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- Topic: Romanian >
- "Voi vizitați seara."
5 Comments
Well, having thought about it for a while, I'm inclined to say that it's indeed incorrect. Kind of. Leaving aside the fact that the Romanian sentence sounds weird because a vizita (to visit) is a transitive verb so you usually need to specify WHAT you are visiting, the sentence refers most likely to something habitual. This means that the best translation should not use the continuous form. I guess that this habitual aspect would be more clear if the English translation used plural, as in "You visit in the evenings", but I don't know if that's standard.
The reason I'm saying your version is incorrect is because it seems to convey the same message as "You're visiting this evening", as in a future plan, and that's not what the Romanian sentence is about.
I thought about that too - that it could imply a future tense by phrasing it that way. However, though I don't think it would be very common, I can see someone wanting to say "You're visiting in the evening," in the present tense. How would that be translated differently?
Depends on the meaning of that sentence, which is a bit unclear to me without a context. Here are a few ways in which I would interpret it:
- You're visiting (me) this evening. = Voi mă vizitați în seara asta.
- You're visiting (some place(s)) this evening. = Voi vizitați (...) în seara asta.
- You visit (me) in/during the evening. = Voi mă vizitați seara.
- You visit (some place(s)) in/during the evening. = Voi vizitați (...) seara.
I'm not sure if this answers your question. The confusion arises from the fact that in English, "in the evening" can mean this evening or evening time in general; whereas in Romanian, "seara" can only mean evening time in general. That, and the stuff I said earlier about "a vizita" being transitive in Romanian, hence the "(...)" in the examples above.
Ah, okay. The fact that "seara" means only evening time in general makes more sense. Thanks!
