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Comment by hashar | Hacker News Reader

There is surely multiple alternatives for any given language, similar to Draconis compressing the latin form, in french instead of the literal:

  11 - Elle a dit au revoir trop souvent avant

You could replace: * "dire au revoir" by "saluer" (which used both for greeting and farewell so you get a bit of data information lost) * "trop souvent" which uses the "trop" adverbe when there is a word for it: "excessivement"

Which got me:

11 - Elle salua excessivement avant

Still as many syllable (4) but less words (from 8 to 4) which might be easier to read.

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> Elle salua excessivement avant

That would not mean anything to a French speaker I'm afraid. "Saluer" is seldom used. It tends to mean "saying hello" or saluting someone in passing, more than "saying goodbye".

Elle a dit au revoir tellement souvent would work.

Better: Elle a dit adieu tellement souvent. Not the exact same meaning, but confers an undertone of dishonesty, as "adieu" should typically be said only once (it means you don't expect to see the other person ever again, except maybe in some afterlife).

Even better IMHO: Elle dit adieu si souvent. Present instead of past. A little farther from the original, but shorter and with a little more punch. It now implies it's something she does all the time.

In the version from Google Translate, "trop souvent" adds a notion of frequency like "too often" would, "avant" is shoehorned as a misplaced compulsory match for "before" when "too many times before" already felt like a ready-made phrase at this point.

In yours, "salua" would likely pass as a greeting, while "excessivement" would rather refer to the silly moves she made. Definitely harder to read for me.

I agree the "before" is the hard part to get right, I process "too many times before" as "too many times already", emphasis on reaching that number of times, given the song's context. Maybe we should treat "said […] before" as a smoothest form of "had said […]" to sing.

I'd go for "Elle a tant de fois dit au revoir" (9 syllabes).

Change my French mind.

> "Elle a tant de fois dit au revoir"

Nice! And sounds better.

To be nitpicking, I'd propose "Elle a tant dit au revoir avant" (9 also), which retains the original 'before'.

Adieu is probably better in that context too: shorter, since we're golfing, and more to the point (definitive goodbye).

You could also insert déjà, which conveys the notion of before: Elle a déjà tant dit adieu. Well, this means so many times and not too many times, so you could say: Elle a déjà trop dit adieu (8). This could also be directly translated as she's already said goodbye too much. You can drop already/déjà, but lowers drops the emphasis on before. If you do so, Elle disait tant adieu (6) works.

That doesn't really have the same meaning, and sounds very awkward though, especially because "saluer" needs an object.

I'd say (considering the context, the meaning is that she "told me goodbye" too many times before): Elle m'a trop dit au revoir.

That's 6 syllables (7 if you pronounce the schwa) and I think that's close enough to what Maroon 5 mean in their song.

Elle m'a trop quitté could work as well, with 5 syllables. I don't think you can get shorter than that, each word here seems necessary and as small as can be, to me.

If you can spare a few syllables, "déjà trop" or "trop souvent" would make these sentences much more natural.

> Elle a dit au revoir trop souvent

I would go for this one. child comments suggest "tant", but this means "so many times" and not "too many times" (another way to say it would be "si souvent"). Adding "avant" sounds very wrong, but maybe it does in English too, I don't know.

You could use "par le passé": "Elle a dit au revoir trop souvent par le passé". This sounds more natural to me.

> Elle salua excessivement avant

Nice gulf :-) Now, the passé simple ("simple past") tense does not sound right for two reasons:

- It's never used when speaking, only in writing, and even then, only if you want to write a novel or something.

- This tense also refer to a one-off event. Like, one day at a particular time she said goodbye too many times in a row, or something. I would not assume a one-off event here.

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