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The sentence "Ich war dir egal", is translated in English as "You didn't care about me". Why in the translation "Ich" and "dir" exchange its position? Why it not translated as "I didn't care about you"?

In this, "dir" is the dative object. And dative objects are the recipient of the action (to/for whom action is taken). Then, how "dir" become the one who is taking action instead of receiving action?

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    This question is similar to: Dative case pronoun position. If you believe it’s different, please edit the question, make it clear how it’s different and/or how the answers on that question are not helpful for your problem.
    – Carsten S
    Commented Sep 19 at 8:46
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    " is translated in English as": By whom?
    – Carsten S
    Commented Sep 19 at 8:47
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    It's simply not true that "dative objects are the recipient of the action". It's true in many cases, and as a beginner you might have been taught that as way of getting started on the case system, but it's a complex and nuanced system that will take a lot of study to master, not something you can summarize in one line. Consider: "Das Kleid gefällt mir."/"I like the dress." "Bitte helfen Sie mir."/"Please help me.", "Mir ist heiß."/"I'm hot." All of these involve the dative in ways that don't follow the "recipient of action" idea, at least from an English speaker's POV.
    – RDBury
    Commented Sep 19 at 14:52

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The sentence Ich war egal. broken down to its meaning of each single word can be understood as I was of no matter.. In English you would say I didn't matter.. Now you can extend it "to whom" I did not matter, and it translates to Ich war dir egal.. I hope this non-scientific explanation makes it clear to you.

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In this, "dir" is the dative object. And dative objects are the recipient of the action (to/for whom action is taken). Then, how "dir" become the one who is taking action instead of receiving action?

First off, "dir" is not the one taking any action.

But let us start at the beginning:

The sentence in question is of the form:

Ich war [attribute].

"egal" is an Adjektiv and hence an attribute. There is no other "action" involved than "war", which is Präteritum of "sein" (to be). The construction is the same as:

Ich war reich.
Ich war gesund.
Ich war jung.

and so on. Some attributes can be "isotropic" (e.g. if you are young, you are young in every direction), but some aren't: a house could be "open" in one direction but be "closed" in the other. There must be a way to express such things and exactly this is the case here:

Ich war egal. (in every regard, "omnidirectional", so to say)
Ich war dir egal. (only for you, others might value me).

The difference to "you didn't care about me" is - as I have explained at length here - that "to [not] care" indeed is an action, expressed by a verb which, in turn, has indeed an object. This is not the case with the German sentence, which describes the same fact by an attribute. German lacks a Verb meaning the same as "to not care about" in English, English, on the other hand, doesn't have an adjective/adverb with the meaning of "egal".

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German Dative is a case best understood as addressing a receiver. In its widest sense, much wider as in English.

In ich war dir egal, the receiver is "Du". The received object is the feeling of non-interest.

This is what is called a dativus judicantis in Latin (which is very likely the origin of the German form), and expresses a self-inflicted judgement on a fact (which can be considered "the thing" that is received.

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