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Катаева Еленаasked for translation 7 years ago
How to translate? (ru-en)

Хорошо когда есть друзья...Но я хочу быть наедине с тобой. ..хоть иногда...Это вообще возможно?

User translations (4)

  1. 1.

    It's nice having friends, but I want to spend time alone with you - at least part of the time. Would that be possible?

    translation added by ⁌ ULY ⁍
    Gold ru-en
    3
  2. 2.

    Хорошо когда есть друзья, но я хочу быть наедине с тобой... хоть иногда... Это вообще возможно?

    Edited

    It`s nice to have friends, but I wanna be with you tete-a-tete... let it be sometimes... But is it possible?

    translation added by ` AL
    Gold ru-en
    1
  3. 3.

    It's great to have friends. But I wish I were alone with you even if sometimes. Is it really possible?

    translation added by Лариса Вершинина
    1
  4. 4.

    It is good when you have a friends...But I want to be with you alone...at least sometimes...is it possible,at all?

    translation added by Max Clayman
    1

Discussion (21)

⁌ ULY ⁍added a comment 7 years ago

AL: a tete-a-tete is a conversation, not time spent alone. "Let it be sometimes" isn't idiomatic.

⁌ ULY ⁍added a comment 7 years ago

Larisa: "even if sometimes" isn't idiomatic. You could say something like "even if it's only sometimes"

⁌ ULY ⁍added a comment 7 years ago

Max: (1) when you have FRIENDS (no article) (2) ...want to BE ALONE with you (3) Is it AT ALL possible?

Artyom Lugovoyadded a comment 7 years ago

Uly, tell me, please, why it should be idiomatic. I don't get it...

⁌ ULY ⁍added a comment 7 years ago

Idiomatic means that its consistent with what a native would say. For example, given the sentence "Она купила чёрно-белое платье" one could translate it as "She bought a white and black dress." Here the words are correct, the grammar is correct, the syntax is correct, but not idiomatic because a native speaker would always say "black and white" in that order. In Larisa's example, "even if sometimes" is grammatical in that context, but not something we would naturally say or write.

⁌ ULY ⁍added a comment 7 years ago

In another example, "I wanna be with you tete-a-tete" is not only not idiomatic, it's also incorrect. A tete-a-tete is a conversation, not a proximity to someone. That is why there's only one example of this from a letter written by one of our first presidents, Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps at that time, it was considered grammatical and idiomatic, but "tete-a-tete" is a noun that means "intimate conversation" in modern English, and we don't say "be with someone tete-a-tete." It's not idiomatic.

Artyom Lugovoyadded a comment 7 years ago

Oh, I didn't really know the 2nd meaning of it, "expressing things in a way that sounds natural" or as you'd put it. Thanks a lot! 😉

Artyom Lugovoyadded a comment 7 years ago

is it correct here to use you'd as you had?

⁌ ULY ⁍added a comment 7 years ago

Yes, it's correct, but there's no reason to use the perfect here. ...or like you put it.

Artyom Lugovoyadded a comment 7 years ago

yeah, it was clear about tete-a-tete, thank you

Artyom Lugovoyadded a comment 7 years ago

I hope I wouldn't have said so...

Artyom Lugovoyadded a comment 7 years ago

I'm sorry, I type too much and think too little. 😐 So did I have to say just "you put" instead of "had put"?

⁌ ULY ⁍added a comment 7 years ago

Yes, I would say... or like you put it. If you use AS, it sounds like you're going to quote me: "By 10pm you were so drunk, you asked me to leave the party... or as you put it "Get the hell out of my house!"

Artyom Lugovoyadded a comment 7 years ago

Ah, so does it mean I can't leave it without the very quote?

⁌ ULY ⁍added a comment 7 years ago

You have to use LIKE

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