English Translation
I might look at flights again right after a shower, if I don’t fall asleep.
Should “Je pourrais regarder encore les vols…” be “Je pourrais encore regarder les vols…” in this sentence? Thanks in advance.
I might look at flights again right after a shower, if I don’t fall asleep.
Should “Je pourrais regarder encore les vols…” be “Je pourrais encore regarder les vols…” in this sentence? Thanks in advance.
You are right about the word order, and your version would definitely be better than the given translation (which isn’t very good).
With that said, both sentences sound weird/off to me.
Looking at the English sentence, I’m not sure what situation the speaker is in, here.
Maybe there was a problem with his/her connection flight, and he/she will soon be stuck in an airport hotel, in-between flights? If that’s the case, then I would drop “pourrais” in French, and say something like:
Je regarderai peut-être à nouveau les vols, (juste) après une douche, si je ne m’endors pas (entre-temps / d’ici là / avant).
Thanks for the deep dive into the sentence. I am learning a lot of vocabulary here. Your comments help go beyond that.
My interpretation of the English sentence is that it is late in the evening after a long day, and the person is planning a trip sometime in the future. In this case the “flights” would refer to “flight deals” / offres de vol.
Would that make a difference to your translation i.e. in your interpretation of the circumstances the “look at flights” was much more urgent/important than casually looking at flight offers on the internet ?
Interestingly, the English sentence was written by an Italian speaker who is a very active contributor of Italian sentences in the Tatoeba corpus. In this instance though, they didn’t provide an Italian translation (which might have helped understand their intention when writing the English sentence).
Interesting…
Given the translation I provided, it actually wouldn’t make much of a difference, because even in my interpretation of circumstances, the fact that this person was very tired / had a very long day, was the main idea. (As in: they might look at the flights again, but that’s pretty unlikely, because they’re so tired. (so much so, that they feel they may well fall asleep before they get the chance.)
But now I wonder… Let’s say that the “look at flights” was important. Wouldn’t the English sentence sound weird then? I mean, wouldn’t they drop “might” and say something like:
I will look at the flight again, right after a shower, if I don’t fall asleep.
And if it was very important / critical, would they even mention the fact that they’re tired or them taking a shower first?
I will (definitely) look at the flights again! (,right after a shower, if I don’t fall asleep! )
I would drop the last part altogether.
What do you think?
That would have been nice …
Yes, I would agree that if it were important then they would very likely have said “will” instead of “might”.
So, building on your scenario in an airport, the speaker here is one of two people travelling let’s say a married couple so that they are sharing a room together in the airport hotel (I mean, this sentence has to be said to someone, and the speaker is probably not just speaking to themselves).
They have arranged a number of meetings for tomorrow, and they now need to reschedule them. The other person is busy calling people to rearrange meetings, whilst the speaker here is tasked with organising flights to get to the destination as soon as possible. The speaker wants to freshen up after the journey that they’ve already taken, but knows that booking flights for tomorrow is essential.
In this case the person would not say that they “might” look at flights again. This is definitely a “will” scenario!
I agree with everything you said.
The way I pictured it with the translation I proposed was:
Person either arriving (or on their way) to airport hotel after a long/exhausting day.
This stop was not planned.
They’re on the phone, talking to a friend or loved one, possibly the person they were supposed to meet.