"Tu peux partir en expédition au Canada si tu veux."
Translation:You can go on an expedition to Canada if you want.
43 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
1255
Agreed. "Leave on expedition" is what one would say in English and is a literal translation.
2484
Yes. I agree with you on both counts. I just had a 'type what you hear' exercise, so couldn't report, but when I saw the English translation I was not disappointed (if you get my drift :-))
Have you been to Canada? I'm Australian and I have - a great deal of its north is wild and desolate, just like Australia's interior but for an opposite reason (cold vs hot etc). I would definitely refer to travel to those parts as an expedition. Plus the Cambridge dictionary defines an expedition as "an organised journey for a particular purpose" (be that exploration, research, etc).
It can be used in French for a long, extended journey as a tourist. I'm not aware of an idiomatic equivalent in English. One of the definitions from Larousse:
"Voyage scientifique dans un pays éloigné ou difficile, ou voyage touristique plus ou moins important ou mouvementé ; hommes et matériel participant à ce voyage".
2176
"You can go away ..." sounds very rude to me. The French is simply neutral . The default should be using "You can leave ..." .
I have tried this translation in a number of ways, and finally realized they won't accept, "if you want to." I have reported it. I thought they had been marking it wrong because I left out the "away," but it turns out they didn't like the "to" at the end. I can say that if I want to!! I just report the hell out of these sentences, and they eventually seem to accept them. In this way, they learn more English translations, and I learn French. Win-win.
Duolingo rejected "if you wish". Why was it rejected. It is more polite than "if you want".
For "go on an expedition" can one use aller? If not, and one can only use partir then having the translation read "go away on" and not simply "go on" is confusing. Regardless, Duolingo could draw this distinction either in the tips or by using examples where the phrase is sometimes "Go away on" and sometimes "go on".
1211
I wrote in Canada in my translation, which was accepted. In this sentence, is au Canada taken to mean the goal of movement (partir au Canada), or the place where the event of expedition took place (expédition au Canada)?
847
what a stupid sentence. Go on a expedition to the Antarctic or to find the north west passage maybe, to find the lost army of Cambyses yes, but a holiday is not an expedition. And we learned the verb partir ages ago.
239
you can leave on an expedition to canada if you want should be accepted. Why offer leave as an option for partir if you then don't accept it?
1344
Are you serious? "Go away" or "go on (an) expedition", definitely not both. British English is surely not so awful as Duolingo's here, the opposite of it.
"set out on an expedition" 1,300,000
"go on an expedition" 694,000
"leave on an expedition" 591,000
"go on expedition" 572,000
"go away on an expedition" 215,000 (the horror! We're losing them!)
"set out on expedition" 40,400
"leave on expedition" 11,800
"go on anexpedition" 466 (a typo, but left in for comparison)
"go away on expedition" 7