"Volendo, c'è anche il posto per un ospite."
Translation:If you want, there is even room for a guest.
33 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I imagine it as "wanting, there is even room for a guest". This doesn't translate perfectly, but you can think of "wanting" as short for "if you are wanting" i.e. "if you want".
There's also one other sentence in this section where the word "volendo" is used to mean "if you want." It must be somewhat idiomatic.
Even though in Italian it does say "il posto," in English, it would be rendered with the indefinite article "a."
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Introducing a sentence with a gerund this way is a remnant of the Latin "ablative absolute," a construction which is highly flexible. It's often best rendered into English with a temporal or other clause. It would be really hard to cover every possible variant.
I don't see why that is not as good as the DL translation with "If YOU" - here's hoping that someone from DL will pass this way eventually.
Does "c'e`anche" always mean "there is even" - can it not also mean "there is also"?
If you want there is even place for a guest is not English. Don't know what language that might be- Martian?
"There is even room for a guest" - that part I can understand. It's how you would render "volendo" into decent English that I have trouble with. But will DL please note that "If needed to" is utter rubbish! Reported 28.2.15
"if one wants" is an equivalent translation that keeps the impessoal character of "vogliendo". But my guess is that a native speaker would say something like "with good will", a better translation.
As others have said, volendo generally means "if X wants" where X will be clear from context.
I'm puzzled that il posto can mean "room". Wordreference shows posto alone with that meaning, it seem to me that this really needs to be "a place" or "a room."
Reported 2014-07-11 17:50 UTC
But there is no context. So like others I don't see why it could not be, if THEY want or whatever.
Agreed. "If they want, there's also the guest room" seems a fine translation to me.
Why "guest room"? One one could argue that "posto" in this case could be a place at a table.
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It seems to me that "volendo" in this context, is just an idiomatic expression, an impersonal gap filler (without significant meaning) which makes me think of the equivalent in English "If you will". Could an Italian please confirm?
So with the ending of present progressive verbs, how do you indicate if the speakers refers to you/he/them etc. like in this sentence?
The ending on the verb says nothing about the (direct/indirect) object.
If you mean the subject, the sentence is intentionally impersonal so the subject is unspecified.
un ospite = a (male) guest
un'ospite = a (female) guest
un is used with masculine words (not connected to the actual gender the word refers to). -> un ragazzo, un uomo, un fiume.
un' is used with feminine words starting with a vowel. -> un'amica, un'ora, un'isola.
Why not ¨a place for a guest¨?........sometimes, DL is SO random. It feels like that could be a correct answer, but bc DL doesn´t LIKE it, it gets marked incorrect!!!!! I HATE THAT about this app!!!