Use of the Infinitive "Chocar"

Question

I found the following sentence while translating an article from El Mundo. "Una nave de la Marina Israelí hiere a un activista al chocar contra un barco humanitario." My best attempt at interpretation is: A ship of the Israeli navy wounded an activist by crashing against a humanitarian ship. However, it seems wrong because chocar = to crash, not crashing. If I heard, rather than read, this sentence I wouldn't have be able to translate it. Can anyone shed light on why the infinitive, chocar, is used.

Gracias por su ayuda,

Saludos,

Jim

Answer 1

Hello. This is correct even though it may seem incorrectly translated in terms of the verb conjugation. In my limited experience with Spanish, I have come up with a guess, if the others could please tell me if I am right or not, that “al + infinitive” means “upon verb stem+ing”. So, basically, I mean that al + chocar, means upon crashing. This is my best guess, and I would appreciate constructive criticism for fluent Spanish speakers. Thank you and I hope this helps.

So, I think that the direct translation would be, “A ship of the Israeli navy wounded an activist upon crashing against a humanitarian ship.” - span4yrs, Dec 28, 2011

Answer 2

When you have a verb form ending in "-ing" and used as a noun in English the equivalent expression in Spanish will use the infinitive. In Spanish the only verb form that can act as a noun is the infinitive.

Note: this does not apply to such expressions as "He was singing." because "singing is not functioning as a noun.

In the hope of forestalling misinformation: the technical term for "the verb form ending in '-ing' used as a noun" in English is "gerund". When not used as a noun, the form (as in "He was singing.") is called the "present participle". In Spanish the present participle is called the "gerundio" which leads a lot of people with only a sketchy knowledge of English grammar (i.e. most English speakers) to mis-translate "gerundio" as "gerund" (and vice versa).

Answer 3

It can also mean colliding with, which might be a bit more natural for the English version.

Answer 4

Look in the dictionary and read the 3. definition of "al". It explains this usage.

It appears to be at the crash or upon crashing.

Good Question. You get my vote.