# EN: Nous n'avions que quelques minutes avant de nous noyer



## Lilietromeo

Bonjour,

Pour une rédaction, je cherche à traduire la phrase suivante :

"Nous n'avions que quelques minutes avant de nous noyer."

J'hésite entre :

- "We only had a few minutes before we'd get drowned" et :
- "We only had a few minutes before we got drowned".

Peut-être même qu'aucune des deux n'est juste. Est-ce que quelqu'un pourrait m'aider ?

Merci par avance,

Lili.


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## frog1gsu

"We had only a few minutes before we would be drowned"?
I think it is "be drowned" not "get drowned", for some reason.
It might be more natural to say, "In a few moments we would have been drowned." 
Good luck!


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## Lilietromeo

Indeed, it has to be "*be* drowned". I was thinking about "get drunk" when I picked "*get*"... I guess this is why I made this mistake.

Thank you very much, I'll use your translation !


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## moustic

You can simplify:
We only had a few minutes left before drowning.


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## Lilietromeo

All right, thank you.


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## Lilietromeo

After almost two months, my teacher just gave us back our papers, and she corrected " _In a few moments we would have been drowned _" : instead she wrote " _It was only a matter of minutes before drowning _". 

Why *frog1gsu*'s sentence doesn't work finally ? It sounded fine, right ? Maybe *moustic*'s simpler suggestion is more natural...


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## radagasty

_Se noyer_ is 'to drown', in the active voice.

'Nous nous sommes noyés.'_ = We drowned _and not _we were drowned. _There is no good reason to use the passive here.


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## jann

radagasty said:


> _Se noyer_ is 'to drown', in the active voice.
> 
> 'Nous nous sommes noyés.'_ = We drowned _and not _we were drowned. _There is no good reason to use the passive here.


I'm not convinced.  We need more context to make that call in English.  

Generally speaking, an imminent water disaster (sinking, flooding, etc.) is imposed by an outside force beyone one's control, and the passive voice is perfectly appropriate to express that idea in English.

In the situation where people had been adrift for hours and were reaching exhaustion, it would be very difficult to pinpoint the moment when there were just minutes left before they would drown.  So while active voice would be more natural in that context, the context itself is unlikely.



Lilietromeo said:


> After almost two months, my teacher just gave us back our papers, and she corrected " _In a few moments we would have been drowned _" : instead she wrote " _It was only a matter of minutes before drowning _".


I don't like your teacher's answer.  It doesn't sound bad, but I believe it is grammatically incorrect. "Drowning" is forced to act as a noun (technically it's a "gerund") in that sentence...  which is illogical.  You can say "it was only a matter of minutes before [dinner / the opening ceremony / etc.]" but you cannot say "it was only a matter of minutes before [eating / starting / etc]."

The point is that it was only a matter of minutes before "we" were going to drown, and that subject information is criticially absent from your teacher's version.   This is a problem.

There was nothing wrong with _In a few moments we would have been drowned._  Or, if your teacher prefers, _It was only a matter of minutes before we would be drowned._  You can even convert either of those to active voice if you want.  

Moustic's version with "drowning" is grammatically okay because the subject "we" is provided... but since we clearly did not drown or we would not be here to tell the tale, I actually don't think that version is very natural.


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## mancunienne girl

"In a matter of minutes we would have drowned" or "a few minutes more and we would have drowned".


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## radagasty

jann said:


> I'm not convinced.  We need more contexte to make that call in English.



In the absence of further context, I went for formal equivalence rather than dynamic.

I suppose I was imagining people trapped underwater, who would survive only as long as they could hold their breath. But the passive voice would be appropriate if there was, say, an approaching tidal wave.


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## Lilietromeo

Wow, thank you everyone for your answers !

I understand that they are many ways to translate _Nous n'avions que quelques minutes avant de nous noyer _and that most of them are correct -or at least not wrong-.
 If my teacher corrected me, I suppose it was because she preferred to turn it differently.
The point is that I think she considered my sentence as incorrect, which worries me.

For the context, the scene takes place during a tidal-wave in New York.

I wrote : " [...] I was in my office with colleagues when the gigantic wave surged, washing everything away on its path. We were panic-stricken, trapped, with no possibility to escape. The windows were cracking, in a few moments we would have been drowned. [...] "

Does that help to find the best way of saying _nous n'avions que quelques minutes avant de nous noyer _?

Thanks again for your help and explanations.


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## mmafan67

I think the most natural way to put it is, "[We only had a few more minutes/it was only a matter of time] before we drowned". That's how it would be said in informal conversation. I don't know if its too formal but there's my go as a native English speaker.


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## Lilietromeo

All right, thank you *mmafan67 *! 

I didn't know I could write it without adding any conditional mark. 
I really thought putting a preterit here was wrong... Anyway...

I'm over now with this sentence, ahah, it gives me a headache !

Thanks again everybody !


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## jamesk65

we were minutes from drowning


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