"我们吃了十碗牛肉面，真饱！"
Translation:We ate ten bowls of beef noodles, we are so full!
53 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
"We ate ten bowls of beef noodles. We are really full!" is accepted now.
I answered "We ate ten bowls of beef noodles, really full!" and got it wrong because I didn't write "we're really full!" I realize this quiz cannot anticipate all possible answers, but my answer should have been scored as correct.
Aside from comma-separated sentences being bad English grammar, I don't think any native English speaker would ordinarily say "Really full!" (with an implied subject) in place of "We're really full!"
712
I think the sentences should match. The Chinese has two clauses separated by a comma but the English has the two clauses in two separate sentences. I get that the subject "我們" is implied for the “真飽”, but it's not a good way to write the sentence for learners.
A literal translation of the Chinese sentence into English as you want would be a comma splice according to English grammar without adding an "and". I personally enjoy how Duolingo is demonstrating the separate rules of grammar by showing sentences that do not have literal word for word translations, as I'm learning what's allowed & normal when composing Chinese sentences.
I never know what they mean by the commas between ideas. In English a period is used to separate sentences, but here the comma can be a "and" or "so" or it can be a full stop. Can someone explain?
- 1579
I'm no expert in Chinese, but I lived and taught in China for a number of years. In nearly all of the texts I have received (written in Mandarin) from my Chinese friends, they have used commas simply to separate ideas in a sentence rather than to join clauses as we do in English. So, the sentence as written in this exercise seems perfectly normal to me even though it would take some additional words to translate it correctly into English.
In English you need a conjunction, a semi colon or a colon to join two independent clauses, not a comma. Either that or you just have two separate sentences. However using a comma seems to be normal in Chinese judging by these Duo exercises.
Using just a comma to join two independent clauses in English is called a comma splice and is grammatically incorrect, although people often use the equivalent structure in conversation because in conversation people often do not care about sentence structure.
For "so full", aren't we supposed to use "太饱了" ? That was a lesson a long time ago. So with "真", we don't need "了"?
"We ate ten bowls of beef noodles, and are really full" seems like it should be the correct translation. Am I wrong in thinking it is incorrect to take a single sentence in Chinese and separate it into two sentences? The point of sentence separation is to partition ideas. If ideas belong together (i.e. are a single sentence) in one language, then they should be together in another language - you just need to adapt the exact phrasing to allow for grammatical differences. Translation cannot always be clearly 1-1, but it should at least be isomorphic (i.e. after translating one way should be possible to translate back and get the original as one of the possible options).
- 859
You are wrong in fact. Different languages have different ideas of what can go into a single sentence. This is the case with Chinese versus English.
But your translation is still a good one. So are ones with "and are really full" and "and we're really full".
Hippietrail is right. Chinese frequently has a single sentence, where in English you need to use two. This is one of the reasons Chinese takes up so much less space than English. If you have ever looked at a large quantity of text written in both English and Chinese you will see that the Chinese takes up much less space .
I entered "We ate ten bowls of beef noodle soup, really filling!" which wasn't accepted. I don't know which part was not accepted, so:
1) Is "beef noodle soup" accepted? If not, do you think it should be?
2) is "really filling" accepted? If not, do you think it should be?
- 1579
1) Probably not. If it were soup, the word 汤 would be in there. 2) The subject is "we", to which 真饱 refers. (饱 describes the state of being satiated after eating, and not to the ability of a meal to make one full.)
1) The Chinese 湯 is something close to a broth. It doesn't have many ingredients in it usually, and is often used as an appetizer rather than a full meal. 麵 can be just noodles (乾麵, literally "dry noodles") or actually a soup in our perception. Here is 玉米湯, corn soup, a popular appetizer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef_noodle_soup
2) OK I guess yes, 飽 characterizes a feeling of a person/animal, not the food.
- 1579
Don't get me wrong: I understand that 牛肉面 is noodles with beef broth (and if you're lucky there may actually be some pieces of meat in it 哈哈). My point was trying to make sense of how the Duolingo authors translated it, that's all. They wouldn't accept "soup" because there was no 汤 in the sentence.
Aah, I see :) In that case I hope they stumble upon my report or this comment thread and see that 牛肉面 is called "beef noodle soup" in English and add this translation :) Thanks!
Why can't "we've eaten" be accepted? I would've thought present perfect would be more appropriate in this translation.
'We have eaten ten bowls of beef noodles, we are so full' should be accepted. I have been reporting this for months and nothing happens >:(
I think it should accept "we had 10 bowls of beef noodles, we are so full!"
The requirement is applied inconsistently. Sometimes you have to include the comma, sometimes you don't. They don't seem to require the "?"
I wrote we ate 10 bowls of beef noodles, we are so full. Should have been accepted.
what about "we have eaten 10 bowls... " It wasn't accepted. To me "have eaten" makes better sense than "We ate.."
- 2512
"We ate" versus "we have eaten" is an important distinction in many languages including English. "We ate" is the simple past, while "we have eaten" is the present perfect. The simple past simply describes something that happened in in the past, while the present perfect describes a past event that has present consequences. So "we have eaten 10 bowls" would mean, for example, that it is the reason we are full or the reason our stomachs hurt, whereas "we ate 10 bowls" is simply a fact. I do not know Chinese well enough to tell you if that distinction exists in the language or in this sentence, but if it does, only one can be correct.
bro i literally wrote "we ate 10 bowls of beef noodles , so full ! " AND IT WAS WRONG ? !