"O importante não é o que você faz, mas sim o modo que o faz."
Translation:The important thing is not what you do but how you do it.
23 Comments
Would "It's not important what you do, but how you do it" not be acceptable? Where is the word "thing" in the Portuguese text? or is it just implied?
The "thing" comes from the fact that "O importante" is a noun, not an adective. But the meaning is the same.
English doens't seem to have a noun "the important". Then you complete with other things like "the important one", "the important thing".
Adjective version: "O que você faz não é importante, mas sim o modo que o faz". (But this could somehow offend the listener, because you say directly that his work is not important)
Another: "Não é importante o que você faz, mas...."
Thanks, helpful! It's confusing in more than these languages.. In my other native language, we'd say "the importantest [most important] is...".
That's very well possible! Does the "mais" then add emphasis?
However, in Swedish there is only one way to say it, and then different or alternatives in each of the other languages I know or am learning. Confusing, but always is.
The "mais" says "the most important", meaning other things might be important too, but this is more.
Saying just "o importante" tends to mean the other things aren't important.
In the Scandinavian languages, the most common would probably be to use the superlative form of adjectives to replace the noun. This is similar to English "The most important is to...", which in turn translates to PT "o mais importante é".
Hey, we have that in Dutch too, although there are some other roughly equivalent phrases as well.
I agree. In this case, it should be accepted. In English, this makes perfect sense and is actually more natural to say.
It´s a good option. Report it. We´re building this DL thing, after all.
What does sim mean here? I just omitted it, to make sense of the sentence in English.
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"mas sim" = "mas". Sometimes to stress the difference between opposite points in a coordinated sentence, people use "sim" after "mas" as the opposite to the "não" previously mentioned.
I would say the closest translation to English of the "sim" here is 'indeed' or 'rather':
"The most important isn't what you do, but rather how you do it."
I've seen it translated in other contexts as ‘but on the contrary’ and ‘but indeed’. In this sentence that starts with ‘the most important thing is’, the extra emphasis feels out of place however.
This question highlights a weakness in duolingo. Although you can completely understand an expression like this and can translate it accurately, matching the exact words used in the 'correct' translation is a lottery. The focus of attention then becomes the limitations of the software. You might consider an override button, where a user can say 'I know this is correct'. Might mess up your stats a bit but will deliver a less frustrating user experience.
Well, I have got round this problem by typing out anything awkward and keeping it in a file open by the side of the browser for each lesson.
