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- "There are policemen standing…
"There are policemen standing around those people."
Translation:Azok körül az emberek körül rendőrök állnak.
11 Comments
1995
We usually would say this like: "Rendőrők veszik körbe azokat az embereket." It's much more naturally.
"Azon/ama emberek körül rendőrök állnak." is also a good translation. And if the English sentence were "There are policemen standing around these people.", then "Ezen/eme emberek körül rendőrök állnak." would be the variant.
Are you a native speaker? It deserves a disclaimer for learners: Those options - though correct - sound literary and not used in everyday speech.
Yes, I'm a native speaker. Yes, it's true, those variants are rarely used in everyday speech but they are useful because: 1. they are shorter and perhaps more logical than the colloquial forms, 2. despite being literary they don't sound odd, but rather sofisticated (in my opinion)
If you insist on everyday speech, you should not insist on doubling of the postposition, either. Consider:
Azok az emberek körül rendörök állnak.
or
Azokat az embereket rendőrök veszik körül.
instead.
Do we really need to use the word," körül" (around) twice when translating this? Is -- "Rendörök álnak azok az emberek körül" -- not another correct response?
You don't necessarily have to use it twice, but that version is the most frequent way of saying it. What you wrote is not correct, but instead you could say "Rendőrök állnak azon emberek körül." which sounds a bit poetic, but it's much shorter.
As a native speaker, I wouldn't use the word körül twice, either, but use the variant you suggested. For me, it is completely acceptable.
- 460
Are ONLY policemen standing around those people, or only SOME of it? I could not understand the meaning in the English sentence and tried it with: Vannak rendörök, állva azokat körül az emberek körül. But it was marked wrong. Is it not better for understanding, to say: Policemen are standing around those people?
It's better indeed. Imagine there're some group of people and one of these groups is surrounded by policemen. The hungarian sentence you wrote is better this way: Rendőrök állják körül azokat az embereket. Or Rendőrök állnak az emberek körül.
