# FR: you cannot do that with



## silvermoon

Bonjour a tous,

J'ai des problemes en traduisant cet prase ci:

If you have lost your Gold Card, you need to purchase a new Gold Card from the website. Since you cannot do this with an already activated Gold Card...

Ma tentative:

Si vous avez perdu votre Gold Card vous devrez acheter une autre du site web.  Comme vous ne pouvez pas "en faire"/ "le faire" sans un GC dejá activé...

Merci d'avance


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## IsiFR

> Bonjour a tous,
> 
> J'ai des problèmes en traduisant cette phrase ci :
> 
> If you have lost your Gold Card, you need to purchase a new Gold Card from the website. Since you cannot do this with an already activated Gold Card...
> 
> Ma tentative :
> 
> Si vous avez perdu votre Gold Card vous devrez acheter une autre du site web. Comme vous ne pouvez pas "en faire"/ "le faire" sans un GC dejá activé...
> 
> Merci d'avance



Hi,

I would say it that way :

"Si vous avez perdu votre Gold Card vous devrez vous en procurer une autre à partir du site web. De plus, vous ne pouvez faire ceci avec une Gold Card déjà activée..."

Pleasure is mine


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## silvermoon

Thanks IsiFR! I was starting to have a head ache! lol


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## rbenham

This is bizarre. In the original sentence, is the "with" supposed to be "without"?? silvermoon has written "with" and attempted to translate it as "without", and IsiFR has translated it as "with" without either of them apparently noticing anything amiss....


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## Krom le Barbare

À mon avis, il faudrait traduire avec "without" :

"Si vous avez perdu votre Gold Card*,* vous devrez vous en procurer une autre à partir du site web. *Seulement*, vous ne pouvez *pas le faire sans* une Gold Card déjà activée..."


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## rbenham

Krom, I agree entirely. I am sure that "without" was intended, and yours is just the translation I was thinking of. But I didn't want to suggest it, as French is not my native language.

Although there was some ambiguity as to the source, having resolved that (in favour of _without_), one needs to forget about the actual *wording* of the English and find an idiomatic way of expressing the same *concept*. And your suggestion strikes me as just the way I am used to seeing such situations explained on (native) French websites etc.


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## Nicomon

Hello,

Assuming that the original context, as found in second link of this search  is this:



> *Since you cannot do this with an already activated* Gold Card, we need to remove the Gold Card System from your account.


 my understanding - I could be wrong - is that you cannot purchase a Gold Card if you already have one activated in the system. In other words... you cannot have two.

If I'm right, then in my opinion : _Since = Comme/Puisque_


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## rbenham

Hello Nicomon. I think you are right in your understanding of _since_, regardless of the correctness of _with_/_without_. I assume by "that research" you mean "this search".... 

So there are two points for me to answer here: the _with_/_without_ question and the _since_ question.

On _with_/_without_: if the sentence you found is indeed the same one that silvermoon is asking about, then indeed the continuation makes it clear that _with_ is correct. I was assuming that the Gold Card was for purchasing things, and so you would need an existing Gold Card to purchase a new one.... This was based partly on the _without_ in the thread title. But I am willing to concede that _with_ is probably correct, in the light of the evidence you found.

On _since_. There is no doubt that _since_ has the sense of _puisque_ or _comme_. But that doesn't mean that you have to use one of these words at the start of the sentence in a French translation. You need to come up with something that expresses the same concepts, but in a fashion that will seem natural and be easy to understand for a French-speaking reader. The underlying logic is (now that you have found evidence that _with_ is indeed intended): "You have lost your card. So you need to buy a new one. But your old card is still registered in our system as activated, and you can only have one card active at a time. So you need to deactivate the lost card." Now, *any* translation that conveys this sequence of thoughts in a clear and natural way is acceptable in this context. You do not need to keep the same sentence structure or anything superficial like that, just the logical structure. And I find Krom le Barbare's suggestion does this perfectly, except that, now, we would need to change _sans_ to _avec_, or maybe _si vous avez_....

The English is a bit weird in this respect. There is an ambiguity about _with_: it could be instrumental ("you can't use your already-activated card to do this") or it could be circumstantial ("you can't do this where there is already an activated card in existence"). Clearly, given the presumed coninuation, the latter is intended, although the former seems more natural....


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## silvermoon

Wow, I hadn´t realized so many of you had contributed.  Thanks much to all.  

Actually the original is WITH, as one is only allowed to have one active Gold Card in the system.  I, too, thought it was WITHOUT and my coworker corrected me, hence my translation to Frech using sans.

Have a wonderful day everyone! and again, thank you very much to all.


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## Nicomon

rbenham said:


> Hello Nicomon. I think you are right in your understanding of _since_, regardless of the correctness of _with_/_without_. I assume by "that research" you mean "this search"....


 I did. Oh, the shame.  I corrected that. Thanks.



> On _with_/_without_: if the sentence you found is indeed the same one that silvermoon is asking about, then indeed the continuation makes it clear that _with_ is correct. I was assuming that the Gold Card was for purchasing things, and so you would need an existing Gold Card to purchase a new one.... This *was based partly on the without in the thread title.*


 That crossed my mind as well... until I noticed the title seems to have been "moderated" and that silvermoon initially wrote "_*en où le*_"



> On _since_. There is no doubt that _since_ has the sense of _puisque_ or _comme_. But that doesn't mean that you have to use one of these words at the start of the sentence in a French translation.


 Of course not - but either one works better than _De plus_ or _Seulement_, in my opinion. 



> You need to come up with something that expresses the same concepts, but in a fashion that will seem natural and be easy to understand for a French-speaking reader.


 In case you wouldn't have noticed... though not from the same side of the Atlantic, I am French speaking. 



> The underlying logic is (now that you have found evidence that _with_ is indeed intended): "You have lost your card. So you need to buy a new one. But your old card is still registered in our system as activated, and you can only have one card active at a time. So you need to deactivate the lost card." Now, *any* translation that conveys this sequence of thoughts in a clear and natural way is acceptable in this context. You do not need to keep the same sentence structure or anything superficial like that, just the logical structure. And I find Krom le Barbare's suggestion does this perfectly, except that, now, we would need to change _sans_ to _avec_, or maybe _si vous avez_....


And in my opinion, _seulement_ isn't necessarily the best choice either. 

Mon effort (mais je ne suis pas entièrement satisfaite) :
_Si vous avez perdu votre Carte Gold, vous devrez vous en procurer une autre à partir du site Web. Cependant/Toutefois, comme il est impossible de le faire avec une Carte Gold déjà activée, nous devons supprimer le système « Gold Card » de votre compte. _


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## rbenham

Hello, Nicomon. I hope you will not be offended if I say that it is obvious from your English that you are a French speaker.... Anyway, that is not really relevant, because I assume French is your first language, and the text may also need to be understood by non-native French speakers in Africa, for example.

As for your suggested translation, I don't want to present myslf as an expert here, but it seems it could suffer from the same problem as the English original: the ambiguity of _with_/_avec_. That is why I suggested "si vous avez" as a modification of Krom's suggestion.

In his suggestion, there is no real connection between _seulement_ and _since_. He has chosen to completely recast the way the information is presented, making it a lot less formal. We could do the same thing in English, maybe using _only_ or maybe a longer locution like _the problem is_. So a translator would have to make a cross-cultural judgment here. Is there a reason for being less formal in French? Maybe English-language writers of such documents tend to be more formal? Maybe the English is just badly-written?

For what it's worth, apart from my slight problem with _avec_ (which reproduces a problem in the original), and Krom's choice of _sans_ where, we have now learned, _with_ was intended, I find both translations perfectly accpetable.


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## Nicomon

rbenham said:


> Hello, Nicomon. I hope you will not be offended if I say that it is obvious from your English that you are a French speaker....


 I am not offended at all. I know it's obvious. My "in case you wouldn't have noticed" was self mockery. 


> As for your suggested translation, I don't want to present myslf as an expert here, but it seems it could suffer from the same problem as the English original: the ambiguity of _with_/_avec_. That is why I suggested "si vous avez" as a modification of Krom's suggestion.


That would mean having « _si vous avez_ » twice, in two consecutive sentences. But I agree with you about _avec_ (and that's precisely why I'm not satisfied with my suggested solution) 


> In his suggestion, there is no real connection between _seulement_ and _since_. He has chosen to completely recast the way the information is presented, making it a lot less formal. We could do the same thing in English, maybe using _only_


 That's precisely it. To me, « _seulement_ » sounds like a direct translation of the English "only/the only problem is". 
And I personally wouldn't use it at the beginning of a sentence. Right or wrong, it simply wouldn't be my choice. 


> or maybe a longer locution like _the problem is_. So a translator would have to make a cross-cultural judgment here. Is there a reason for being less formal in French?


 A translator would normally use the same language "register" as the original. Adapting is one thing, but you cannot really "rewrite", to then translate.  At least not all "clients" would appreciate. 


> Maybe English-language writers of such documents tend to be more formal? Maybe the English is just badly-written?


 That is not for me to say. I can judge French - and never be satisfied with my own attempts - but English... less so.

My last effort (still not to my satisfaction) :

_En cas de perte de votre Carte Gold, vous devez vous en procurer une autre à partir du site Web. Cependant, comme vous ne pouvez le faire si vous avez déjà une Carte Gold activée, nous devons supprimer le système « Gold Card » de votre compte. _


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## rbenham

If I were your client, I would be perfectly happy with that effort!

The other questions, concerning register for example, are just too hard.... We don't notice them so much between French and English, because the languages and cultures are not too distant, but just imagine you are translating a letter from pre-revolutionary China!


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## Krom le Barbare

> it could be instrumental ("you can't use your already-activated card to do this") or it could be circumstantial ("you can't do this where there is already an activated card in existence")


It's the same in French ... but less usual.


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