# EN: one of the men's sons



## litchi

Hi!

I'm a little confused here:

"Other people joined them: a middle-aged man, a woman and her mother and two more men, *with one of the men's sons,* who looked hardly any older than Peter but already wore a wedding ring."

So, there is one middle-aged man, two women, 2 other men...but

-how many sons?
-who's wearing the wedding ring?


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## rigmarole

Hello Litchi!
Glad to join the wordreference forums... 
Joining the party were:

The middle-aged man 
The woman
The woman's mother
Man 2
Man 3
The son of _either _Man 2 _or _Man 3.

The son is wearing the ring.

rigmarole


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## litchi

so "one" is for both men and son? 

"un des fils d'un des hommes" (don't worry I won't translate it this way... )

sinon, je ne comprends pas le pluriel de "sons"


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## rigmarole

No, "one" is for "Men's sons". And yes it's confusing! 

_"one of the men's sons" _is the same as "the son of one of the men".


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## jann

The treatment of plural possessives in English is not totally parallel to French.

Man 2 and man 3 both have at least one son.  Therefore, taken as a group, man 2 and man 3 have sons, plural.  We do not know how many sons each man has, and perhaps each man has only one son, but as a group, that still makes a total of two sons.

EDIT: second possibility = one of the men has zero sons, and the other man has 2 or more sons...

..._avec encore deux hommes, et avec l'un de leurs fils (à eux)..._


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## litchi

mm, ok...
but is this plural form meaning that one of these two men have more than one son or that both men have son(s)?
hihi? tu me suis?


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## jann

> but is this plural form meaning that one of these two men have more than one son or that both men have son(s)?


We don't know.  Either is possible.  It's not precise.   Sorry! 

And yes, actually, I would like to revise my previous post: it would be possible for one of the men to have zero sons, as long as the other man had 2 or more.  But this is not the first impression I get when I read the statement.  I will update my post above.


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## rigmarole

jann said:


> We don't know.  Either is possible.  It's not precise.   Sorry!


Exactly.

Another example, but without the possessive:

"The three men threw their hats in the air" we cannot know for sure how many hats each man has.


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## jann

> Another example, but without the possessive:
> 
> "The three men threw their hats in the air" we cannot know for sure how many hats each man has.



Don't you consider "their hats" to be a possessive?


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## litchi

Well, I think that in French it's better to loose a part of the informations but to be more clear by saying:

et deux hommes dont l'un d'eux était accompagné par son fils...


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## rigmarole

jann said:


> Don't you consider "their hats" to be a possessive?


Indeed it is!


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## litchi

We loose the idea that the other man has, at least a son too; idea which is totally useless for the story's understanding.


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## Maître Capello

I assume _one of the men's sons_ would never possibly mean – even in some other context – _the sons of one of the men_. Is my interpretation correct?


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## jann

litchi said:


> Well, I think that in French it's better to loose a part of the information*s* but to be more clear by saying:
> 
> et deux hommes dont l'un d'eux était accompagné par son fils...





litchi said:


> We loose the idea that the other man has, at least a son too; idea which is totally useless for the story's understanding.



It is not sure that the other man has a son, provided that the first man has more than one...

Translation is as much an art as it is a science.  If you capture the essential meaning of the original, translated into good French, and perhaps retaining some element of the original style (if this is important for your particular translation) then you are doing well.  Considering the inherent ambiguity of the English structure, I wouldn't worry too much about losing some of that ambiguity (which may not have been deliberate!) by translating into a more natural-sounding French _tournure_.


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## jann

Maître Capello said:


> I assume _one of the men's sons_ would never possibly mean – even in some other context – _the sons of one of the men_. Is my interpretation correct?


Correct.  It says "*one* of the sons," therefore only a single son is concerned.  "The *sons* of one of the men" is plural, and means that more than one son would be concerned.


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## Loob

Hi all

I haven't posted much in this forum, but was intrigued by this one!

I think there are two ways of understanding the phrase *one of the men's sons:*

(a) *{one of the men}'s sons: *the sons of one of the men
(b) *one of {the men's sons}: *one of the sons of the men.

Of these, the more natural interpretation would be (a); but this is ruled out by the original context.

I suspect that the original phrase should have been *one of the men's son = {one of the men}'s son =* the son of one of the men.



> "Other people joined them: a middle-aged man, a woman and her mother and two more men, *with one of the men's sons,* who looked hardly any older than Peter but already wore a wedding ring."


 
This isn't particularly elegant, though. Personally, I think the sentence would have been better if it had followed the approach in litchi's translation "et deux hommes dont l'un d'eux était accompagné par son fils": in other words

"Other people joined them: a middle-aged man, a woman and her mother and two more men, *one accompanied by his son*, who looked hardly any older than Peter but already wore a wedding ring."

The Anglo-Saxon genitive is full of pitfalls, isn't it?

Loob


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## HistofEng

I agree with Loob


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