"Vem har berättat det?"
Translation:Who has told you that?
22 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Yes, it literally says who has told that, but it’s not really good English. In Swedish you can use it without the pronoun. You can compare it to who said that?.
582
I have written "who has told it" and got it wrong. I am not Enough speaker and I feel it's slightly not fair to require idiomatic english translations. Especially when there are many questions where literally translated answer are acceptable.
We try not to accept literal answers if they sound too bad in English. A lot of people try to learn both languages by using this app, and allowing incorrect English also annoys many users who are native speakers of English. (all accepted answers can get shown to users even if they don't input them).
I put 'who has said that' and got marked wrong. Should it be accepted??
But, for this context when the receiver of the message (that was "told") shouldn't we translate it as "said"? For me it sounds way more natural.
'Has told' in English requires an indirect object to support a direct one. That is a peculiarity of this aspect, so "Who told that?" is OK (but emphatic on 'that') but not "*Who has told that?"
'Who told you that' was also marked wrong. It seems the most natural to me so would like to understand why.
It's because that would be Vem berättade det? in Swedish. The past tenses are close enough between Swedish and English that we ask you to keep them the same when translating.
I think "who has told" would be more idiomatic. It is a bit childish but children (and not just children) do use "told" in that intransitive way as an accusation. "The teacher" or "your parents" or "the special investigator" is assumed but not named.
