10.2 filling your car

Wayne422

December 17, 2020

I am having trouble figuring this out.

Alors écoutez bien Rocket French et vous n'aurez plus jamais de problèmes

Translation says; So listen to Rocket French and you'll never have problems!

A couple of things that I can not figure out

Why is the bien in there? Or shouldn't it be translated as So listen well to Rocket French?

Plus Jamais de problems shouldn't it be you'll never have ANY problems, not you will never have problems?

Wayne

RobertC106

December 22, 2020

Bonjour Wayne.

vous n'aurez plus jamais de problèmes (you will never again have problems/never have anymore problems)

Unless I'm mistaken, the whole point of plus in this case is the distinction between never having any problems (jamais) and never having anymore problems (plus jamais). Former, you never had problems and never will; latter, your problem days are over.

écoutez bien (listen well/listen carefully)

I hope this is helpful.

Robert

Mitchell-Rocket-Languages-Tutor

December 22, 2020

Bonjour Wayne,

Robert is correct in both cases. I will add my two cents just in case further clarification is needed or a different perspective.

BIEN

Bien is added after verbs to emphasis that someone should do something well or carefully as Robert indicated. However, it is also used to soften an imperative/command so that the speaker doesn't sound so bossy. For this reason, we often don't translate the 'bien' because it add excessive stress or softening where we don't often put it in English (or if we do, we would say 'please', but that doesn't work here).

It is tempting to translate everything literally but in this case I would leave it as is and just understand that the French and English equivalents as they stand carry the same weight/stress.

PLUS JAMAIS

JAMAIS - Alors écoutez bien Rocket French et vous n'aurez jamais de problèmes! If we just had 'jamais', then the English equivalent would be much the same: "So, listen to Rocket French and you'll never have problems!"
PLUS - Alors écoutez bien Rocket French et vous n'aurez plus de problèmes! If we only had 'plus', the the English would be: "So, listen to Rocket French and you'll have no more/no longer have problems!"
PLUS JAMAIS - Alors écoutez bien Rocket French et vous n'aurez plus jamais de problèmes! If we have 'plus jamais', the English should be: "So, listen to Rocket French and you'll never have problems!" or "So, listen to Rocket French and you'll never have anymore problems!"

The distinction between 1 and 3 is that 1 implies you will not have problems in the future, while 3 implies that you may have had problems up to now, but in the future you will no longer have them.

Why is it 'never have problems' instead of 'never have anymore problems'? Similar to the issue with 'bien'; it's a question of politeness. In French, it must be 'plus jamais', but in English it doesn't and the tendency is to focus on the positive, future solution, not stress the current difficulties.

I realise literal translations can appear preferable, but it can degrade the overall sense or tone of a sentence.

I hope this helps and hasn't muddled things further.

- Mitchell

Wayne422

December 23, 2020

Thanks to both of you for your expanations. I'm still working on getting these two concepts. I'll have to spend some time reading and working with these explantions to get it to sink in.

Wayne

10.2 filling your car

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