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- Topic: Russian >
- "Вера — администратор кафе."
30 Comments
Not sure this is a very natural title in English - is this like a manager?
I've had a job entitled administrator. I paid salaries and sent out bills, etc. Not in a café but it is a thing.
Yeah I totally didn't mean to write it off as a job, I just had a bit of trouble picturing what it involved in this (apparently very well organised) cafe :)
"Vera is the café's manager" is an accepted translation, fwiw. (As is "Vera is the café manager.")
Where is "an" indicated? Just assumed? Because I wrote "Vera is administrator of the cafe" and it is incorrect.
1658
It shouldn't be. You'd be safer writing "the administrator", but you're far from wrong in leaving off "the"
Why isn't kafe before administrator? It's an adjective? Is one of those words in a genitive or possessive form?
кафе is in Genitive, though, you cannot really tell because all its forms are the same. Anyway, кафе goes second because this is how you use Genitive modifiers:
- хозяин ресторана = an owner of a the restaurant
- теория относительности = the theory of relativity
- бутылка молока = a bottle of milk
- коробка конфет = a box of candy/chocolates
Пожалуйста, господин хозяин ресторана, дайте мне бутылку молока, коробку конфет, и объяснение теории относительности.
This sentence. This is why I joined Duo. (Thank you, Shady Arc.)
Thanks Shady_arc for the clarification. So, I assume the genitive here indicates possession, kind of "the administrator of (or pertaining to) the café"
Why isn't it кафя. That looks so wrong, but I am just following the rules on Genitive that I got... не знаю
That's the thing with neuter loanwords. They only have one form (if the word is a direct borrowing without any wrapping with Russian suffixes). The same goes for loanwords that do not match any declension patterns or feminine loanwords that do not end in -а/я (e.g. names like Маргарет).
The difference is, neuter-looking loanwords do seem to have the same endings as Russian neuter nouns but end up indeclinable.
I had totally forgotten that кафе is indeclinable (like кофе), so I was really confused about why it wasn't кафя. Just thought I'd post this to validate anybody else's confusion. :)
This question requires me to type é with the accent aigu... If I plain type "Vera is the cafe's administrator." it is incorrect
If that your exact answer? It is accepted. In fact, every single answer accepts café and cafe, as well as "diner" and "coffee shop" (e.g., a line may look like Vera is [the/a/ ] manager [of/at/in] [the/a] [cafe/café/diner/coffee shop]. ).
I copy-pasted what was listed as the correct answer and substituted "e" for "é" and it didn't accept it. I wish I had seen this response earlier so that I could be more sure of exactly which variations I had tried.
- 409
It is, though you can choose an indefinite article (an) or a definite article (the).
Somewhat related to this... your sentence is better expressed as, "English isn't such an article compulsive language."
- 1658
Or: "English isn't so article-compulsive a language." (The hyphen really should be there, as the combined noun and adjective form a kind of compound ajective.)
It's is perfectly good English to say, "Vera is café administrator" (no hyphen in this sentence, since it's two nouns).
An article is not needed in the English translation. "Vera is administrator at the cafe" audiophile be correct.
I'm not happy with this question not taking my answer either... I first wrote "Vera is the administrator of a cafe" and now "Vera is the cafe's administrator"... I think that it requires the possessive "cafe's" or "of the cafe" since it is genitive case, although I agree that if we treat administrator as a job title your translation works.
- 1658
In "administrator of the cafee" (without "the" in front of "administrator), the word "administrator is both/either a title or a descriptor. Using two or more nouns in a row in English is common, turning all of them except the last one into adjectives - or sometimes titles, e.g., "the boy scout troop member".
- 1658
lauraelspeth1 is correct, so I don't understand why the comment received several down-votes.
There are probably plenty of English native speakers who look askance at that translation. Might not be available in their dialect, so they've never been exposed to it at all. Might be something they think only a non-native speaker would say. Might consider it annoying "biz-speak" with its unbecoming disdain for articles of all sorts. Might be native speakers of other languages who recall from their English textbooks that professions always require articles in English, unlike in their native language, so seeing a violation of the textbook rule makes them presume it must be an error.
Or it could just be that there's no poster with the handle "audiophile" in this thread, so what's the last line supposed to mean?
