¿Cuál es la diferencia?
How do you translate, where are we going to meet? ¿Dónde nos encontramos? o ¿Dónde encontramos? and why?
5 Answers
Although you could use the future tense in a situation like this and be understood perfectly by most Spanish speakers, it is much more common and preferable to use the present tense. Future tense is rarely used like this in Spanish. That is one difference between the use of tenses in Spanish and English, and something a lot of people have trouble grasping. That being said the use of the periphrasis "ir a …" is also very common. There are probably hundreds of ways to express this, here are some common ones:
¿Dónde quedamos?
¿Dónde nos vemos?
¿Dónde nos encontramos?
¿Dónde nos reunimos?
¿Dónde nos citamos?
For the verbs "encontrar", "ver", "citar" and "reunir", the "nos" indicates that you and another person will be participating in the action. Unfortunately I don't have a good explanation for the use of "quedar" in this case other than just knowing its use and knowing that the pronominal form "quedarse" means "to stay"
To be honest, I really look forward to inspired answers, it's a phrase I have had to e-mail to lots and lots of people and never felt sure of:
Do you use ' quedar' or ' quedarse' or 'encontrar' or' encontrarse' or cononcer???
Brilliant question, which I ought to be able to answer with ease, but I'm not.
However, I have always managed to met up with all the people I have written to, although I have used all these formulations in various shapes, so they must all be understandable.
' Dónde vamos a encontrarnos ' might be the simplest.
You would say "Dónde nos encontraremos" because you need an object of the verb encontrar. Without "nos" you don't know if you're meeting, finding a book, a lost sock...
I would also make it in the future (encontraremos instead of encontramos) because you want to know where you WILL meet. Or you could say" Dónde nos vamos a encontrar" if you wanted to keep more closely to the original "Where are we going to meet".
Hello Adsimon and any other readers 
Welcome to our Spanishdict community forum
You asked:
How do you translate, where are we going to meet? ¿Dónde nos encontramos? o ¿Dónde encontramos? and why?
You can say: ¿Dónde vamos a quedar? (Spain)
or ¿Dónde encontramos?
...if you are talking about a meeting that will take place in a short period of time that is defined eg tomorrow or next week
However, if you were meaning: Where will we meet? when talking about meeting up at a much later date, ie: in 3 or 4 months time from now, or at some undefined time in the future then you should, strictly speaking, use the future indicative tense:
¿Dónde nos encontraremos? = Where will we meet?
I have recently read on Spanish dict in a response which i think was from a native Spanish speaker that it is becoming increasingly more common in some regions of the Spanish speaking world, to simply use the immediate future using the ir a + infinitive (verb) construction instead of the future. In view, this would be a great pity, just perhaps on account of some people's laziness to learn or speak the language properly, as the future indicative is such a great tense to use! 
I hope this helps
Corrijan mi español si es necesario, por favor
Though I found pescador1's answer interesting and informative, I want to share with you something I observed after reading your question. I often keep by my computer Langenscheidt's Universal Dictionary Spanish. It is a perfect desktop companion especially in an area that frequently loses internet connection due to external interference from planes, trains, and the like. (The planes fly so close to the houses in my area that I've read through quite a lot of it! In fact, while writing this post, I learned another two dozen words!!) Be that as it may, I decided to see what this pocket dictionary might have for "encontrar(se)." What I found is below:
encontrar: find
encontrarse: meet
I also took a look at the WordReference entry for "encontrar," and what is listed there corresponds with what I found in Langenscheidt. Now, I know in practice that there's some fuzziness with these two (encontrar vs. encontrarse) in terms of usage, but sometimes knowing too many words for one concept can be somewhat confusing for the beginning-intermediate student of Spanish. For that reason, I often find such pocket dictionaries helpful, especially when attempting to translate from English into Spanish. And I'm not the only one who finds this dictionary valuable either. For a review that reveals just how well liked this dictionary is by one user of it, read this review titled, an old favorite.
If, however, you want to venture beyond a pocket dictionary, I wholeheartedly recommend using Reverso (www.reverso.net) alongside a reputable dictionary. It often adds insight to words and phrases you are unlikely to find elsewhere. For example, a search for "we met" indicates that it is more often translated as "nos conocimos" rather than "nos encontramos" (by more than 6:1). But keep in mind that "conocer" means "to know someone" when in the present tense and "to meet someone for the first time" in the past tense. On top of that, I believe either one of these (conocerse and encontrarse) can be used reciprocally -- we met each other -- but, using Reverso, I only see evidence that "nos conocimos" is used to convey a reciprocal meaning. Either way, context should dictate the meaning unless the writing/speech is ambiguous.
HTH
Final note: After rereading your question, I see now that you were specifically asking about how to ask a question about the future (in addition to the distinctions between "encontrar" and "encontrarse"). My answer is still relevant to your question even though I don't address the future aspect, but I'll add a bit on that as well. First of all, there are two ways to express the future, and more if you factor in, as pescador1 has mentioned, that the present is often used to talk about future events. Since that was already touched on, I won't add to that, except to add this link here for further study. As for the two customary ways to express future tenses (besides use of the present tense), you've got the following:
1) A CONJUGATED FORM OF "IR" + INFINITIVE
EX: ¿Dónde nos vamos a encontrar?
2) THE SIMPLE FUTURE TENSE
EX: ¿Dónde nos encontraremos?
Now, why would you use one over the other? Well, it is my understanding that you use the future tense when you really want to express something with conviction. For more details on the differences, see this post here.
But don't follow that rule blindly because actual usage may reveal something else. For example, when I took a look at what Reverso has listed for these two variations, (links listed below):
I found that the phrases most often translated with some varation of "meet" are those with "nos encontraremos." For "nos vamos a encontrar," you'll find a mix of variations involving "meet" and "find." Translations of "nos encontraremos" involving "find" do appear as well, but when they are, they are translated as "we will find ourselves." Overall, whether you find the conviction in the examples using future tense or not, it appears that "nos encontraremos" may be a more common way of saying, "we will meet" and the difference between saying that and saying, "we are going to meet," is about the same as you would find in English. When you ask, "Where will we meet?" does that carry a different meaning for you than when you ask, "Where are we going to meet?" For me, there really wouldn't be (although "Where will we meet" feels just a tad bit more formal). The only way I could make "Where will we meet?" express conviction is if I emphasized it using voice inflection as in "Where will we meet?" or changed "will" to "shall," but overall, expressing conviction and asking a non-rhetorical question seem to be a bit at odds with one another in most cases.
Again, HTH.
