"你们有没有买保险？"
Translation:Did you all buy insurance?
15 Comments
People have trouble with the lack of a dedicated plural second-person pronoun in English, it seems.
It's just one of the ways of saying plural "you" in English so 们 is "guys" in this sentence.
I tried "Did you buy insurance" and was told it had to be "Did you guys buy an insurance", which is of course utterly Chinglish. "Insurance" is an uncountable noun so putting "an" before it makes it ungrammatical.
I tried: "Have you bought the insurance" and got:"Have you bought any insurance?" so we are as usualy playing cat and mouse in those narrow alleys of scrutinsed translations.
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Just for info on the English grammar. It would only be "the" to refer to insurance previously discussed, so maybe if you had been told it write be a good idea to get insurance. If it's the first time it's being mentioned, "any" would be better.
Missing out either weird, so just "did you buy insurance" can be used in either case.
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Can't take anyone serious who have to address the plural "you" by adding "guys".
I think the main problem is that, even though they use it, this translation is not accepted everywhere.
Take away the "guys" in all sentences. I don't think anyone would accept if you put in "girls" as a plural default.
I don't think insurance can ever be plural. You can have multiple insurance policies, but you either do or do not have insurance.
