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- "El gobierno nos ha citado en…
"El gobierno nos ha citado en el Ministerio de Justicia."
Translation:The government has made an appointment with us at the Department of Justice.
85 Comments
In English "has cited us" and "made an appointment with us" mean two different things. I thought this meant "has apppointed us", which has a third meaning!
I translated the same " ..has appointed us..." so still not sure if it's right or not but google translate used "nombrado" for "appointed", not "citado", so maybe "citar" means "to make an appointment (with)..." and "nombrar" means "to appoint/name..."
1923
I peeked and translated " has cited us etc" and that was correct but i had no idea that this stands for making an appoint. I am not a native speaker but feel there is something wrong.
"To cite" in English most often means to quote. When you write a research paper, you "cite" your sources and you list your "citations" at the end. I looked up "cite" in the dictionary and it also means to summon someone for them to appear in court. So it does mean to make an appointment, but in a very specific sense: only if you are ordering the person to appear in court.
That helps a lot.
The verb "to summons" translates as "citar". ("To summons" specifically means to summon to appear in court.) So this sentence could also be translated as "The government has summonsed us to the Department of Justice".
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That certainly sheds light on the etymology of the 'citation' that i get from the Fuzz. Same latin root after all, I suppose.
Probably because the people who developed this question didn't happen to think of "summoned" as a potential answer. I personally think that summonsed is more accurate, as it specifically means to order to appear in a court of law (i.e. before the department of justice), whereas summoned means to order to appear, more generally (to summon a physician). Report it so that it gets added as a correct response.
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That was helpful, thanks. Then my sentence with 'cite' should not have been marked correct.
Yeah, I would not generally use "the court cited us" in everyday speech, but along those lines, a parking ticket or traffic violation is frequently called a "parking citation" or "traffic summons." I had never thought of the words citation and summons as being related terms until just now though!
I see that the word citado is derived from the verb citar, meaning to arrange a meeting (una cita) or to quote.
I found that as well on spanishdict.com so I thought that an acceptable translation would be "The government has arranged a meeting with us..." Nope. Duo doesn't like that.
My two good dictionaries offer "make an appointment with" along with cite, quote, and excerpt as definitions for citar.
It would be helpful if the hint showed that this is the present perfect conjugation of "citar" meaning "to arrange a meeting." in this case "arranged a meeting."
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You are right; it is very strange English to say they have cited someone in a physical building
"The government made us an appointment at the Department of Justice" was counted wrong. Reported it, but honestly, as much as I like this program for the amount of drill it provides, I'm getting more and more frustrated with it as I get further down the tree.
Possibly the reason your frustration is growing is that the phrases and usages are becoming more complicated and context driven. My frustration at the start of the tree was largely that we didn't have the context to correctly decipher the meanings and so multiple answers were always possible. Now we do have context, but to get the correct answer you have to read the entire phrase correctly.
For example: your answer transposes the phrase from the passive <<nos ha citado>> (has made an appointment with us) to an active <<nos hizo una cita>> (made us an appointment), which changes the meaning.
Also, and I mean this as a help, translating a word to its English cognate and then wondering why that one definition in its English meaning does not fit the sentence is always going to be frustrating and not help you understand the Spanish. In my experience it is much better to learn Spanish words as (at best) synonyms to English words, but never as exact matches.
This is why I wish DL would also give us literal (word by word) translations of sentences. I believe it helps get into a Spanish mindset and better show how the Spanish grammer rules work.
Thanks for your reply, but I still don't see where "with us" comes from in this sentence, nor why the sentence is necessarily passive. "Has made an appointment with us" and "has made us an appointment" are both in active voice in English. Passive would be "An appointment has been made (for or with) us by the government." Is that a fair translation of the Spanish sentence?
"With us" is not in the original but is denoted by the reflexive nos ha because appointments are with someone in English, so it parses like this:
El gobierno The government
(nos) ha citado has made an appointment (with whom? us)
en el Ministerio de Justicia. in/at the Department of Justice
The passivity in the original is with the speaker; the government arranged for the meeting, and the construction implies it was without the speaker being directly involved. Your construction implies that the meeting was a desired outcome, after a request by the speaker, or as a favor. To a degree they are interchangeable, all determined by context, but they aren't the same.
I may be too dense to learn Spanish. I don't think I'll ever see how I'm supposed to know that "nos" isn't an indirect object pronoun, but instead a reflexive, in any given sentence. Thanks for trying, but you may be beating your head against the wall of my lack of perspicacity.
I think "nos" is an indirect object pronoun here. For "nos" to be reflexive, the actor would have to be us. (Nos lavamos, we wash ourselves.)
"citar" means "make an appointment with". The "with" is part of the verb. The object of "with" is "us" ("nos").
If the verb is from a first person plural perspective, then the nos is reflexive (or creates a "false" passive). So if the verb here was "hemos" instead of "ha," it would be reflexive.
Not sure if it's been answered yet, but jindr's mistake was simply calling it passive voice. What you wrote in the post I'm replying to is considered passive voice; the difference between your original sentence and duo's is that one of them would be in the preterite in Spanish, while the other is in the present perfect tense. Duo wants you to translate more directly, and yes—the difference between the two can sometimes be important.
God my bloody brain hurts! Please stop intellectualizing, read widely, listen carefully practice a lot in Spanish and be prepared to be confused and make mistakes sometimes. Time and practice.
Don't read it if it makes your brain hurt. We read, listen, practice, be confused, make mistakes, and intellectualize occasionally. :p
Anyway happily Dl accepts "The government has quoted us in the Department of Justice" which is the easiest in English
This translation reminds me of a sign I saw in an airport on my way back to the US from the Dominican Republic. There was a warning in several languages against bringing forbidden items on the plane, and apparently whoever had translated it from Spanish into English had made a mistake, as the sign said:
"Whoever violates the law will control the Justice Department."
That makes much more sense to me than "The government has made an appointment WITH us at the Department of Justice. I understand that una cita can be an appointment, "Tengo una cita con el medico" but I have no idea why the government would be making an appointment with me in the department of justice, unless I was receiving a citation for something and even then...with me implies that I was involved in the appointment making process or that the government made an appointment to see me at the dept etc.. (Maybe I was working at the department?) Too confusing!!
- 2125
Thank you all. Now I have citar connected to la cita. (Shouldn't I have automatically seen that - duh).
Anything wrong with this translation or is it just not in the database yet? "The government has summoned us to the Ministry of Justice." It seems to me that if the government wants you to be at the Ministry of Justice, they're not simply going to make an appointment for you at a convenient time, they're going to summon you.
I have no idea what this sentence is supposed to mean, even after 44 comments
"Cited" means "quoted as evidence" or "summoned to appear in a court of law." I suppose the second definition leaves room for the "made an appointment with us at the Department of Justice" translation. It has the ring of 1984 Big Brother speak, though, doesn't it?
"Justice Ministry" is not accepted by DL, but it is very common to use the shortened form in many English speaking countries, such as Australia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_ministry I guess DL cannot be all things to all (wo)men, even if they are Aussies :)
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English speaking countries outside the US are more likely to use "Justice Ministry" because we have the British system of government
I noticed that the DL dictionary also lists "has incited" as an option, but then fails to accept it as a correct answer.
"Incited" puts a whole different spin on the sentence, as it means basically "to stir up negative emotion", as in, "The activist incited racial hatred in the crowd."
I don't necessarily think it should have been accepted as a correct answer in this context, but I thought it was worth pointing out.
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"Incited" was at the top of the list of suggested translations in the hover clues, which in most cases indicates that it's the translation that Duo expects. It seems to be one of the translations for incite; however, in the context of the other translations it seems to be of lesser usage. I believe incitar is the more common usage, so perhaps Duo should remove "incite" from the clues if it's going to mark it wrong.
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The hover thingy offered "incited" as a possible translation and then rejected it when I used it. That was the translation that made the most sense to me as an English speaker. So how would one say they "incited us"?
"The government has summoned us to the Ministry of Justice" should be scored as correct here.
Confusing 'citar'. 'Citar a + infinitive': to make appointment/arrange a meeting to (inf). 'Citar con': to meet with someone. 'Citarse': to arrange to meet. Of course, when citing someone or something, one would 'Citar + a (if personal a)' or 'DO citar'. This seems to leave us with a contextually unclear sentence which allows for somewhat disparate translations and a ton of confusion as to how to appropriately use 'citar'.
"The government has given us an appointment..." is not accepted but other non-literal definitions are in other places.
Agreed. It is no less literal than "...has made an apointment with us."
My only problem here was saying "The government HAVE" rather than "The government HAS". I'm sure it's standard (British) English usage to treat a collection of people such as a government, a team, a group etc as a plural: "My football team ARE doing well" and so on.
What's the point? I just got this as one of those click on the word boxes type questions. Every single one was pre-selected! All that was left to me was to hit the button!
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It's a bit ridiculous that the whole solution is printed and I just have to press Check...
It's a complicated sentence, but the translation given is correct.
The verb "citar" carries an implied "with", and in this case the preceding "nos" tells us that it is "with us".
And as Babella already noted, "en" refers to a place, and in this context would normally be translated as "at" in English.
I'm not sure about the first with/for, but the second isn't a with, "el Ministerio de Justicia" is a place, that's why "en" is used.
If we're saying that "the government has made an appointment" then "The government has arranged a meeting " or "the government has arranged an appointment" should also be accepted. Neither response is. "has made" and "has arranged" can be used interchangeably here in US English.
- 2046
the government has arranged to meet us in the ministry of justice --> something wrong with this translation, otherwise I will report it
- 2125
If you know how to report it after you leave the question, tell me! There's nothing wrong with your translation, but I expect it would be hard for the computer to parse it.
It used to be fairly easy to get the sentence again in "vocabulary" by picking a fairly uncommon word like "ministeria".
Now, you have to repeat the lesson and hope you get the sentence in the right form.
You can always use the "support" tab at the left to report problems. The only difference is the program won't automatically know what sentence you are working on, so you have to tell them the sentence and the problem.
Why is ؛The government has appointed us in the ministry of justice wrong?
Edit.. fixed typo
- 620
Because it is not "no" but "nos". Us instead of not, in other words. I believe I made the same mistake when I passed through here.
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Oh, you're wondering about in rather than at. I would think you're right but I am not an expert on that. You could go ahead and report that and see what happens.
La cita is a noun that means date/appointment.
Citar is a verb, which in the 3rd person singular present tense would be conjugated as "cita"
This is a weird one. More than 50 comments and everyone is like "this one is so messed up" :)
I translated this as "The government has made us an appointment with the..." (of course, wrong), and this is the second time I did this! I don't feel like I'm ever going to get this sentence right - guess it's too complicated a sentence for me to translate correctly at this stage of my learning. (frustrated) :'-(
i put "the government has quoted us in the ministry of justice" and got accepted. but after i saw the translation there, they're actually two meanings. I'm inclined to think that "has made us an appointment" is the correct one.
google and spanishdict.com say citado means aforementioned: "citado Edit
citado
aforementioned"
no appointment or cited
Total eyewash. In English, in this context, the verb cited means quoted or referred to. If I make a trivial mistake I get failed. If you don't have good English I get failed
Would it be safe to say that this is not the typical way a native speaker would say this?
I hate hate this section, "the government has an appointment with the department of justice" was not accepted because I left out "MADE" but there is no clue that "MADE" is important to the meaning here
"ha citado" means that it is about the verb "citar", which means "to make an appointment". http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/citar
"The government has an appointment" would need the noun "cita", "El gobierno ha una cita"
There is no way to even report this under the sentence to tell them "make an appointment" is not part of the drop-down menu.
