не зная что делаю

[123xyz]

Thread slpit from here

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Context:
У нас был план купить подарок для подруги вместе, и так я пришел перед торгового центра в назначенном времени чтобы с ним встретился, но посколько ему якобы неловко проводить время со мною, он решил просто не появиться не сказав ничего, и меня покинул в беде. Потом я сам покупал подарок, не зная что делаю.

 

[Rosett]

Context:
У нас был план купить подарок для подруги вместе. Итак, я пришел к торговому центру в назначенное время, чтобы с ним встретиться, но, поскольку ему якобы неловко проводить время со мною, он решил просто не появиться/появляться, не сказав ничего, и меня покинул в беде. Потом я сам покупал/купил подарок, не зная что делать.

[...]

 

[123xyz]

[...]

As for the corrections to my sentence, why was "не зная что делаю" changed to "не зная что делать"? Now it means "not knowing what to do", whereas I wished to say "not knowing what I was doing", i.e. that the speaker didn't know how to buy a proper gift and was lost in the overall process, rather than that he didn't know what else to do but buy a gift himself.

 

[Drink]

Thank you for the replies. I really like "(про)динамить".

As for the corrections to my sentence, why was "не зная что делаю" changed to "не зная что делать"? Now it means "not knowing what to do", whereas I wished to say "not knowing what I was doing", i.e. that the speaker didn't know how to buy a proper gift and was lost in the overall process, rather than that he didn't know what else to do but buy a gift himself.

It's pretty simple:
- "не зная что делаю" = "not knowing what I am doing" (an action that is taking place in the present)
- "не зная что делать" = "not knowing what to do" (a potential action in the immediate future)
- "не зная что я делал" = "not knowing what I was doing" (an action that was taking place in the past)

 

[Rosett]

Well, "не зная что делаю" sounds in Russian almost "не зная/не соображая что творю", like if you just lost your mind and got disconnected from the reality. That would be rather strong to describe the suggested situation.

Alternatively, "не зная что делать" is fairly neutral. It describes your state of mind when it had been slightly baffled by your friend's absence, and you were simply forced to take a reasonable decision on your own.

 

[123xyz]

Drink, I understand. The problem was with the concordance of tenses. I used the present when I should have used the past, because in Macedonian, we use the present in both cases.

Rosett, I am open to the notion of "не зная что делаю" sounding rather dramatic (although I don't really understand why, since in English "not knowing what I was doing" sound perfectly neutral to me, as does the equivalent phrase in Macedonian), but that doesn't mean that it be replaced with "не зная что делать" just because this phrase is more neutral - the meanings are radically differently, independently of the distinctions in intensity. Namely,"не зная что делать" doesn't convey that the speaker of the sentence had trouble with buying a proper gift in the proper manner, which is what I was aiming for. As you say, it suggests that the speaker was baffled by the friend's absence and was forced to take a reasonable decision on his own, i.e. that he didn't know what else to do except go ahead and buy the gift by himself. That also makes sense in the context, obviously, but that's not the point.

 

[Sobakus]

The South Slavic da + finite construction always corresponds to infinitive in Russian, the 1st and 3d examples in Drink's post won't be translated with да in Macedonian as far as I know.

For reasons mentioned by Rosett, a different translation of your original sentence is required. Пришлось самому покупать подарок, совершенно в них (этом) не соображая/не разбираясь is how I'd put it. Note that не соображать в чём-то is a rather informal expression.

As an off-topic, в <...> время/час/день requires the Accusative, however counter-intuitive it might be. Here's a monstrously confusing thread on time, prepositions and cases.