Giulia
Member
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2021
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Italian
- Home Country
- Italy
- Current Location
- Italy
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.
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.