Please help me with this sentence...

   Share on Facebook  
JCDenton  #546164  Fri, 25 Jul 08 08:29 AM
Hi guys,

Can you please help me with the next sentence?

Context:  FBI agent wants to calm down the parents of the kid, which was kidnapped by the sex offender.

 

(agent)  : There are some reasons to be hopeful.
(mother of the
kidnapped kid) : What reasons?

(agent)  : The fact that this man bothered to change your son's appearance to dies his hair, to cut it. It shows that he's formed some kind of bound
with him. As disturbing as that is to hear, that works in our favor.

 

Please guys, can you please paraphrase that sentence for me ?

 

many thanks

Best Regards

JCD
 

  
Top 150 Contributor
Joined on Tue, Jul 3 2007
Europe
Regular Member (505)
Trusted Users
26TMNTJG2PG  #546202  Fri, 25 Jul 08 12:10 PM

Context:  FBI agent wants to calm down the parents of the kid, which who was kidnapped by the sex offender.


(agent)  : There are some reasons to be hopeful.
(mother of the
kidnapped kid) : What reasons?

(agent)  : The fact that this man bothered to change your son's appearance to dies  dye his hair, to cut it. It shows that he's formed some kind of bound bond
with him. As disturbing as that is to hear, that works in our favor.  Although the situation is upsetting, that development works in our favor.

  
Top 200 Contributor
Joined on Wed, Apr 23 2008
Full Member (266)
Mr Wordy  #546203  Fri, 25 Jul 08 12:16 PM

Context: An FBI agent wants ["tries" might be better here] to calm down the parents of the kid, which was a kid who has been kidnapped by the a sex offender.

(agent)  : There are some reasons to be hopeful.
(mother of the kidnapped kid) : What reasons?

(agent)  : The fact that this man bothered to change your son's appearance -- to dies dye his hair, to cut it. It shows that he's formed some kind of bound
bond with him. As disturbing as that is to hear, that it works in our favor.

The last sentence is fine to me after the minor change I suggested. Without knowing what you want the paraphrase to achieve, it's hard to know which of many possible alternatives to suggest. The simplest way of saying this is probably "That sounds disturbing, but actually it works in our favour". Being of a slightly less complicated grammatical construction, this is perhaps more likely to be said in real life (though the original could easily be said in real life too).

  
Top 75 Contributor
Joined on Tue, May 27 2008
Regular Member (960)
Proficient Speaker
Native British English speaker
JCDenton  #546299  Fri, 25 Jul 08 03:32 PM

Thank you guys for your help!

Best Regards

 

  
AddThis Feed Button RSS Feed: ESL Vocabulary and Idioms
© 2008 MediaCET Ltd.
Terms and Conditions & Terms of Service