"Oni zapominają, że są w muzeum."

Translation: They forget that they are in a museum.

[Tom873317]

I said "at the museum" and was marked wrong. Is there a better preposition than w for "at"? In English, in/at seem interchangeable in this case. I am still pretty bad at Polish prepositions, though.

[Oliver536732]

While I agree with you that in/at are somewhat interchangeable in English, the way I read this sentence is: (they are being loud) they forget they are in a museum. Your sentence "they forget (that) they are at the museum" almost sounds like they've suffered amnesia or some form of dementia and have forgotten where they are. I don't know for sure what the Polish sentence is trying to communicate and even if "at" could be perceived as ambiguous, I still think it should be accepted.

[Jellei]

Added 'at'.

Interesting examples :)

[chb0lingo]

I put 'they forgot they are in a museum' and got dinged too.

[JerryMcCarthy99]

This sentence uses present tense in the Polish; therefore the English needs to be in present tense too.

[Dan597269]

It may be a glitch, i was dinged also and reported same 4.22.19

[JerryMcCarthy99]

Sorry; what may be a glitch?

[Jellei]

Your comment isn't under any specific comment so it doesn't tell us what you put there, but you used the word "dinged" just like chb0lingo did, and chb0lingo's answer had "forgot", which is wrong here because the Polish sentence uses Present Tense.

[Dan597269]

Hi Jellei, after reviewing my answer I used mixed my tenses...thank you, the word "dinged" is used as a slang, at least where I live, for small mistakes or things I/we do wrong wrong, like mixing tenses...thanks again

[JerryMcCarthy99]

Also, a "ding" can be a (usually small) dent in, for example, a car, after a very minor road traffic accident....

[richard.birks]

The sentence in English just sounds weird.

You might tell someone: Don't forget your keys.
And you might respond: Thanks, I tend to forget them!

But if you were behaving in a way unfitting to the quiet solitude of a museum, you'd form the sentence thus:

They forgot that they were in a museum.

I got the translation right, but the English feels like fingernails down a blackboard to me... It's just not right somehow.

[Jellei]

I see your point. Well, it sounds perfectly natural to me in Polish, but I see how it feels weird in English... I think it might be best to just remove this sentence.

[Musicalantonio]

I agree. I translated it (incorrectly) to past tense "forgot" at least three times before figuring out why it was getting marked wrong (because it's present tense "forget" in Polish). I agree it feels very wrong to say this sentence in present tense in English.