# la rândul ei



## clairebear84

I've come across this phrase at the start of a sentence, and can't figure out what it means. Here's the sentence it comes from:

La rândul ei, materia întunecata nu poate fi observată decat indirect deoarece ea nu emite şi nici nu reflectă suficientă lumină pentru a fi vazuta. 

The rest of the sentence doesn't pose any problems. But I've looked everywhere to try and figure out the meaning of 'la rândul ei', and although it seems to be quite a commonly used phrase in Romanian, I didn't see any explanation of it anywhere.

Mersi!


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## Trisia

Hi,

You've got me stumped. 

Until someone has a better idea, I could try and explain -- hopefully you'll come up with something yourself of another member will know more. Where one would say in English "first," "second" / "firstly," "secondly"... in Romanian we'd say "în primul rând," "în al doilea rând," etc. This isn't unlike it... I'd expect to find this in a paragraph where another aspect of the same issue had just been discussed.


In short, all I can come up with right now is _"on the other hand."_ Let's see if the others agree (and I think it would help a lot if you gave us the sentence preceding this one).


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## JoAnne van Heff

Indeed, very difficult to translate.


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## clairebear84

Here it is with the sentence before it, which I think will help.

Energia întunecata nu poate fi observată direct, dar ea este responsabilă de creşterea vitzei de expansiune a Universului. La rândul ei, materia întunecata nu poate fi observată decat indirect deoarece ea nu emite şi nici nu reflectă suficientă lumină pentru a fi vazuta.

I think it is like what Trisia said, something like 'secondly', or 'additionally'. Am I right?


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## OldAvatar

I don't think that _additionally _is the best word here because, in my opinion, it slightly places the _dark matter_ in an inferior position in comparison with the _dark energy_, which is not the case in this sentence. We've got two items: first is the dark energy and the second is the dark matter, both having the same rang in the sentence. So, I guess that _secondly _works a little better than additionally.
Imagine that you have a queue, where all items queuing are equal, even if one come first and then the other one. After all, that's what *la rândul ei* means (when its place comes in a queue or something like that ).


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## Trisia

Thanks for the additional context. 

I agree with Old-A that _additionally _doesn't work. I'd also like to say that "secondly" isn't a great choice either.

The idea of the paragraph is like this (...right?)
dark energy cannot be directly observed
dark matter can only be observed indirectly

I think you can ditch the words completely, or use whatever you want such as "furthermore," "also," or a paraphrase that would make clear the _similarity_ between the two: they can't be seen.


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## fluturas rosu

Maybe something like "As far as the dark matter is concerned, it cannot be etc."
I don't know...just a suggestion.


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## irinadumi

I would translate it as "in turn"  - it's not the exact translation for it, but it's close enough.


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