[Grammar] Past perfect use in narration

[Giulia]

Hello,

I am translating a text to English, but I have some trouble choosing between the past perfect tense and the past simple tense.
I already know the general rules of these tenses, however a friend of mine, who is a native English speaker, proofread my translation and corrected it giving me an explanation that confused me.

Here is the text. I underlined the verbs that I had written in simple tense.

"He spent too long in front of the laptop display to digitalize the Santinos. The town hall could not offer them much support and his department had finished the funds available. There were too many families that did not make it to the end of month. At least, he had finished his work for the day. Then, the following morning the Fennigans and Ortegos were the first families on the list."

Now, I understand why the first verb was changed, but for the second one, this is the explanation I was given: "it does not matter when he did it so you can use the past perfect".
We all know that the past perfect is used to talk about something that happened before something else, so I was wondering if there are any additional rules when it comes to narration or if maybe my friend did not explain it clearly. Can anyone enlighten me?

Thank you.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Hello,

I am translating a text to English, but I am having some trouble choosing between the past perfect tense and the past simple tense.

I already know the general rules of these tenses. However, a friend of mine, who is a native English speaker, proofread my translation and corrected it, giving me an explanation that confused me.

Here is the text. I underlined the verbs that I had written in simple tense.

"He spent too long in front of the laptop display to digitize (probably digitise in British English) the Santinos. The town [STRIKE]hall[/STRIKE] could not offer them much support, as his department had finished spending the funds available. There were too many families that did not make it to the end of month. At least, he had finished his work for the day. Then, the following morning, the Fennigans and Ortegos were the first families on the list."

Now, I understand why the first verb was changed, but for the second one, this is the explanation I was given: "It does not matter when he did it, so you can use the past perfect".

We all know that the past perfect is used to talk about something that happened before something else, so I was wondering if there are any additional rules when it comes to narration or if maybe my friend did not explain it clearly. Can anyone enlighten me?

Thank you.

I think the past perfect will make more sense to you if you use as (meaning because) in that sentence rather than and.

It helps to use space breaks between paragraphs when writing online.

 

[Giulia]

I think the past perfect will make more sense to you if you use as (meaning because) in that sentence rather than and.

It helps to use space breaks between paragraphs when writing online.

Thank you Mr. Bernstein. I appreciated the punctuation check too.

 

[jutfrank]

The town hall could not offer them much support and his department had finished the funds available.

It's hard to comment on this sentence because it isn't clear what it means. If Charlie Bernstein is right that and should be read as as, then the past perfect makes sense in that the second clause would be understood as being a reason for the town hall being unable to offer them support, and thus placing the second clause temporally prior to the first. However, with and in that position, the meaning is very unclear.

There were too many families that did not make it to the end of the month. At least, he had finished his work for the day. Then, the following morning the Fennigans and Ortegos were the first families on the list.

Your friend's explanation was not good, but it appears that the past perfect is appropriate here as a narrative device. Again, the sequence of events is not completely clear to me from this little context but I think I understand enough to say that finishing his work is an event that comes before the present moment of the narrative. When you're relating a story in the past, your narrative uses past simple, which means that when you relate anything that happened before this narrative time frame, you use the past perfect.

Let me know if you don't understand my explanation.

 

[emsr2d2]

What does "He spent too long in front of the laptop display to digitise the Santinos" mean?

 

[Giulia]

It's hard to comment on this sentence because it isn't clear what it means. If Charlie Bernstein is right that and should be read as as, then the past perfect makes sense in that the second clause would be understood as being a reason for the town hall being unable to offer them support, and thus placing the second clause temporally prior to the first. However, with and in that position, the meaning is very unclear.

Your friend's explanation was not good, but it appears that the past perfect is appropriate here as a narrative device. Again, the sequence of events is not completely clear to me from this little context but I think I understand enough to say that finishing his work is an event that comes before the present moment of the narrative. When you're relating a story in the past, your narrative uses past simple, which means that when you relate anything that happened before this narrative time frame, you use the past perfect.

Let me know if you don't understand my explanation.

"The town hall could not offer them much support and his department had finished the funds available."
Meaning: the town hall could not support the Santinos and the department where the character works (he is a social worker) did not have funds to help them.

In the original text is used "and".

Thank you for your explanation.

What does "He spent too long in front of the laptop display to digitise the Santinos" mean?

It means: he was in front of the computer for a long time, because he was writing all the information about the Santinos.

Is it not clear because there is no context, or is it just badly written? The text is a translation I am doing. I am trying not to change the text too much for the benefit of the author.

 

[emsr2d2]

What does "He spent too long in front of the laptop display to digitise the Santinos" mean?

It means: he was in front of the computer for a long time, because he was writing all the information about the Santinos.

Is it not clear because there is no context, or is it just badly written? The text is a translation I am doing. I am trying not to change the text too much for the benefit of the author.

It doesn't mean that. The use of "too long" doesn't work and nor does the infinitive "to digitise". I'm guessing you went for a fairly word-for-word translation. If so, in this case, it doesn't work. Say something like:

He spent a long time on the/his laptop, digitising the Santinos information.