La palabra del día: Superar

Question

superar soo-peh-rar' (verb)

to beat; to overcome, to surpass, to overtake

1. Quiero superar mi tiempo por 5 minutos.

I want to beat my time by 5 minutes.

1. Los insectos superan los seres humanos en este mundo. 2. Los insectos superan "A" los seres humanos en este mundo.

En el ejemplo 1 no estoy totalmente seguro, pero creo que la palabra "por" sale sobrando, es decir, tal vez podría quedar así:

"Quiero superar mi tiempo 5 minutos"
"Quiero mejora mi tiempo 5 minutos" "Quiero bajar mi tiempo 5 minutos"

en otras frases la palabra "por" sí se usaría, por ejemplo:

"Rompió su record POR más de 5 minutos" "Él impuso nuevo record mundial POR apenas una décima de segundo"

If Im wrong, please correct me.

Answer 1

Quiero superar mi tiempo por 5 minutos

Quiero mejorar mi tiempo a 5 minutos menos.

Quiero bajar mi tiempo en 5 minutos menos.

Las últimas están bien.

Answer 2

Gracias de nuevo, hombreman. Por supuesto, vuelves a estar en lo cierto.

Lector constante:

I consider myself a novice (at reading Spanish) and had no difficulty understanding what was meant.

If they don't sound strange for you, it's just because those sentences are usually literal translations from English. For me, they ARE hard to understand and I usually need to read those in English, because I am not able to get what's supposedly written in my own language.

So...it's not only a matter of style.

One of my sisters sends me things that she puts through a machine translator; the last one was so bad that, although I had no issue understanding what the English she put in was, I actually said to her that I would wonder if a Spanish speaker... - Stadt, Feb 11, 2012

...who did not know English would be able to understand it at all- it was long and complex and had some idiomatic English usages that did not translate correctly. - Stadt, Feb 11, 2012

"Strange to you" would be a little more natural than "strange for you". :-) - Stadt, Feb 11, 2012

Answer 3

I feel that this is more a matter of style than it is of correct usage. I consider myself a novice (at reading Spanish) and had no difficulty understanding what was meant. There was a subtle difference, however, in what I would call "tone". I would expect a teenager to want to beat his time, a serious athlete to want to better or lower his time and "improving" one's time to be more a literary usage. ?? Quiero mejorar mi español, y mi mente. I want to improve my Spanish, and my mind.