"Překládala jsem ten dopis celý víkend."

Translation: I was translating that letter all weekend.

[dsarkarati]

"long" is not necessary in this sentence. "I was translating that letter all weekend" is natural English.

[endless_sleeper]

What a surprise! It's one of the accepted translations :o

[DavidMills574753]

It did not work for me. This is an exact copy of what I put: "I was translating that letter all weekend."

[AgnusOinas]

It's really good to send a report, even if you also comment afterwards. I can guarantee that "I was translating that letter all weekend." is accepted, I tested it again now.

[BarbaraWhi574572]

Can one translate it as "I have been translating that letter all weekend"? The correction to that answer was "I had been translating" which seems possible also but not instead of "I have been tr...". Both underline the fact that I have not yet finished.

[vor23]

I don't think so. "I have been" is present progressive, whereas the Czech sentence is in the past. The sentence in the past progressive could be finished; for example, "I had been translating that letter all weekend when my pen ran out of ink; I then got a new one, and finished the translation on Sunday night."

[deactivated user]

I think that's right. For "I have been translating" one would simply use překládám.

[Pollyhs]

přeložit/překládat Is there a difference?

[AgnusOinas]

"přeložit" is perfective, "překládat" is imperfective.

We need the imperfective here because we're talking about the action in process.

"Překládala jsem ten dopis celý víkend, ale nakonec jsem ho přeložila." ...but I eventually translated it (or: I eventually finished translating it).

BTW there are many verbs with the same root but with different prefixes, they form the same perf-imperf. pairs, e.g.: položit-pokládat (place/put/lay), uložit-ukládat (save/deposit), složit-skládat (assemble), naložit-nakládat (load cargo), vložit-vkládat (input/enter), odložit-odkládat (postpone/put off), založit-zakládat (found).

[Pollyhs]

Thank you. so then, The imperfective is not a collocation of the perfective, they are different Infinitives?

[AgnusOinas]

The aspect (perf/imperf) is marked on the infinitive, too, yes. You may see them as different verbs, but they are obviously related and one is derived from the other. You can take one verb and change it to change its aspect.

Adding a prefix to an imperfective verb makes it perfective. Examples:

• dělat (imperfective) -> udělat, dodělat, vydělat, předělat, etc. (all perfective)
• brát (imperfective) -> sebrat, vybrat, zabrat, ubrat, nabrat, etc. (all perfective)
• psát (imperf.) -> napsat, zapsat, odepsat, vypsat, přepsat, etc. (perf.)

Then you can take the prefixed (perfective) verb and "extend" its root to make it imperfective again - this part is tricky and a dictionary is your friend before you start seeing the patterns. For example:

• předělat (perf.) -> předělávat (imp.)
• dostat (perf.) -> dostávat (imp.)
• vybrat (perf.) -> vybírat (imp.)
• zapsat (perf.) -> zapisovat (imp.)
• přeložit (perf.) -> překládat (imp.)
• otevřít (perf.) -> otevírat (imp.)