"I haven't been here for three years. This place has changed a lot."
Translation:我三年没有来，这里的变化很大。
13 Comments
I don't think they'd be correct for the negative notion being expressed in this instance.
"了" would be for a completed action (not an action that was not carried out), and "没来过" means "have never come". Neither fits here.
I defer to native speakers though.
To me it feels more like a 有 or 已经 (before 三年) or possibly even a 都 is what is missing, but I could be wrong. Definitely not a 了, but 过 would be reasonable.
647
嗯，错的 In Chinese, the time reference typically comes before the predicate.
To my mind, "I haven't been here for three years" can mean "it's been three years since the last time I was here" or "the amount of time that I've been here has not yet reached three years". What do you think of nao657961's suggestion as a translation of the latter (even though "this place has changed a lot" implies that the meaning here is the former).
- 647
I had to think a bit about what you mean, but I'm pretty sure I have it. For the latter case, if you mean "I've not yet been here three full years," there would be an entirely different way of saying it in Chinese that would not even use the verb 来.
- 647
Really close! What were you doing 在这里? You might say -- and again, I'm not a native -- 我还没住在这里...
Maybe "我留在这里还没有三年" or "我待在这里还没有三年".
(Hopefully a native speaker can chime in.)
(Interestingly, when I put "I haven’t yet been here for three years" into Google Translate, I get "我还没有来这里三年", and when I enter "我在这里还没三年呢", I get "I haven’t been here for three years".)
The tooltip for "changed" in the "Write this in Chinese" version of exercise only includes "改變", when it should also include "變化".
