[irrational]

> She would have had to have been being watched.

Well, now I want to see how this sentence would be translated into all the other major languages! I immediately understand the meaning, but can see why it might be hard for a non native speaker to understand. Are their other languages that can say the same thing as concisely?

Google Translate must absolutely butcher this sentence. I just tried Spanish. “Habría tenido que haber estado vigilada.” I know Spanish well enough to know that is hilariously incorrect, but not well enough to know the correct translation.

[mucholove]

I speak both English and Dominican Spanish natively. Here is my translation:

“Tendrían que haber estado mirándola.”

“Vigilado” is a much stronger word and to me it would be much more like “guarded”

Ive studied Chinese before and a translation eludes me.

If anybody can help, my guess the trick is in : “ 本来就” of 她本来就必须被监视

[ahoyleo]

The Chinese translation could work. I'd try 她早该被一直看着

[solatic]

One issue that prevents translation is just how much passivity is in that sentence. In other languages, more active grammar is preferred, to the point where trying to construct such passivity on purpose would be nigh unintelligible.

For example, in Hebrew, I would translate the sentence as חייב להיות שמישהו היה צופה בה, which literally translates as "it must be that someone was watching her". Trying a more literal take, היא הייתה חייבת להיות צפויה, not only (by sheer necessity) injects the infinitive tense into the middle of the sentence, but also would just cause a native speaker to ask you in English, "why don't you tell me in English what you're really trying to say?"

[hilbert42]

Whilst I do not know Hebrew your point is very well taken. It aptly demonstrates the sheer complexity of trying to achieve an exact translation between one language and another (in fact from my understanding of the problem an exact translation between most languages is nigh on impossible).

I both admire and pity translators who work for organizations such as the U.N. as they have to translate documents such as treaties and do so with great precision.

However, I suppose my major concern with translations is how sloppy some actually are—that is that errors in translation are not limited by structural limitations caused by differences in the languages as in your example but rather by sheer carelessness. Frankly, I'm fed up with seeing bad translation of subtitles from German into English. I'd be more than happy if I had a dollar for every time I've seen the verbs glauben (to believe) and wissen (to know) interchanged with one another during translation.

Clearly, to know something is very different to believe something but unfortunately it seems that significant numbers of translators find such precision unnecessary.

[pezezin]

Google's translation is not wrong, but the original phrase is too convoluted...

I would translate it as "debería haber estado vigilada". DeepL translate it as "tendría que haber sido vigilada". Both are much easier to understand.

[Symbiote]

> too convoluted

It's a sentence that would typically be spoken rather than written, but it's only a step beyond "you would have had to have been there", which has genuine occurrences in Google Search.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22You+would+have+had+to+hav...

[cptsmrk]

Which is also funny, because it's apparently convoluted enough in English to have us regularly shorten it to "you had to be there" (which sounds correct, even though I'm fairly sure it's ungrammatical.

[Xplune13]

My native language is Marathi (India). Though it is not well known globally, it still is pretty dominant if we compare the number of people that speak Marathi (around 83 million).

Anyways, the translation would be: तिला पाहिलं गेलं असतं

[flobosg]

IMO the Google translation is almost correct. My take would be “Ella habría tenido que haber estado siendo observada”.

[bakuninsbart]

In german, I think we would change "being watched" to a noun with the same meaning:

Sie hätte unter Beobachtung gewesen sein müssen.

Still a sentence with 4 verbs though.

E: Interestingly enough, google translate is just plain wrong in a predictable way:

Sie hätte beobachtet werden müssen.

Which implies that she should have been watched.

[shawxe]

My best attempt at Japanese:

その場合、彼女は監視されていたはずであろう。