Por lo general
What is Por lo general plz discribe to me i keep getting different translation sometimes 'Usual" sometimes "In general" what is it ? plz help !
5 Answers
I don't think that this is a question of machine translators (at least not of the machine translators offered on this site). I tried running the expression through our translator and the results were: Usually, generally and generally.
I would say that, in this case, the translators were fairly reliable in their translation of this expression.
If you examine each of these expressions in English (Usually, generally, in general), you will find that, grammatically, they are all used as adverbs to describe the frequency with which an action (described by the verb) occurs, or more accurately, it describes how often an action occurs or is performed by a person or group of people.
Hopefully, you can tell that each of these words are fairly synonymous with one another. If one is familiar with the idea that there is often more than one way to describe the same idea (in both English and Spanish), that each language has its own distinct manner of expressing such ideas and that this manner is generally independent of the way that it might be expressed in another language then it should not come as much of a surprise that a given phrase might be conducive to more than one translation.
Taking that into consideration, it would probably not be odd to see the same expression translated as any of the following: In most instances, as a rule, by and large, broadly speaking, in most cases, etc.
Each of the expressions described above are very idiomatic in English, however, may or may not have analogous expressions in Spanish. Spanish, however, does have its own unique expressions which are meant to convey the same, or at least a very similar idea. When translating, it is often a good idea to not get so hung up on word for word translations but to instead focus on or give a bit of thought to what semantic meaning is actually meant to be conveyed by each expression/word.
i keep getting different translation sometimes 'Usual" sometimes "In general" what is it ?
That's because A) machine translation is a "work in progress" and B) there are a variety of ways to express the same idea in English.
The translator translates often word for word.
Generally, usually, oftentimes.
generally
