"I think social media is very useful."
Translation:Je pense que les réseaux sociaux sont très utiles.
13 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
238
English is rather an exception in that it has articles but doesn't use them in what are called 'universal statements', i.e. statements that apply to something (like 'social media') in general. In French (as in Spanish, German, etc.), the noun about which a universal statement is being made is preceded by the definite article, the equivalent of 'the'. In French, that is 'les'. As for 'des', called a 'partitive' article', I think of it as the equivalent of a plural indefinite article, where English has only the singular indefinite article 'a' (or its variant 'an'). It applies to an indefinite part of a quantity and is usually translated (if at all) as 'some' or 'any'. In this case, since usefulness is applied not to some social media but to social media in general, 'les' is the appropriate article.
- 576
its hard to determine that, though. there's another sentence in this same lesson where they used "des reseaux sociaux", and it easily could have applied to either 1 or multiple social media.
- 238
I can't speak to the other case you mention, but since the current sentence is worded in a way that doesn't allow for exceptions to the generalization (there is no 'any' or 'some'), I don't see how you can make a case for anything but 'les'.
- 2110
Exactly. That's why 'Je pense que les médias sociaux sont très utiles' should be accepted. The English sentence says 'social media' not 'social networking'
- 238
It seems that everyone translates the English 'social media' as 'médias sociaux', but going in the other direction 'réseaux sociaux' seems to be translatable either as 'social media' or 'social networks': https://context.reverso.net/translation/french-english/les+réseaux+sociaux
- 2110
This translation is for 'social networking' not 'social media'. My answer: 'Je pense que les médias sociaux sont très utiles' was not accepted.