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How would you describe a car kicking up clouds of dust as an adverb of a car heading somewhere?

English Language & Usage Asked by akaralar on March 13, 2021

I am trying to translate a sentence from Turkish to English. I’m almost satisfied and it is something along the lines of

A black car kicking up clouds of dust was seen heading to the city from a distant road.

However, in Turkish, the act of "kicking up clouds of dust" is an adverb of the verb "heading", so it qualifies the verb and not the car itself. In other words, the way the car moves along the road is by kicking up clouds of dust, so it is heading to the city by kicking up clouds of dust. Do you think there’s a way to make it into an adverb? Or maybe a phrasal verb that catches the essence of those two actions, both heading somewhere and kicking up clouds of dust? The verb "heading" is not mandatory, it can be "arriving", "coming" or something else that matches the meaning, and the meaning is the car is going towards the city and is arriving/about to arrive at its final destination.

The best I can come up with is

A black car at a distant road was seen heading to the city by kicking up clouds of dust.

but using "by" to connect those to actions seems like cheating and makes me feel I’m thinking in Turkish and not in English.

For the curious, this is the original sentence (maybe it helps)

Uzaktaki yoldan siyah bir otomobilin tozu dumana katarak şehre geldiği görüldü.

One Answer

I'm not sure what the sense is here. English doesn't require a lot of agreement among the parts of a sentence, so it sometimes requires restructuring for clarity. English is also notorious for its "dangling modifiers". Here are a few options. I'm not sure if either of them capture the meaning you are looking for:

  1. A black car, seen from a distant road, kicked up clouds of dust as it headed to the city.
  2. A black car kicked up clouds of dust as it headed to the city from a distant road.

Answered by Andrew C on March 13, 2021

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