He is always forgetting things.
This sentence feels odd in French. etre en train de is more to describe being the middle of an action. The verb oublier (to forget) is not something that one can be in the middle of doing. Wouldn’t it be better to use simple present tence? (Il oublie toujours des choses.)
It sure does.
You’re right.
Still, I am struggling to find a translation that I like…
Maybe:
Il oublie toujours quelque chose. (He’s always forgetting something.)
I agree quelque chose feels more natural than des choses. Thank you!
Nevertheless, one can find quite a few of instances of this pattern in the corpus. Maybe they are “translation artifacts”, i.e., things you would rarely find in first-hand sentences?
I searched for “toujours en train”, and got some 18 hits.
That makes sense: “toujours en train” is fairly commonly used.
Typically, “être toujours en train de + infinitif”:
Il est toujours en train de se plaindre → He’s always complaining.
When translating from French into English, I think you can often use “always + verb-ing”.
I have no data to base this on, but I think you are more likely to end up with weird sounding sentences if you apply the same idea, while translating from English into French.