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En una de las sentencias más esperadas de los últimos añosIf you need help translating a sentence or longer piece of text, use this forum. For translations or definitions of a single word or idiom, use the vocabulary forum. |
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#1
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En una de las sentencias más esperadas de los últimos años
I have never understood this use of esperar as for "to hope" and "to expect". This sentence is part of a newspaper article on the sentence passed on the husband of Cristina de Borbón.
If it means "a judgment eagerly awaited", why can't it mean "an expected judgment"? (because the idiot was clearly guilty) Edit: link |
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#2
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People were eager to know what the final decision would be; they both expected and hoped that "Urdanga" would be sentenced and jailed, but there was some uncertainty for fear of influence peddling that might have him cleared.
...And some others hoped but never expected the Infanta would be sentenced for the same reasons.
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#3
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So are you saying that it is deliberately ambiguous (in English)?
I just can't understand why Spanish does not seem to differentiate clearly between "hope" and "expect", and I can't understand why I seem to be the only person in the universe who sees a problem here. |
#4
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I'm not sure there is anything really ambiguous about it. For us, the verb inherently has these two meanings, so it's not like we'd stop and think whether it should be one notion or the other.
I kind of feel that the idea of anticipation or expectation dominates in this sentence, but I think I wouldn't have noticed if a translator would have used "awaited" instead of "anticipated" (my choice if I had been the translator) or "expected". But I understand what bothers you; it's probably like my own problem with "to know" or "to be". It took me long to come to terms with the fact that there is one verb for two separate notions in my head.
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#5
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Awaited: waiting for the result without having any idea about the outcome Expected: the outcome was as we thought it was going to be How can this not be a problem? Which language are you talking of? |
#6
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"To know" may mean "conocer" or "saber", and "to be" means "ser" or "estar". It was funny when I started learning because I couldn't understand why such different actions would correspond to the same verb in English.
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#7
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How would you say 1) I expect to die tomorrow and 2) I hope to die tomorrow ? |
#8
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I agree with Angélica that the situation is analogous between esperar and know. I would add that both have caused me headaches when translating.
When translating expect into Spanish I frequently use a circumlocution. My intuition is that tener expectativas and tener una expectación allow a moderate level of precision. I'd be interested to hear what native speakers think about that. Here, when translating into English I would favour awaited over hoped for on the grounds that if the editor wanted to make clear that the latter was the salient interpretation they could instead have used anhelada. 1) Presiento que mañana me muera. 2) Ojalá me muera mañana. Last edited by pjt33; February 21, 2017 at 01:16 PM. Reason: Respond to specific follow-up question |
#9
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I expect to die tomorrow = Mi expectativa es morir mañana.
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#10
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All that is to say, you're not alone and every language learner has struggled with similar things.
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