Pirin wrote:To get to the meaning of
"กลายเป็นปัจจัยที่ ๕ ของคนไทยไปแล้ว สำหรับโทรศัพท์มือถือแบบ 'สมาร์ตโฟน' เรียกว่าทุกวันนี้แทบจะมีกันทุกคน ตั้งแต่เด็กเล็กไปจนถึงคนเฒ่าคนแก่ แถมยังได้รับความนิยมมากขึ้นเรื่อย ๆ เพราะแต่ละรุ่นพัฒนาเทคโนโลยีมากขึ้น สวนทางกับราคาที่ยิ่งต่ำลง ๆ"
one needs to have some knowledge of the collocation in Thai as well as the different styles of composition. Then in translation, one also needs to reproduce the meaning of the text that one gets in another language.
This is just to say that when one doesn't understand the gist of a piece of text, one tends to translate it literally. Doing so means that some particular meanings or connotations expressed or implied in the text are not included; otherwise, some particular meanings or connotations are slightly altered.
Thanks for that Pirin but it doesn't solve our problems. As learners we would like to be able to compose a piece of Thai text for ourselves so the "collocation' of words has to agree with their meaning and role in a sentence.
In your translation you have made the topic the smart phone which in the Thai is introduced after the preposition สำหรับ which I understand shows that the following noun is one facet of the main topic. So where is that main topic?
กลายเป็นปัจจัยที่ ๕ ของคนไทย since it comes first might as well come first in English.
" Changed into the fifth necessity of life for Thais. As for the 'smart phone'".
If the 'verb- กลายเป็น had a subject' The Internet', 'mobile phone network' or similar สำหรับ would make sense to me.
David has 'it' but what is 'it'?
The fact that there is no subject makes me wonder why the writer has put สำหรับ there.
I can accept that since this is a magazine article we shouldn't try to make sense of it but because it makes sense to you and the writer we need to try to fill that gap in our knowledge.
A separate question is: What do you see as the meaning of "เรียกว่า" ?