"他们是去年春天去伦敦的。"
Translation:It was spring last year that they went to London.
53 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
1884
I wrote something similar myself that wasn't accepted. I suspect that for the best translation of the 是的 structure, they may be looking for extraposition in English, (that is, movement of the subject to a point father back in the sentence, while making 'it' the new 'dummy' subject): It was ... that (/when) ... // It was he who, ... etc.
It took some digging—I came upon this sentence during a "dumbell" flash card review—but this pattern was introduced way back in the skill Time 4.
It took some digging—I came upon this sentence during a "dumbell" flash card review—but this pattern was introduced way back in the skill Time 4.
The pattern “是 + [information to be addressed] + verb +的” is very similar to the “it is/was the … that …” construction in English, trying to emphasize the particular information between 是 and 的. It is a very popular structure when we try to ask
questions since questions aim to figure out
specific content.We use it more for
stating details related to the verb in the past.
你是昨天去的医院吗?
Nǐ shì
zuótiān qù de
yīyuàn ma?
你们是昨天去医院的吗?
Nǐ[men] shì
zuótiān qù yīyuàn de
ma?
Was it yesterday that you went to the hospital? (emphasis: yesterday)
1015
Here is yet another example where thr "translator" has used English that is not quite correct. We would not normally say "It was spring last year...". More normally we might say "It was (the) spring OF last year." It is still not to late to have the translations checked by an educated speaker of English, and thereby reduce the continuing embarrassment.
Some speakers would go as far as "It was spring last year they went to London" (with no conjunction at all), and others would insist on "It was in spring last year," and some people would quibble about "when" versus "that." Your insistence on "of" is no different.
I am a native speaker of English, and my language does not require "of" any more than yours requires "in." Are you here to boast about your veddy proppah English or are you here to learn Chinese?
1884
I find both the short and longer forms acceptable, though possibly a bit different in formality or register. When I first arrived in Japan many years ago to teach English, I remember pointing out some 'errors,' that I soon discovered were normal expressions in the UK, but until then, unknown to me, a native of the northeastern US.
820
There is inconsistency throughout this lesson about whether in such sentences, 'last spring' or 'spring last year' are acceptable. Both should be.
1884
Certainly that is the basic, neutral sentence (or as a couple of people suggested, using 'spring (of) last year' to avoid ambiguity). However the point of the 是...的 structure is to highlight, or emphasize the part of the sentence immediately following 是. So, such a sentence is by definition, not a neutral sentence, in which nothing in particular is emphasized. The sentence is quite likely the answer to a request for that very information: When did they go to London?, or expressed in a cleft sentence (mentioned elsewhere here), When was it that they went to London? Lawyers and other people (a skeptical parent or girlfriend?) wishing to establish or verify specific pieces of information are particularly fond of the cleft sentence question. :-)
To answer this in spoken English, we might simply say 'last spring' louder. Putting 'last spring' first, as one person suggested, makes the sentence sound more to me like the answer to 'What did they do last spring.' These are some reasons why the 是...的 structure is often translated into English using the structure: ',It was X, that ... '. This places the emphasis clearly on X.
In my English both are acceptable, and they have slightly different meanings. "That" is definitely contrastive: It was spring last year, as opposed to any other time. "When" can be contrastive, but it can also just be topicalizing for some other purpose, like setting the scene to tell you about other things that happened then.