Seeking a few clarifications

Ian L.C1Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor

Seeking a few clarifications

Seeking explanations for/comments on some of the translations that I provided in this exercise that were assessed as incorrect:

1.     Indeed, in order to be able to feature on the official ballot,

En effet, pour pouvoir être inclu sur le bulletin de vote officiel,

 

2.    But what is that about?

Mais ca s’agit de quoi?

 

3.    Here's a non-exhaustive list of the elected officials allowed to submit a sponsorship

Voici une liste non exhaustive des élus qui sont autorisés à soumettre un parrainage

 

4.    Although some elected officials concurrently hold several offices,

Bien que certains élus occupent parallèlement plusieurs postes officiels,

 

5.     there can only be one sponsorship per elected official.

il ne peut y avoir qu'un parrainage par élu.


Thanks in advance,

Ian

Asked 3 years ago
CélineKwiziq team memberCorrect answer

Bonjour Ian,

Thank for your answer, Maarten ! Indeed, it is rather difficult to add all possible answers to one sentence. Don't be too harsh on marking yourself, Ian, as most of what you wrote is correct.

I would say that your translations (1-3-4-5) are more than fine although for 'translation 4', as Maarten aptly pointed out, 'cumuler des mandats' is THE expression of choice, in France. 

For 'translation2', personally, using 'ça' with 's'agir' makes me cringe ;-).  It is very very (and again) very familiar. It sounds strange to my ears and I would not do it as I always teach the expression with 'il'. 

Il s'agit d'un article de journal it is a newspaper article

Il s'agit du musée du Louvre = it is about the Louvre Museum

C'est de cela dont il s'agit that is what this is about

 

I hope this is helpful.

Bonne journée!

 

Matthew V.C1Kwiziq community member

Hi Ian, just done this exercise myself, so for what it's worth as I'm not a moderator or anything:

2) looks a bit informal. Ca (ça) is more for spoken french and the recommended inversion of s'agit-il is again more formal and perhaps appropriate for this sort of text.

4) works but 'le cumul des mandats' is a big (sometimes controversial) thing in France so it's the most culturally  appropriate formulation for the context. 

With the others I might have given myself a 4 so just short of perfect as they seem like fine alternatives (though figurer sur feels closer to the sense of 'feature' than être inclu sur), it's just that they can't list every possible variation so offer 1-4 model answers. I don't think there is only one 'correct' answer to every passage and approach these tests in that spirit.

NB I self scored v low on this one first time round so retested but still didn't get everything that was genuinely wrong first time!

Cheers, Matthew

Seeking a few clarifications

Seeking explanations for/comments on some of the translations that I provided in this exercise that were assessed as incorrect:

1.     Indeed, in order to be able to feature on the official ballot,

En effet, pour pouvoir être inclu sur le bulletin de vote officiel,

 

2.    But what is that about?

Mais ca s’agit de quoi?

 

3.    Here's a non-exhaustive list of the elected officials allowed to submit a sponsorship

Voici une liste non exhaustive des élus qui sont autorisés à soumettre un parrainage

 

4.    Although some elected officials concurrently hold several offices,

Bien que certains élus occupent parallèlement plusieurs postes officiels,

 

5.     there can only be one sponsorship per elected official.

il ne peut y avoir qu'un parrainage par élu.


Thanks in advance,

Ian

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