interpr?tation de "need"

Cers amis,

Que pensez-vous de mon interpr?tation de la traduction de "need"?

We didn't need to queue.
a) On n'a pas eu besoin de faire la queue. [et on ne l?a pas faite ?]
b) On n'avait pas besoin de faire la queue. [mais on l?a faite ?]

Merci mille fois et bonne soir?e.
Hela

We didn't need to queue.

a) On n'a pas eu besoin de faire la queue. [et on ne l?a pas faite ?]=> traduction d'une logique imparable = il ne nous a pas ?t? n?cessaire de ...DONC, on ne l'a pas faite. Monsieur de La Palice n'aurait certes pas d?daign? cette phrase.

b) On n'avait pas besoin de faire la queue. [mais on l?a faite ?] => Pas du tout d'accord avec cette interpr?tation car, m?me en l'absence de tout contexte, (encore !) le simple past fait forc?ment r?f?rence ? un ?v?nement pass?, termin?, coup? du pr?sent et s'accommode DONC mal d'un imparfait fran?ais.

Still, remember I am no grammarian!;)

Merci Jean pour toutes ces pr?cisions.

Bon week-end :)

C'est bizarre car j'aurais r?pondu l'inverse :-/

J'aurais traduit "We didn't need to queue" par "Nous n'avions pas besoin de faire la queue", tandis que je traduirais "Nous n'avons pas eu besoin de faire la queue" par "We didn't have to queue".

Je pensais avoir r?pondu ? cette question, notamment gr?ce ? l'aide de WordReference. N'est-ce pas H?la ?

Voici quelques-unes des r?ponses apport?es :

"It wasn't necessary for us to queue. (We were able to go straight in/aboard without waiting.)"
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A very minor point, which you may or may not have been asking about. I agree that it means "it was not necessary to queue". However, there is no definitive statement about what we did. That is, we could have waited in the queue for 15 minutes, reached the window, and then learned that we could have gone straight to the front. "we waited in line for 15 minutes even though we didn't need to queue".
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"In this case, don't you normally say "... but we needn't have queued"?"
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"Both sentences are possible, but I sense a difference in meaning:

"We waited in line for 15 minutes even though we didn't need to queue" suggests to me that we waited in line knowing that it was not necessary.

"We waited in line for 15 minutes, but we needn't have queued" suggests to me that we only realized later that queuing was not necessary."



So long! :)