13:50 Mar 26, 2002 |
French to English translations [PRO] / Cycling | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| ||||||
| Selected response from: Attila Piróth France Local time: 14:30 | ||||||
Grading comment
|
Yes - depending on the context Explanation: It is common practice in English as well as in many other languages to use the present tense for past events to make it mo0re vivid. If you think this is the best solution within the context, go ahead. Bon courage! -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 2002-03-26 17:45:07 (GMT) -------------------------------------------------- Take a look at the following excerpt of David Lodge’s Therapy: `I’ve come to the conclusion that the essential difference between book-writing and script-writing isn’t that the latter is mostly dialogue – it’s a question of tense. A script is all in the present tense. Not literally, but ontologically… Even when one character is telling another character about something that happened in the past, the *telling* is happening in the present, as far as the audience is concerned. Whereas, when you write something in a book, it all belongs to the past… A journal is halfway between the two forms… As soon as you start to tell a story in writing, whether it’s a fictional story or the story of your life, it’s natural to use the past tense, because you’re describing things that have already happened. The special thing about a journal is that the writer doesn’t know where his story is going, he does not know how it ends; so it seems to exist in a kind of continuous present, even though the individual incidents may be described in the past tense… The past tense of the opening sentence implies that the story about to be told has already happened. I know that there are novels entirely written in the present tense, but there is something queer about them, they’re experimental, the present tense does not seem natural to the medium. They read like scripts… So, using the present tense is common practice (no question: less common than the natural past tense). Hope the so-called value given by this change of tenses is clear from the above. |
| |
Grading comment
| ||