Without

How do you translate "without" into Russian in such a sentence as: "They were able to run for four nights without sleeping." Thanks.

Они без сона могли бежать 4 дня...

I think. But i'm not a native speaker, only been studying for about a year :)

I think the general construction is just Без + gen.

How about something like "не спав, им было возможно бегать четыре ночи". I thought about using this one "... без сна" but wouldn't it mean something else?

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Originally Posted by Spiderkat

How about something like "не спав, им было возможно бегать четыре ночи". I thought about using this one "... без сна" but wouldn't it mean something else?

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Yes tdk got the genitive of Cон wrong.

You can either either replace the verb with a noun:

Without sleeping ---> Without sleep (Без сна)

then it's easy, Без + gen.

Or you can use a negated participle, in this case a Past Active Participle:

"Не знав куда идти, он...." - "Without knowing where to go, he..." (I think, it's probably wrong though :wink: ) This lit. emans "Not having known"

Они могли бежать 4 дня без сна sounds good to me.
I think не спав sounds good only in past tense "они бежали 3 дня не спав".

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Originally Posted by challenger

How do you translate "without" into Russian in such a sentence as: "They were able to run for four nights without sleeping." Thanks.

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без сна is good here, but when translating into Russian you also want to keep the context in mind since "they were able to run" can either mean a past ability in general or a one time achievement as in "They managed to run for four nights without sleeping" in which case in Russian Могли turns into смогли and бежать becomes пробежать.

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Они могли бежать 4 дня без сна sounds good to me.
I think не спав sounds good only in past tense "они бежали 3 дня не спав".

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sure but isn't могли past tense also as well as "were able to"?
I'd say "не спав" could be used here but it would be more likely if you wanted to add some more info on how exactly they didn't sleep like if the original sentence read something like
"they were able to run for four days without sleeping a single hour /minute/at all" then in Russian you'd say something like
они (смогли бежать) бежали четыре ночи подряд не спав ни минуты

Фраза по значению близка к - они могли бежать 4 (четверо) суток напролет, т е подразумевается что эти 4 ночи они были без сна.

Хотя фраза - они могли бежать 4 ночи без сна - тоже возможно - надо видеть полностью контекст

Quote:

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Originally Posted by challenger

How do you translate "without" into Russian in such a sentence as: "They were able to run for four nights without sleeping." Thanks.

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без сна - is OK.

Thanks, everyone!