Originally Posted by LDousay

Sirs,

Please tell me if the following sentence is properly written.

The poems are not the translations.

History behind this question and the sentence in context: I moderate a poetry forum in Canada. In response to an Indian professor, I asked him if the poems he had recently posted were translations. His response:

The poems are not the translations.

I know this is silly, but I work for a university and I've often helped international students write thesis, letters, articles, etc. I've noticed that they seem to have problems with "the" and "a". When I responded that the proper way to say the above was:

The poems are not translations.

The man wrote back:

In " the translations" THE is used as a definite article referring to THE five poems I have submitted. Don't push me to the next grade out of sympathy as we the teachers often do.

I do not want to offend this man. I feel he would be a valuable contributor to our forums, but I'm at a loss as to how to respond to him.