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O participante precisa de descansar durante a conferência.

O participante precisa de descansar durante a conferência.
The participant needs to rest during the conference.
From Lesson 111:Time prepositions (desde, até, durante)·Portuguese (Portugal)

Breakdown of O participante precisa de descansar durante a conferência.

precisar de
to need
descansar
to rest
durante
during
o participante
the participant
a conferência
the conference

Questions & Answers about O participante precisa de descansar durante a conferência.

Why do we use durante here, and does it change depending on the word that follows it?
The word durante means "during" and tells us when the rest will happen. Unlike many words in Portuguese, durante is invariable. This means it never changes its form, no matter if the noun after it is masculine, feminine, singular, or plural.
Why is there a de between precisa and descansar?
In Portuguese, the verb precisar (to need) almost always requires the preposition de right after it. Whenever you say you "need to" do something or "need" a thing, you must use precisar de. Because of this rule, you cannot put the two verbs together directly like you do in English.
Why isn't the verb descansar conjugated here?
When you have two verbs linked together to express a single idea, only the first verb is conjugated to match the subject. Here, precisa is conjugated for the subject O participante, so the second verb, descansar (to rest), stays in its original dictionary form (the infinitive).
The word participante ends in an "e". Does that mean it is automatically masculine?
Nouns that end in -nte, like participante or estudante, are actually gender-neutral and are exactly the same for both men and women. To know the person's gender, you have to look at the words before it. Here, the masculine article O at the very beginning tells us that this specific participant is male. If it were a woman, it would be A participante.

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