Promover usage?

Question

So I came across this line: shows that ... promote lying or cheating. (its actually part of a rather long discription) and was going to translate promote as promover, but was not 100% sure of that was the right usage of promote. So I looked it up and found the following under promote in the dictionary, and it furthered my curiosity.

1. fomentar, promover (encourage)• to promote somebody's interests -> favorecer los intereses de alguien

Should I be using fomentar instead of promover? And why is the example for fomentar, promover using yet another word favorecer. Maybe I should be using that one (that the show favors lying and cheating??)

Answer 1

Promover (pro + mover) means to "push forward or in favour of". For example, you can "move" (or compel) people and resources in order to achieve a goal (here you can use "fomentar" too), move people up in a ranking, grade or job... Therefore, translations vary according to the context: to promote (from Latin pro + movere = pro + mover), to sponsor, to cause/provoke... While you can "promover" debates and discussions that could end up bad, you don't normally use this verb for encouraging negative behaviour (which is more common in "fomentar").

Fomentar comes form Latin fovere (to encourage/warm), and it has the same meaning as "promover / to promote", as well as to boost. It also shares the medical meaning of relieve pain of "to foment", but this word in English is otherwise used only to encourage negative things, while in Spanish it can be used to encourage all sort of things, but mostly positive ones, like the arts...

Thanks for the clarification. - pacofinkler, Aug 18, 2011

Answer 2

In checking the " usual suspects" Linguee.com and word reference, it would seem that " fomentar" may be better.