"Мы смотрим, как девочка играет на скрипке."
Translation:We are watching the girl playing the violin.
40 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I can always add a reject message first. :)
The important thing is to not lose the meaning. For example, both "The ball is in the box" and "The ball is on the box" are correct English sentences but they aren't both adequate translations of «Мяч лежит в коробке». "Travel" and "make a journey" are similar but, probably, not in "Light makes a journey in a straight line unless affected by a gravitational field of a large mass".
It is a set structure. To express how you listen to or look at (hear, see) someone's actions as they do them, you use смотреть or слушать (видеть, слышать) and then use unstressed как to connect a clause. Usual Russian rules of sequence of tenses work (i.e. the verb will usually be in the present tense, because the verb of the clause is understood to be relative to the verb in the main clause)
If you need the literal interpretation of как badly, you use context to support your point or emphasise it in your speech (rewording will also help, naturally).. Think of this: there is a huge difference betwen closely watching someone, who is playing the violin (cops do it if they suspect somehing fishy's going on), and watching someone play violin (audience does this). Yet in English "We are watching the girl playing the violin" means both.
Admittedly, these sentences in the course are sort of artificial. In real life "X watched Y do something" would appear as a part of a larger story («Что ты делал?» — «(Я) просто слушал, как она поёт»). Unfortunately, long sentences are no fun on Duolingo, so we keep it simple when we can.
interesting... now I see. It seems that my question was more related to Portuguese than English, I guess...
so lets say I'm a violinist as well, but she have done a sound I have never heard before with the violin. I want to see how she does it so I could reproduce it. I'm watching specifically how she plays the violin. I mean, her technique. the chords, etc.
How would that be in Russian, if any different from the original?
Thanks
1068
So "we watch/are watching as the girl plays the violin" is incorrect? And what about "we watch/are watching how the girl plays/is playing the violin"? How would these be said differently, if they are not correct translations here?
"We are watching the girl play the violin" might be slightly better than "We are watching the girl playing the violin". The latter sentence is ambiguous: it could mean we are watching the girl who is playing the violin, as opposed to the girl who is playing the cello. "We are watching how the girl plays the violin" is a grammatical English sentence, but it means that we are either evaluating her technique or watching in order to learn to play ourselves, not simply "We are watching the girl (as she is) playing the violin".