"我弟弟喜欢一边洗澡，一边唱歌。"
Translation:My younger brother likes to shower and sing at the same time.
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"My little brother likes to bathe and sing at the same time."
淋浴 (Lin2 Yu4) is to shower, where I'm from.
And where is that, may I ask?
I wondered whether "淋浴" was acceptable for translating "take a shower" for a different question, as I'd always thought of "洗澡" as "bathe".
一边A一边B means “while A, do B” (i.e. A is the background action in front of which B happens. But in English you can’t say “My younger brother likes [while taking a shower, singing]”, you have to move the “while” part to the end.
1624
The placement of "while" depends on how you arrange the sentence. You could say:
"While my younger brother takes a shower, he likes to sing."
"While my younger brother showers, he likes to sing."
"While showering, my younger brother likes to sing."
- 1880
Because the singing is literally and figuratively an accompaniment (secondary) to the shower, the main or background activity. I believe the main activity is put first in Chinese. In English, however, the main activity can be put into a 'while' or 'when' clause, that goes last as a kind of background information, while the additional activity is fronted as newer, more interesting information.
- 868
The most idiomatic English way to say this would be "likes singing in the shower" but that would miss the point of the lesson. So taking that into account the best would be "likes singing while he's taking a shower".
I'm fascinated by the chinese sentiment (literally expressed by the language, anyway) that singing in the shower is a sort of multi-tasking.
I wonder if this sentence would be the most common way of putting it, as I can think of at least one more: "我弟弟喜欢在洗澡的时候唱歌。"
Chinese native speakers?
- 393
"My younger brother likes taking his shower and singing at the same time." is not accepted...
- 868
In a shower you stand up while running water sprinkles down from above. A bath is a tub that you fill up with hot water and then you climb into. It's like a small pool.
- 542
is it stupid to say: "my younger brother likes taking his shower and singing at the same time?"
- 1284
Both bath/shower means same to me or at least the ppl around here does not have bathing (soak in bathtub) habit. Also we call it 冲凉
- 796
My younger brother likes showering and singing at the same time. Accepted on 7 October 2021.
The problem is that DL's translators, are very limited in the English language and thus they mark " wrong " that which are perfectly comprehensible English translations of the Mandarin Chinese given as an example.
I disagree.
When the Chinese course first came out of beta, the accepted translations were very limited, and the course was very frustrating, but these days the range of accepted answers is generally sufficiently broad, and I find myself having to report a rejected answer as correct relatively rarely.
There's still the occasional oversight, and I don't always agree with Duo's preferred translation, but I don't experience correct translations being rejected very often anymore.
Mind you, a translation should actually be correct, and not just comprehensible. It doesn't make sense for Duo to accept sentences that contain grammatical errors or that don't convey the proper sense of the Chinese.
Fortunately these forums exist and allow users to post potential answers for feedback from fellow language learners.
It's not wrong and you can certainly try reporting it, but to my mind it's not particularly natural in this context.
- 1624
What's wrong with "My little brother likes to shower and sing songs at the same time"?
It's fine. Just keep in mind that "songs" can often be implied in English, because "sing" doesn't have any homonyms, whereas Chinese often requires a phrase (e.g. "唱歌") for clarity and euphony.
