"Louis, tu veux m'aider à distribuer les manuels ?"
Translation:Louis, you want to help me hand out the textbooks?
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Don't worry, at least you can say "h&book" instead of "handbook" if you want. Good to know their priorities are in order
They're both fine in colloquial speech. You can even drop the "you" if you're really lazy: "Louis, want to help me hand out the textbooks?"
Yep. It's just that I would expect better English in these lessons. English learners could get the wrong idea.
The example sentence also uses "tu" so I think it's clear this is supposed to just be informal chatting :)
It seems more like a teacher speaking to a young student. It that case the teacher would address the student with tu, but the student would be expected to use vous with the teacher.
Formality of phrasing and tu/vous are not really related. You can certainly have an informal chat with someone you don't yet tutoyer. This is particularly true among older adults; young adults go to tu sooner; teenagers and especially children go straight there.
I agree, but that doesn't change my point at all. Most teachers aren't going to be speaking very formally in this context. They're chatting with their students, not writing an essay.
"Louis, want to help me hand out the textbooks?" is accepted as an alternative translation. :) I tried it since the French is in the familiar form. It is very informal.
I had the same thought, but if you read the English aloud I think you'll see that it's perfectly idiomatic. It is very informal, though.
I'm curious as to what "Louis, you want me to help hand out the texbooks" would be, because that's what I thought this sentence said.
Louis, tu veux que je t'aide à distribuer les manuels ?
Normally French requires an actual subordinate clause if the verbs have different subjects. Furthermore, I doubt that there's any circumstance in which m'aider could mean mean that the speaker is not the person being helped.
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trying to rearrange the English words into an idiomatic or colloquial American phrase is quite challenging for those of us who speak British English - presumably even worse for those learning through English as a second language. Those exercises should avoid using the more informal and regional phrases which are accepted as translations the other way round.
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Would 'pass out' work as a translation of distribuer? I tend to use pass out much more naturally and often than i do hand out.
