wie" this is a quote from "Die Miestersinger von Nürnberg" (Richard Wagner). Eva says it in the second act. It means "This song hurts me, I don't know how". And altmeisterlich means "according to the way of the old masters."
i.imgflip.com/1nrl86.gif (click to show)