Which verb tense is more realistic?
As an exercise on LiveMocha.com, I'm reading a letter in Spanish, supposedly a postcard home sent by someone on vacation. It says, in part:
"Hemos estado en Tlaquepaque, un pueblo muy bonito y tranquilo y hemos ido al mercado de Tonalá. ¡Ha sido espectacular!"
When I translated "hemos ido al mercado" here on spanishdict.com, two of the three computer translators returned "We have gone to the market," while one returned "We went to the market." I had the computer programs translate "We went to the market" and got "Fuimos al mercado" from all three sources, which makes more sense to me. Could it be said that translating "We went to the market" as "hemos ido al mercado" in this context is "wrong," "unskillful," or "stilted"?
In a similar vein, is "¡Ha sido espectacular!" what you would expect to write? Thanks.
4 Answers
Hola,
If translated literally into English
- Hemos estado -> we have been
- Hemos ido -> we have gone
- Ha sido -> it has been
However the Spanish Present Perfect tense is often used to describe things happened in the past, regardless if it has lingering effect to the present. It is somewhat different than the usage of English Present Perfect tense which is used to emphasize on the present lingering effect of the past action. In other words, "Hemos ido a..." would be better translated as "we went to ..." instead of "we have gone to..." It depends on the situation.
There is a SD grammar page on this very topic here.
As for those machine translators, I found they can only be trusted to give a general meaning. They are not precise enough.
Perfect:
Ha sido espectacular: it has been spectacular. Hemos ido: we have gone. Hemos estado: we have been.
Preterite:
Fue: it was. Fuimos: we went. Estuvimos: we were.
Those are the literal translations, but they are often used in similar ways. There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying "fuimos al mercado."
It is the same as the difference in English between "we have been to the market" ("we have gone to the market" means something slightly different in English) and "we went to the market". . .in other words, there isn't much difference. In Latin America, people are much more likely to use the preterite here.
As a mexican I would have written: "Estuvimos en Tlaquepaque y fuimos al mercado". But probably a spaniard would write: "Hemos estado en Tlaquepaque y hemos ido al mercado". Both forms are gramatically correct. The difference is rather idiosyncratic.
Now, which form do yo like most:
"We have gone to the market" or "We went to the market" ?
As a non native I would choose the second one.
