Help with tense - French

[Sayquoi]

Hi, I'm new here. I'm wondering if anyone can help me figure out how one would translate the following into French.

"He got up from his chair, yawning and stretching".

I can't quite figure it out. Originally, it was "He got up from his chair, yawning and stretching as he did so" but through study, I understand that "as he did so" is just a linguistic ellipsis referring back to the verb "got up", and that it isn't really necessary to translate it into French. Part of knowing how to translate is knowing what not to translate, no?

Anyway, my problem is with the tense. I really can't tell if it should all be at the passé composé, l'imparfait or if I need to throw a participe présent in there. << En se levant de sa chaise, il bâillait et s'étirait. >> Or even << En s'ayant levé... >>

I'd really appreciate any help with this, it's driving me nuts.

[Sayquoi]

OK, well, ,I've figured out a basic mistake I've been making. Reflexive verbs take être, duh. So << Il s'est levé >> both means he gets up and got up. In French if we're talking about a person's physical position we use a past participle. Still, I've no idea what tense yawning and stretching should be.

[reineke]

Sartre: "Pedro se leva en bâillant et vint souffler la lampe."

...en s'étirant could be used here for "stretching".

Se leva: literary. Are you trying to write a story?

Il se lève gets up/rises can also be used descriptively.

WordReference is a wonderful resource.

You can also play with Reverso.

[Sayquoi]

Hey, that's a useful quote. I guess if an actual French author wrote it like that, it must be correct. I've been looking stuff up all day about perfective and imperfective aspect. I even read a 115 page thing on French syntax thinking maybe I was just missing something with sentence structure. This little snippet has had me stumped for a few days now. Thanks for the help.

A story? No, I just try to think of interesting sentences and figure out how to translate them.

http://www.academia.edu/1997083/Fundame ... nch_Syntax

There's that syntax thing I mentioned for anyone interested.

[Ani]

I don't trust myself to give advice like this, but Rutledge's Complete French Grammar has an abundance of lovely examples like this and might be a good help.