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The phrase: "Translate this last phrase and write your answer in the comments on it, please."

I found it on a Russian website, I'm a Russian speaker and I know for a fact that 'on it' refers to this exact phrase. But I feel like on it makes no sense here and feels redundant in English. Does it make any sense having it there or it's just a bad literal translation?

Edit: The web page has about 10 phrases, each of them has a comment section. The previous phrases were there to state a riddle. This phrase is the last one and it is used to gather answers — just to have them all in one place.

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  • If each phrase has its own comments section, the instruction can be understood to mean 'write your answer in the comments section for this phrase'.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Jan 10, 2020 at 17:10

2 Answers 2

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a) The phrase is grammatical

b) The phrase is not idiomatic

There is tension between these two statements, if grammaticality is to be derived descriptively from idiomatic usage. I'd not be surprised to see it from a native speaker, anyhow.

The only problem is that various alternatives exist, that might seem preferable: comment-section instead of comments; about or below instead of on; ellipses of the prepositional adverb, as you implied it.

on would often start a fused relative clause with farther detail, e.g. on which ... instead. Here, the relative clause is rather short, and it does not add any detail, but establishes a relation.

it is ambiguous, actually referring to the farthest of the possible referents. Thus it adds more confusion than it solves.

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Translate this last phrase and write your answer about it in the comment section, please

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