- Forum >
- Topic: Hungarian >
- "The secretary sits down onto…
"The secretary sits down onto the desk."
Translation:A titkárnő felül az íróasztalra.
12 Comments
Asztal = table, iroasztal = desk.
I think the authors of this course should focus on simple basic expressions and situations and add some more elaborate sentences years later. Keep it simple in Beta and try to hold on to those dedicated students who are still hanging in - we gonna lose most with poor English translations and way too extended complicated sentences.
The poor English translations are the biggest problem for me. Also, inconsistent translations, where a word is accepted in one exercise and rejected in another one that is very similar. Then, in order to get through the section, I have to write a bad English sentence or else I'll be stuck in the section forever!
I do like the long and complex sentences because they're challenging, and they give me a good idea of sentence structure. I take your point, though, about people dropping out because of it.
If you lead up to a complicated sentence with similar simple ones so you'll have a chance to learn how to construct them then I'd say OK, a few longer ones are fine. However, in our course here we are faced with super long, sometimes artificially complicated ones right off the gate ... just to fail us? Maybe to show off how smart and witty they are, who knows. The bottom lines is that many of us simply can't accomplish their goal by getting tangled in these webs.
Why does a table suddenly become a desk? There is no question in my mind at this point that people with less English skill are having their English undermined in order to learn Hungarian with this course.
Isn't this rather " a titkarno leul az irasztalra" right? Sits down sounds like downward motion and onto the desk refers to the upper surface, I would think. So, although an unusual way to position herself, I think our girl decided to put her bum on the top of that desk this time.
"move into a sitting position" is pretty much always "sit down" in English in my experience, even if you start off lower than the sitting surface -- perhaps because the last few centimetres of the movement are nearly always down, even if you had to move upwards first.
As I understand it, Hungarian is different here: it looks at the motion as a whole, and so you have kiül, felül, leül, ... depending on the relative positions of the start and end of the motion.
So since the desk is higher than the secretary's bottom, she would felül there in Hungarian even if she would "sit down on it" in English.
("sit up onto it", which I think I have also seen on this course, sounds odd to me. "sit up" for me is only "change your sitting posture so that your back is straighter", not a motion towards a sitting position at a higher point.)
The bottom line is: "felul" is NOT ever in no circumstances translated to "sit down." fel = up, le = down
I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this.
English is not "Hungarian with funny words" (nor vice versa), so you can't always translate 1:1.
I would say "the secretary sits on the desk." I realize that is ambiguous, as it could mean "the secretary is sitting on the desk" (a static, ongoing action) or the dynamic action of changing from a standing to a sitting position. It's true that English uses "sit down" to indicate the second meaning, but since she has to get up there before sitting, I don't think many people would actually say that. Unless this was a very tall secretary. So I think "the secretary sits on the desk" (as a perfective action) is valid and should be accepted along with "... sits down on the desk."
Another problem here: in the multiple choice question: the system wants "two" choices: one with iróasztalra, and one with asztalra. I checked only the first one as I believe that asztal is a table, not a desk. Reported.
Right: Szergej & Sherm - they should only accept "desk" for "iroasztal," glad you reported it.
