"I numeri del primo semestre non sono belli."
Translation:The numbers of the first semester are not pretty.
22 Comments
I cannot think of anything better, but previously "i gradi" was used for grades. Also English speakers would not use "pretty"
English speakers would use "pretty" but perhaps not when talking about grades (mainly because I've never heard grades referred to as numbers). I have heard "the numbers aren't pretty" quite a lot when business people are talking about profits, customer numbers and the like. I suspect it's referring to numbers of students rather than grades.
I'm a native speaker of midwest US English, and I've often heard "not pretty" or "not very pretty" used to refer to financial numbers, grades, and even medical test results. I have only heard it in the negative, though, never if the number referred to is good. So while you can say "I got my grades today, and they aren't pretty," you would not say "I got my grades today, and they are pretty."
It's colloquial, but not at all uncommon, and most native speakers would understand it immediately, at least in this part of the country.
"The numbers of the first semester are not good" was accepted, It's a much better translation than "pretty".
I''m thinking it's about grades too, but maybe its enrolments, so the sentence could be from a worried university administrator. After all we also have gradi and voti to mean grades....
American speakers say "aren't pretty" (or ain't) to mean that something is bad.
I like that. I can imagine a worried administrator saying that, even in the UK.
In English we'd be more likely to say 'The numbers FOR the first term are not good'
Along with the examples already listed, "pretty" can be used ironically. A teacher looking at a list of very bad grades: "Now there's a pretty sight." I imagine this applies to the UK, too. "Pretty" used ironically in regard to some kind of mess.
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Thanks. That's a good example of the ironic use of "pretty" in the affirmative.
in english you would say the numbers for the first term, but we are learning italian so i am assuming that's how you would say it in italian?
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As a British English speaker, "marks" was my natural translation for "numeri"
I agree. An English speaker in England would not say 'pretty' here. It's American English.
I agree that "for" is better than "of" in translating this sentence. The word "semester" is commonly used in the US to mean half a year of college, but "term" is also used, perhaps more informally, and allowing divisions other than halves. A quarter or a trimester (three make up a school year) could be a term. In primary and secondary school, I am used to hearing "marking period," which usually specifies a quarter of a school year. This word is sometimes replaced with "term," too. I am wondering how flexible the Italian word "semestre" is in accommodating these different possibilities. Perhaps schools in Italy have less variety in the structuring of the year? I also like the idea of translating "i numeri" as "the marks." This has a distinctly British tinge, but Americans hear about getting a mark on an assignment sometimes, too, though that usage seems to be getting rarer, and it is characteristically in the singular in the US. For example, "What was your mark on the paper?" As so often happens with Duolingo exercises, the lack of context allows the sentence to have many meanings. "The numbers" might mean the attendance totals for the semester, for instance, or scores on pretests, or sales at the cafeteria, or total disciplinary actions. Schools keep track of many different kinds of numbers!
