Thread: Разные вопросы по грамматике (by Antonio1986)

Originally Posted by Helenej

2. "Decline an offer" or "Turn down an offer" – отклонить предложение, отказаться от предложения

My impression as a non-native learner is that отказаться (от) would suggest a stronger refusal (perhaps the offer was offensive in some way), while отклонить could mean that the offer was simply uninteresting to you. Is this correct, Helenej?

Originally Posted by Helenej

5. They will keep going. – Они продолжат идти.

I think the Russian translation that Helenej suggests would usually mean "they'll keep walking" (or, if you're talking about buses and trains, "They'll keep operating on this route").

But "to keep going" can have other idiomatic senses in English, such as "to be persistent" or "to stay in business" or "to survive," or "to not quit," etc. So depending on the sense, you could use infinitives other than идти after the verb продолжать/продолжить ("to continue").

Like, "The women's shoe-store will keep going" (even though it had to lay off one-third of its employees) could be Магазин продолжит продавать женскую обувь. ("The store will continue to sell women's footwear.")

In other contexts, using some negated construction such as Они не перестанут ("they will not stop...") would sound better than Они продолжат ("they will continue...").

But in any case, "to keep going" is so idiomatic and non-specific that more context is necessary to translate it properly.

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

My impression as a non-native learner is that отказаться (от) would suggest a stronger refusal (perhaps the offer was offensive in some way), while отклонить could mean that the offer was simply uninteresting to you. Is this correct, Helenej?

A tough question, you know. I didn’t find any answer to it in the web. This is just what I think.

Neither of these words is emotional. They both are neutral.

Отказываться (от) means

1. to refuse or reject smb’s offer like food, money, present, award, help, job, post, offer, role, trainer, deputy mandate, throne, smb’s sacrifice, chance, attempt.

2. to cancel smth planned before like trip, purchase, joining the Navy, relocating.

3. to disown smth. like thought, idea, intention, theory, view, signature.

Отклонить means to refuse smth, to give the negative response to smth. It is not applied to offerings or suggestions. We отклоняем application, claim, request, candidature, petition, bill, prosecutor’s protest, project.

With regard to what is declined the usage of this word seems to be more or less formal or official. I agree with Medved that the word combinations with отклонять sound formal with the slightest difference that отклонять is not formal itself. Maybe it sounds formal rather because of the realities to which it is applied. Nevertheless the difference doesn’t lie in the style only.
"Существуют опасения, что кабинет министров Украины будет вынужден отказаться от помощи Международного валютного фонда" is quite correct, thought it apparently can be said at some official level. As well as "Существуют опасения, что кабинет министров Украины будет вынужден отклонить предложение помощи Международным валютным фондом." I don’t know.

Btw, when we deal with a suggestion to do smth. we generally use отказаться сделать что-либо.

Предложение can be translated into English as offer, suggestion or proposal. So we need to choose the proper Russian version in accordance with the context.

In the following pairs the first sentence is correct and the second is incorrect.

1. Она отказалась от его помощи. Она отклонила его помощь.
2. Депутаты отклонили законопроект. Депутаты отказались от законопроекта.