Quote Originally Posted by scotcher
Quote Originally Posted by Полуношник
Quote Originally Posted by scotcher
You're right. The problem is that to express the Russian sentence in English properly you need to use a different sentence structure, because the direct translation, "The doctors diagnosed him for a long time", isn't idiomatic English.

I would say "The doctors spent a long time diagnosing him." is the closest you can get.
The sentence isn't correct in Russian either. Диагностируют болезнь, а не пациента.
Fair enough, but couldn't его refer to a (masculine) illness? грипп, or рак, for example?

In which case the English translation would be something like "The doctors spent a long time diagnosing it".
Wow, this is yet another twister to the translation. Just when I thought I was making some progress .................... seems like it's still a very loooooooooooog way for me to go.