This means something like: "What do YOU think it is?" in reference to an object; or "What do YOU think is going on" in reference to a situation. Что вы об этом думаете? sounds to me more like "what's your impression/opinion of this?" and that's not what this question means.

This is exactly what I meant. Russian voice-over artists translate it just like that Что вы думаете об этом? Or Что вы на это скажете? When a movie character referring to an object or to a situation

OK, if you say so. This usually comes up when there’s a crime and something happens that makes the investigators wonder if it has any connection to the crime at hand. For instance, they’re investigating someone they suspect of murder and when they go to his house to question him, they find him burnt up. Then one detective asks the other “what do you make of this?“ meaning “What kind of sense does this make/what impact does this have within the scope of our investigation?“ “ how does this relate to our investigation of the original crime?“

Exactly. But Russian language can be tricky to foreigners:) This is exactly how our voice over artists translate this phrase. “Что вы на это скажете” или “Что вы об этом думаете?” For example a detective referring to a dead body and using this phrase.But when our translators hear this “What do you think it is”? they translate it Что это по вашему такое?

it’s just our Russian language difficulties:/

So ignoring voiceovers and other sources, how do you personally interpret this in Russian pursuant to what I described?

Well I think it mostly depends on the situation. The example with detectives discovering a dead body of a murder suspect: If one of the detectives said that phrase pointing at the dead body I would interpret it as Что вы на это скажете?

Ok, thanks 🙏

You should add that as a translation too

Ok

It’s just difficult to explain. But these two Russian phrases Что вы об этом думаете? and Что вы на это скажете? They are pretty much equivalent in the situation described above. Tough Russian language:)

👍🏼

Two good variants!

I added lots of your translations to my words to learn list

Cool! And if you’re on VK, you can friend me in case you ever have any questions.

Awesome! Sent u a friend request

Got it!

👍🏻