"它吃鱼,也吃饭。"
Translation:It eats fish and also rice.
111 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
One time people state that they are here to learn Chinese, not the intricacies of English; then the other time people want to get the idiomatic details of the English sentence discussed thoroughly. As for now, I would say: focus on the details of the Chinese grammar: that is the goal of this course. Unless, of course, the English translation would be blatantly wrong, grammatically. In that case it is worth reporting.
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Agree, I cannot see why 'and' is required in the answer. I wrote "it eats fish, also rice" and the error only underlined the missing 'and'! Odd!
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in english that wouldn't be correct grammar; you'd need a semicolon in place of the comma for that to work i think
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In "type what you hear" 他, 她 and 它 should all be accepted, no? since they all sound exactly alike
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for the listening exercise "他" and "她" should be accepted because there is no way to know which "ta" they are meaning from listening alone
Because you're translating literally, not translating into proper English. "It eats fish, also eats rice" is not a correct English statement.
In the same way that you translate 我五点半吃饭 to "I eat at 5:30", and not the literal translation of "I 5:30 eat". Sometimes you need to reorder words and even add in new ones to correct the translation.
Doulingo doesn't make money on people translating over and over again the same sentences in the courses.
Years ago, Duolingo had translation exercises that they did use to sell translation services, but that part was dropped long ago. I don't know why people still think it works like that, it wouldn't make sense with the current model.
Their business model might have changed slightly, but I doubt it's no longer based on translations, since translating sentences from different languages to English and back seems to be still at the core of all exercises. As well as hearing / speaking exercises which might easily be used for feeding some artificial neural networks in order to train them for text-to-speech or automated translations.
I don't know what is their current business model, but I know one thing: they have to make money on something, because hosting such a web application globally and maintaining databases with user scores & words "for free"wouldn't be possible otherwise. And keep in mind that if something is "for free", then most likely you are the product :q
If DuoLingo is selling our exercise translations, then their clients are not getting their money's worth.
I'm sure Duo is making money from advertising to us; I am using the free version on computer (not the phone app), and I see at least one advertisement (typically more than one) every session. If I search for something online, then the next time I open DuoLingo, I often get an ad for that very item I was searching for. A friend of mine tells me there are ads on the free mobile phone version as well.
Duo also makes money from their paid subscribers, the students who pay to use DuoLingo; supposedly, there are no advertisements on the paid version of the app.
DuoLingo is a very popular application; I'm guessing that the revenue from advertising and paid subscriptions is more than enough money to sustain the service.
You're right, it shouldn't, but from different reasons: because the audio doesn't specify whether it's meant to be "he", "she" or "it". If it were a translation exercise, and if it would use "it", you would have to type 它 in pinyin anyway, so better learn how to do select from the options it gives you ;)
It says that the correct solution is "It eats fish and rice, too", but I would argue that the "too" is redundant (because the "and" already explains it). "It eats fish and rice" should be accepted, I think, but that's based on my knowledge of English, not Chinese. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I did report it.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong...but I gather that in Chinese culture pets are more or less regarded as "it"s v. he or she. I live between Shanghai and Nanjing where it's more "developed", and from what I observed pets are treated less like family members than they are in Western culture. That's how I've rationalized it, at least.
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In the "Type what you hear" version, 他吃鱼,也吃饭。should be accepted, since there are no context clues to suggest that the sentence doesn't refer to a person.
The issue has been brought since 2 years ago, there is no need to force us to use "AND" in this case. If the admins has a confusing grammar issue with it, then it's better to not include this line in the exercise at all. There is no AND in the literal translation that's perfectly understandable in english "it eats fish, also rice". Why bother with questions that causes confusion? Everyone, please downvote the translation of this exercise.
so is this a rare example of english being more efficient then chinese, or is it just odd? I cant recall at the moment but i know we covered a character for "and" , and its not "Ye". this sticks out to me because in a previous lesson i recall getting it wrong for inserting "and" , as well not repeating the word like in this example "chi" ALSO....in google translator "chi" is sounded like "she" and says it's "verified" so which one is right?
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Am i the only one who doenst know why they say this this animal eats rice, i assume they were talking about cats
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When only the audio is given, it should accept 他、她、or 它. They all sound identical. Without context it is impossible to tell which is intended.
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"it eats fish, also eats rice" should be OK : "and" is not necessary, and 吃饭 has been translated from the begining of this course by "eat rice".