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- "Elle porte des vêtements tro…
"Elle porte des vêtements trop étroits."
Translation:She is wearing clothes that are too tight.
40 Comments
Would this also translate as "She is wearing clothing that are too tight"? Didn't want to sacrifice the heart to find out, you see...
Maybe so, but "she wears clothes that are too tight" is way is more common and less awkward sounding in English than "she wears too tight clothes." Even though the second translation is more literal, I don't know anyone who would actually say that. Anyway, the original commenter just wanted to know if Duolingo accepted the more natural sounding translation, so I was just letting him/her know that there were other acceptable answers.
I don't think Duo will recognize your proposal as correct, with the change from clothes (plural) to clothing (sing) and the addition of "that are(is)".
455
It would have to be "her clothes" in that case, which is probably a little too far away from the original sentence.
you are absolutely ight, DianaM. This is probably what I meant to write. 'The clothes' doesn't sound right at all! Mea culpa :)
I put very tight clothes, it was corrected with "overly tight clothes" surly that his an atheistic judgement rather than an error. A lot of people like to wear very tight clothes.
It there is an aesthetic judgment, it is not yours, so you have to translate what you are given and not interpret it. "Too tight" is the correct translation for "trop serrés" and "very tight" would be the translation for "très serrés".
Although "tres" is not in the sentence, but would "She wears VERY tight clothes" be accepted? Because it also make similar sense. I put in this, lost a heart.
No, strictly speaking, the judgment is not the same: she can have "very tight" clothes and look very attractive for that reason, or "too tight", meaning she looks like a sausage.
How do you say "She looks like a sausage" (with respect to too-tight clothes) in french? This is an awfully funny phrase my mother used to use and I am wondering if this simile also used in French.
"On dirait une saucisse !"
You can also use other allusive phrases like "le papier colle au bonbon" (the paper is sticking to the sweet) or "le rideau est coincé dans la fenêtre" (the curtain is trapped in the window).
Why not "She wears her clothes too tight". I've seen some other examples where de (des) was translated as his/her because it fits the context and sounds more natural.
How about "She wears too tight of clothing"? "Too tight clothing" doesn't sound natural to me.
- 455
"Too tight of clothing" is not right, sorry. "Too tight clothing" is fine, although a bit casual. At one time, it would probably have had a hyphen, i.e. "too-tight clothing", to indicate that "too tight" is used as an adjective.
How so? I am a native speaker of English. The sentence is colloquial, but fairly common usage, I think (a quick Google search for "too tight of clothing" comes up with tens of thousands of results). Surely that is enough for Duolingo.
- 455
How interesting. I was born and raised in California, lived all my adult life in Canada, and that is not an expression I've ever heard used. Where are you from?
I grew up in western Pennsylvania. It's not something I would use in formal speech/writing, I guess, but it sounds more natural to me than "too tight clothing," which I can't imagine saying at all. "She wears her clothes too tight," yes, or "She wears clothing that is too tight," but not, "She wears too tight clothing."
"Surely that is enough for Duolingo."
I hope not. Popularity does not imply that the words or phrases are correct.
I'd hate for Duo to assume that "youse", "gonna", and "D'oh" are commonly used so therefore they must be adequate substitutions for more grammatically correct words and/or phrases.
I'm with DianaM on this - "She wears too tight of clothing" is wrong.
DianaM - I agree with use of the hyphen. My understanding of compound adjectives is that if two words preceding a noun they modify act as one adjective, then they are hyphenated.
This particular section of the site is intended for speakers of English learning French. If a natural and commonly-used, though colloquial, English phrase that conveys the meaning of the French is provided, it should be accepted, even if it does not necessarily follow English style manuals (as spoken English often does not). English is not what is being tested here. As a foreign-language teacher, it would not bother me in the slightest if my students used "youse" or "yinz" or "y'all" to get the idea in their heads that there are singular and plural forms of "you" or if their flashcards on the future with the verb "to go" included "gonna". Imposing arbitrary grammar rules in English when the objective is to learn a foreign language is, to my mind, just being pedantic. I'm not saying we need to throw grammar out the window (I quite like grammar, actually), but we need to consider that people are not consulting style guides as they go through these exercises. That's not the point.
I just tried the same google search out of curiousity - "too tight of clothes" (which someone else proposed further down the thread) and "too tight of clothing", and yes,they both come up with lots of results. But . . .skimming through the first couple of pages of them, I didn't find any results with the words "too tight of" in them. the results were all terms like tight clothing, wearing clothing that is too tight, skin-tight clothing, the dangers of very tight clothing etc. You can put anything into google and it will always give you results, but if it can't find your exact search term it will look for anything that seems like it is related.
Try searching with the phrase in quotation marks. Lots of relevant results.
Searching with the phrase in quotation marks does come back as 5,600 results (not tens of thousands), however if you skip to page 9 of the results, the top of the page has Page 9 of about 86 results (0.37 seconds) and at the bottom of the page is the message "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 88 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."
When I repeated the search with the omitted results included, I could get to "Page 14 of about 130 results (0.44 seconds)" before the results ended. I don't know why google does this, but a part of my job is online research, and I come across this discrepancy between the number of results listed at the beginning of the search and the number at the point where the results end quite often. What I usually see is that the omitted results are more content from websites that have already been referenced in the initial results ie the often the same author/speaker. Anyway, I guess what I am saying is don't take google at face value, or any online resource for that matter.
So yes there does seem to be some usage of "too tight of clothing", and I am sure that if you used that term that you would be understood, but this may not be in widespread usage.
Weird, the numbers must have changed in the last 3 years. I know one shouldn't take Google numbers as exact, but they do help to give an idea of whether a phrase is in use. And there's not a huge difference between the accepted alternative "too tight clothing," which only has 172 results (using your method here) compared to the 86 for "too tight of clothing." Just saying it might be worth considering. : )
The too-tight looks better that without the hyphen, but "her clothing is too tight" sounds better.
Could this be les vêtements and if not, why not. Just asking, still have problems with distinguishing between when les v des must be used.
"Too tight clothes" jars on my ear, so I used "overly tight" which was not accepted. I can't see why not; can anyone else?
I have used "tight" before in a similar clothing context, but it was not accepted because it was not "narrow." (??)
I'd be remiss if I didn't add that she can wear her clothes however tight she wants to wear them, DUOLINGO.
