Cuántas personas caben en el coche

Cuántas personas caben en el coche
 

para cuantas personas hay sitio en el coche?
cuantas personas caben en el coche?
Cómo podemos traducir esto en inglés?

How people can be inside of the car?

May my translation work?

How many people does the car hold?
How many people can fit in the car?
What is it, a 5-seater?

Crotalito, se entiende, pero "be" no es la mejor elección de verbo ("¿Cuántas personas pueden estar dentro del coche?" suena raro, ¿no?), y "inside of" me parece excesivo. "The inside of X" es "el interior de X", pero cuando se trata de preposición basta "inside" o, en este y otros casos, "in".

Can anyone tell me what passenger means in this context, and whether it means the same as pasajero? This might be a strange question, but recently I was booking a ferry to another island, on-line in Spanish. One car and how many passengers? was the question. I got it wrong because I answered 1 passenger, meaning 1 driver plus 1 passenger. The site understood 1 person in the car, just the driver, counting the driver as a passenger, which is wrong in English (I thought). :thinking:

So if someone asks 'how many passengers fit in this car?', does this include the driver?

Tough question. I would probably say no...:confused:

Perikles, me parece posible que la pregunta haya sido "¿Cuántos pasajeros [en el ferry]?" y no "¿Cuántos pasajeros [en el coche]?".

No, it was quite clearly the number of passengers in the car. (But of course, they could have meant ferry) :confused:

We use passenger, and yes it includes the driver.
Can we use room in the original question?
for example For how many people is there room in the car ? I know it souds stilted but ........

Hi Robin - The sentence is correct, although a bit stilted, as you thought.

Perikles - I suppose that once the car, driver, and passengers are aboard
the ferry, all occupants of the car become ferry passengers.

@pjt: You are right. One usually asks "cuántos caben", "para cuántas personas/pasajeros es el coche", "para cuántos es el carro"...
"¿Cuántas personas pueden estar en el coche?" is a valid question, only when you're asking about how many people can remain inside the car for a specific purpose.
Normally, in the parking lots one cannot remain inside the car, but there are some places were one person is allowed to stay.
And I heard once that in a car wash they only let one person stay inside the car. The rest had to wait outside. :)


@Perikles: "Pasajero", when referred to the number of people a private transport can hold, includes the driver. It's a convention. :)
(Not the same for public transport, where the number of "pasajeros" do not include the driver.)

Thanks - that's interesting, because I don't think the convention is the same in English for passenger. A car can have a driver and three passengers = four in the car. :thinking:

@Perikles: I have asked, and I've been informed that a relatively new convention prefers "plazas". "Un coche de 5 plazas" avoids the ambiguous use of "pasajero". :D

@Hermit: Does "How many people have room in the car?" sound equally awkward? :thinking:

It could sound like a silly competition to see how many people fit into a car, regardless of the number of seats. :D

:lol: But that can also be an ambiguous meaning of the question in Spanish. ;)

Eso significa algo distinto, más o menos "¿Cuántas personas tienen espacio en el coche?" Pues, depende de cuántas personas están adentro actualmente, y de si son gordas o delgadas.

Yes, technically correct, but to my North American ear it would sound better as:
"How many people does the car have room for?". This effectively rearranges Robin's
sentence, and is commonly heard colloquially, although grammatically incorrect.