Search results for 'tag:Translation tag:Definite articles' matching tags 'Translation' and 'Definite articles'

Re: Another little question concerning the translation of SH

Huevos — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:11:59 GMT

Ant_222
I don't want to omit the article before "grey rocks". Is it possible?

Yes, it's possible but it changes the meaning. Use the definite article where the noun is already known to the listener/reader or has been introduced in a prior sentence.

Re: the Czech Republic

Winpoj — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 10:58:46 GMT

Well, I am not a native speaker of English but I happen to be Czech too and, from your English version, I can see almost exactly what you have tried to translate (vykon statni/verejne spravy..., right?). That normally means that the translation is too verbatim and, frankly, wrong.
"With a view to" means "with the intention of" or "in anticipation of", which makes no sense in your title.
The Czech Republic is normally written with the definite article, although I have seen it used without it. In a legal/official text like yours you should no doubt keep it.
Perhaps something like this might sound better: "The Criminal Law Aspects of the Czech Republic's Public Service Function with a Special Emphasis on the Customs Administration".
But I'll leave it to the more qualified to give you a more authoritative answer.

Hodne zdaru!

the Czech Republic

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 09:30:58 GMT

Please, could you tell me if I translated the title of my paper correctly.

Do I have to use there the definite article in front of Czech Repuplic?

This is my translation:

1) Criminal Law Aspects of Execution of the Public Administration in the Czech Republic with a View to the Czech Customs Administration

or what about?: focusing on (or Focusing?) (instead of with a View to..)

2) Criminal Law Aspects of Execution of the Public Administration in the Czech Republic focusing on the Czech Customs Adminstration

or what about?: Executing the Public Administration (omitting of?) instead of Execution of?

3) Criminal Law Aspects of Executing (omitting of?) the Puplic Administration in the Czech Republic focusing on the Czech Customs Administration

Which possibility sounds best?

Thank you for your answers Mowgli

Re: Star Heritage:Translation, Part II

Ant_222 — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 13:40:11 GMT

Yeah, that was a bit more helpful. Thanks again, Goodman.

I understood my simple mistakes (was->were, vigors->vigor,...) after your first post. Now I have understood a few more ones.

Here are the problems that I still haven't resolved:

Sorry for maybe stupid questions, but even a correction given, I sometimes don't understand it and ask for an explanation.

«The swamp had been left behind. I was on a field overgrown with grass. Now I distinctly saw strange metal constructins (metal construction is a structures. Not sure what you tried to depict in the preceding sentense !) in the east.»

You wrote: «metal construction is a structures». I don't understand it. What's the problem with «metal constructions»? And which sentence did you refer to as the «preceding sentense»? «I was on...» or «Now I distinctly...»?

«In the north I was amazed to find an _uncomely_ (choice of word) path going across the swamp.»
Is one of the below alteratives appropriate: imperceptible, unremarkable, unnoticable? I wanted to say that the path was difficult to note (spot).

«I stood at the territory of an abandoned factory. Everything here had grown over with grass. (Everything here had been covered by the over-grown vegetation / grass)»

Ok, but maybe «was covered by overgrown vegetation»?
I think the Past Pefect and the definite article are not needed. Am I right?
And is «to be grown over with» incorrect? I am asking it becasue I derived this phrase from my dictionary.

«..._addle_ (not familiar with is word) wooden crates»
As an unexperienced non-native speaker, I have troubles with word choice. So, I commented in the previous post: «(I) Don't know a word to express what happens to wood with time, especially when it's in a humid environment.» Then I listed some words, one of which I thought to be suitable: decomposed, decayed, corrupt... Which adjective can be applied to wood?

«To the north of the factory were rocks, (and ) the swamps stretched (stretching) to the south.»
«... and the swamps stretching to the south» â is this what you propose? Maybe you didn't understand what I wanted to express here:
To the north of the factory were rocks. To the south of it were the swamps. In order to be not repetitive I said the second in this way: «The swamps strethed to [in] the south». Maybe replacing «to» to «in» will do?

«It seems (tense, seemed), that it was a weapon factory.»
Yes, I have read that in your previous post and wrote (in my previous post) why I used Present Simple here. It's not so easy to me to deal with tenses in a text adventure... Maybe I'll ask this in a seperate thread...

«I passed the factory by. It was (silently uncomfortable) _silent and comfortless_ here.»
Silently uncomforable? «Silent and comfortless» doesn't sound right to you? Why? Of course it can be a sort of the feeling of the language, so you may not know the answer...

Re: Looking for an accepted grammatical explanation.

Pinenut — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 21:28:25 GMT

Paco2004 wrote:
"The farther you move away from Earth's center, the less the pull of gravity becomes"

This "the" was originally "thy", i.e., the instrumental case of the nominative definite article "the" and was used to mean "by means of". Now this "the" is lexically classed as an adverb and OED's grammarians take it that the first "the" means "by how much" and the second "the" means "by so much"
       "By how much farther you move away from Earth's center, by so much less the pull of gravity becomes."
The oldest use of this construct appeared in King Alfred's translation of Gregory's Regula Pastorialis scripted in 897: "ÃÃ¦t her Ã°y mara wisdom on londe wÃ¦re, Ã°y we ma geÃ°eoda cuÃ°on"

On the other hand, a British grammarian Quirk explains "the â¦ the â¦" in his CGEL as paring subordinators to make up a proportional relative clause similar to "as â¦ so â¦".
       "As you move away from Earth's center farther, so the pull of gravity become less."
Suppose the paired "the"s could be used independently, and suppose
       The pull of gravity becomes less the farther you move away from Earth's center.
be grammatical, then it would be paraphrased like:
       "As you move away from Earth's center farther, the pull of gravity become less."
It makes sense, but sounds somewhat weaker in the sense of proportionality than "the ... the â¦" or "as â¦ so â¦"

paco

I am somewhat satisfied with this explanation. It at least tries to explain the usage of "the" in 'the farther'.

Re: Looking for an accepted grammatical explanation.

paco2004 — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 20:33:09 GMT

"The farther you move away from Earth's center, the less the pull of gravity becomes"

This "the" was originally "thy", i.e., the instrumental case of the nominative definite article "the" and was used to mean "by means of". Now this "the" is lexically classed as an adverb and OED's grammarians take it that the first "the" means "by how much" and the second "the" means "by so much"
       "By how much farther you move away from Earth's center, by so much less the pull of gravity becomes."
The oldest use of this construct appeared in King Alfred's translation of Gregory's Regula Pastorialis scripted in 897: "ÃÃ¦t her Ã°y mara wisdom on londe wÃ¦re, Ã°y we ma geÃ°eoda cuÃ°on"

On the other hand, a British grammarian Quirk explains "the â¦ the â¦" in his CGEL as paring subordinators to make up a proportional relative clause similar to "as â¦ so â¦".
       "As you move away from Earth's center farther, so the pull of gravity become less."
Suppose the paired "the"s could be used independently, and suppose
       The pull of gravity becomes less the farther you move away from Earth's center.
be grammatical, then it would be paraphrased like:
       "As you move away from Earth's center farther, the pull of gravity become less."
It makes sense, but sounds somewhat weaker in the sense of proportionality than "the ... the â¦" or "as â¦ so â¦"

paco

Re: Plural Nouns without Quantifiers

Roro — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 12:13:52 GMT

Hello Mr Ruzinsky, let me continue.
As you pointed out,

Sentences using Bare Plurals, that is common nouns without quantifiers, are vague.

It's true. But sentences with definite /indefinite articles, too, have two (or several) usages. For example:

[1] John gave Peter a book.

The existential quantifier is well suited as a translation of such a. ?x [book(x)...]

[2] A whale is a mammal.

On the other hand we cannot capture the meaning if we use the existential quantifier in translating [2].
We should use the universal quantifier.
?x [whale(x)?mammal(x)]
And [2] is called the Generic usage of the indefinite article a.

[3] He who is late is to be punished.

?x [late(x)?punished(x)]

[4] Someone who is late is to be punished.

?x [late(x)?punished(x)] (=[3])

[5] Someone, who is late, is to be punished.

?x [late(x) ? punished(x)]

Boys who are late are to be punished.

?x [(boy(x) ? late(x))?punished(x)]

And, there's some similarity between these generic usage and Bare Plurals' usage.
Please bear in mind that what we can do is to classify usages and to give them logical forms.
That is, we don't intend to distinguish the meaning of Bare Plurals in general, from other quantified nouns'.

This is a kind of preliminary remarks. I take a short rest and will continue. If you have any question, or... if I've misunderstood your question, please tell me so, I'll do my best.
With my best regards,

Re: Pls correct my translation homework

abbie1948 — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 12:57:21 GMT

Hi Lyn,

Here is one of my posts from a previous thread on the topic of articles. It might help.

Posted: 03-30-2005 12:26 PM

The correct use of articles is acknowledged to be one of the most difficult points of English grammar, so don't be despondant Ali; mistakes don't usually matter too much, as you will still be understood.

First, we don't usually use an article with plural or uncountable nouns. e.g. "there are lots of fish in the sea" NOT "Lots of the fish in the sea". "I love cats" NOT "I love the cats".

"The" is a definite article, as Jazz says. We use it for the following:

* to refer to something which has already been mentioned

"Ali posted a question to English Forum; THE question was about articles."

*when both the speaker and listener know what is being talked about, even if it has not been mentioned before.

"Have you done the housework?"

* when we are speaking about a particular person or object
"The man over there is a famous film actor."

* objects which are regarded as unique
"The sun" "the moon" "the sea" "The world"

* with adjectives which refer to a whole group of people
"The English" "The Americans"

* names of geographical areas
"The Indian Ocean" "the Sahara Desert"

and finally
* with groups of years
"the seventies" "the 1800's"

a/an are indefinite articles.

We use 'a' when the word which follows begins with a consonant. (i.e. any letter whch is not a vowel),
"a book" "a film"

We also use 'a' in front of a word which begins with vowels which sound like a consonant (e.g. 'u' & 'eu' sound like 'y', so we say "a university", "a euphoric experience"

We use 'an' when the word which follows begins with a vowel (a,e,i,o,u).

"an apple" "an exciting time"

As Jazz says, sometimes 'h' isa silent letter, i.e. we don't pronounce it, and we use 'an' in front of these words. I'm afraid these just have to be learned, but there aren't many of them. (e.g. "an hour" "an honest boy" "an hotel".)

Indefinite articles are used:

* When we talk about something for the first time.
"lets go to see a film"

* when we talk about particular groups of people (don't confuse this with the groups mentioned above)

e.g.
*jobs "a doctor"
*nationalities "an Englishwoman",
*religions " a Muslim"
*musical instruments "a piano" (but, if we are describing an action we say "he is playing THE piano", because we are speaking about one particular piano)
*names of days "I go to town on a Monday"
*with numbers "a hundred pounds" "a thousand and one uses"
*when we talk about one particular thing or person "she has a beautiful silver bracelet", " a thief stole it"

Ok - that's a fairly long explanation! Now how about some practice? Go to this site

http://a4esl.org/

Click on English grammar quizes, easy, then look at level 2 "Articles". You will find some exercises there to help you.

Re: Pls correct my translation homework

lynn1981 — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 04:39:36 GMT

abbie, thank you so much for your help and your words, in fact , I am always not confident in my translation work, so far I can't manage to use definite articles"the" correctly ,which has troubled me a lot since i began to learn english a few years ago. :(

do you have msn ,maybe we can chat on msn.
my msn: lynn19810902@hotmail.com

anyhow, thx again!

Re: He has a good English

MrPedantic — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 01:21:27 GMT

Hello all

'He has a tolerable English' is possible, but quaint. A more likely context would be e.g.

1. 'This essay is written in a tolerable English.'

The purpose of the indefinite article here is to give the sense of 'a particular kind of', or 'a particular brand of', i.e. here, 'this essay is written in a kind of English that is more or less comprehensible, but not the English of a native speaker'.

However, if we say:

2. 'This essay is written in tolerable English',

we mean 'English, the language as it is generally spoken'.

Sentence (1) implies that there is something distinctive (either good or bad) about the style of English. Sentence (2) has no such implication.

The commonest way of commenting on someone's grasp of English is to say 'he speaks good English' or 'his English is good'. 'He has good English' isn't really idiomatic; it has the air of a translation.

MrP