"虽然那条裤子很便宜，但是不舒服。"
Translation:Although that pair of pants is cheap, it is not comfortable.
33 Comments
Again with the discrimination against users of British English! Trousers! :-)
The English translation is pretty strange. It send to imply that all cheap pants should be comfortable, with this being said exception. Would "those pants are cheap, but not comfortable," be a better translation? Or is the Chinese version making the same strange implication?
I feel strange with this pair of a reason and a result. I prefer to "Although those pants are cheap, they are comfortable." or "Although those pants are expensive, they aren't comfortable." I would like to propose to change the original Chinese sentence.
This seems to be a general problem of this lesson, even in the grammar section. Seems like the authors have a different understanding of the word although than me.
It's hard to directly translate this sentence structure directly because it's not how we use "although" in English, but that's the closest translation word for word. I would say this structure would be used to present contrasting points. The best way to understand the idea of the sentence in English would be like if someone was like "Wow, those pants are cheap" and you respond "Yeah they cheap, but they're not comfortable. I wouldn't wear them". (As always would love if a native speaker could confirm this?)
tl;dr Your translation is right, but no direct English translation quite captures the idea of "although this is a valid point, this is another thing to consider" the way the Mandarin sentence does.
Again I get the you have a typo in your answer error. This is clearly a bug in the system as I select the correct answer using the supplied words!
This seems to happen when shortened forms that use apostrophes are split up! This one had "are" and "n't" which turn into "are n't" in the answer. I think the extra space is what registers as a typo.
"Although thar pair of pants is very cheap, it's uncomfortable" should be accepted
For goodness sake, TROUSERS should be correct! It's even in the dictionary hints! How many times must we report it?!!!
...so frustrating.
'that pair' is singular, then the next part of sentence should be 'it is not comfortable' and not 'they are' There is a lack of consistency here, which happens fairly frequently.
I agree that the two halves of the sentence should be consistent for stylistic reasons, but ultimately I think both "that pair is" with "it is" and "that pair are" with "they are" should be marked correct (and maybe even combinations of the two conjugations), because of a phenomenon in English and other languages called (among other names) "synesis" or "notional agreement". (There are regional and individual differences in the use of synesis.)
In any event, there's still a lot of inconsistency in the course as a whole.
These lessons are all messed up! Practically every other perfectly fine English translation that I submit is marked as incorrect! It's getting really frustrating!
The course is still in beta! The people making it can't possibly account for everything people will input, and the further down the tree, the fewer people have submitted feedback. It's annoying but if you submit feedback you'll make it better for those after you!
I've just answered using words Dou gave me:
"Although those trousers are cheap, they aren't comfortable."
WRONG! Should have used "pants" instead of "trousers"!
Damn you Duo!
I wrote: "Although those pants are cheap but they are not comfortable." It was marked wrong! This is the third time I am trying to answer this question. I am really running out of options.
I don't think you can have both "although" and "but" in the same sentence, in English...
Well in this case your English was not grammatical. You can't use "but" like that. The sentence should be accepted as correct without "but".
760
"Although those are cheap pants..." was not accepted. I reported it, as I think any difference in meaning or connotation would be too slight to invalidate my answer.
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Is "...they're not.." grammatically wrong? (as opposed to "...they aren't...")
Both are grammatically correct. If one isn't accepted, submit it as an answer that should be accepted.
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Some of the words for the English translation aren't showing up. This is not the first time this has happened.
I cannot picture myself ever saying this sentence in English. i would probably not moan about how comfortable the trousers are if they are cheap. Now if the trousers were expensive and they were uncomfortable then stand back and watch me complaining!
You can't use "there" before a noun like this in English. It should be "those pants".
