恐怕

[Pedroski]

人类最糟糕发明排行榜。

它的发明者恐怕做梦也想不到，汽车现在居然被称为“城市生活中的流动杀手。

恐怕 = ‘perhaps' 吗？

也可以写 ‘恐怕在梦中也想不到’ 吗？

[MPhillips]

Here I think 恐怕 is best translated as "I doubt" or "It's doubtful"--"I doubt its inventor ever dreamed ... " I'll leave your second question to a native speaker.

[Pedroski]

Thanks. I've got to stop relying on what the dictionary gives me, as it often doesn't fit.

[hellochinese]

恐怕 is an adverb, which means "something negative is very likely to happen" and is often used at beginning of a sentence of a situation. For example:

 

恐怕明天的天气仍然会很糟糕。

恐怕咱们的活动得取消了。

恐怕他们已经知道了真相。

[陳德聰]

I'd treat 恐怕 as more like "probably" in this case, but because of the negation within its scope you can get "doubt", where "probably never" and "I doubt that ever" are similar though I prefer the former.

For the second question... I would say it's possible but not preferable.

[MPhillips]

I agree that "probably never" is better here since it saves the translator from having to recast the sentence into the first person with "I doubt", to retain the third person you'd need to use "it's doubtful" which sounds kind of clunky.