She’s supposed to be back by lunch time.
It looks like this is not a word-by-word translation. “Si suppone” is “supposedly”, “it is supposed”, “it is assumed”. I guess in the construction with “che lei” it has to be “si suppone”, otherwise it would be “lei dovrebbe”. (?)
I also had my problems with that sentence and I agree.
Lei dovrebbbe essere ritornata … because it’s the same subject (?)
Or you have to translate:
“One supposes that she would be back by launch time”
Ciao. I first read this as “He/she is supposed to be back by lunchtime” or “One supposes that…” as you wrote MRgK.
Right, I think this is down to how the verb suppose works.
In Italian, you can suppose a thesis or theory, or an explanation, for sure not a person. So we resort to the “si suppone…” impersonal construct to introduce the uncertain statement.
I got used to the English construct, but surely it felt odd at the beginning!
Please, don’t say “è supposta che torni per pranzo”, because, aside from the reason above, “supposta” means suppository, so it could be an embarrassing thing to say…
Grazie, @mike-lima ! That warning about “supposta” is like “Uomo avvisato, mezzo salvato”.That was really unexpected!