Thread: is this translation correct?

I am translating a text from italian to russian for my next exam.
It starts like this

"Дорогая Надя,
Я узнал моим другом, что ты хотешь корреспондировать с италянским мальчиком. Поэтому я хожу представлюсь и погоыорить о себе."

Could someone help me with any mistakes?

Я узнал моим другом

I suppose you meant something like "My friend told me that"

Дорогая Надя,

Я узнал от своего друга, что ты хочешь пообщаться с итальянцем... Итальянским мальчиком? Sounds like a little bit of romance is involved? Anyway, boy is more about someone who's around 13 max, so it's better to say итальянским парнем in this case)

поэтому я хочу представиться и поговорить (о себе) That last part in () translates as "talk about myself", is this what you really wanted to say? Sounds like an asshole thing to say Maybe you wanted to say "talk about you or just talk?" If the former then use поговорить о тебе, if the latter leave поговорить or better yet пообщаться, although we have used this word already in the sentence, so you can safely choose поговорить for variaty.

Cheers.

Thanks for your help!
Well, I don't think there is any romance involved in this text, so... xD

What I meant was like, 'tell you about myself', 'letting you know about myself'.

Why 'своего' and not 'моего' to say "my (friend)" ?

cheers!

Originally Posted by fufaika94

Why 'своего' and not 'моего' to say "my (friend)" ?

Because you refer back to your own friend. Grammatically speaking, you have a subject, which is I, and then you have a personal pronoun that refers back directly to the subject, I and my are closely connected, don't you think?

Just compare:

Он любил свою жену - That pretty much means that he loved his wife, the person he's married with.

Он любил его жену - In this case that would mean that he loved someone else's wife, a wife of another man, because of "his/его", as его doesn't refer back directly to the subject.

That's pretty much the difference between свой/своя/свои etc and his/her/their etc. We differentiate the use of those to avoid potential confusion.

Just a note, while there is much less confusion when refering back to я with мой, it's still preferable to do that with свой as it sounds more elegant if you will.

Originally Posted by fufaika94

What I meant was like, 'tell you about myself', 'letting you know about myself'.

In that case say something like: ... и рассказать (немного/a little) о себе.

Perfect спасиво!