How do I translate sentences with often-hyphenated adjectives?

Question

I am trying to translate to Spanish the following quote from one of our customers (we teach computing):

"He truly cares about translating his hard-earned and vast knowledge to his students."

I often have difficulty translating sentences with hyphenated adjectives in them... so I'm looking for general advice on how to approach translating hyphenated words, for example "hard-earned".

My best attempt at this sentence doesn't work:

"Él realmente se preocupa por la traducción de su propio conocimiento, vasta y tan duramente ganado, a sus estudiantes."

It is ambiguous about whose knowledge is being transferred, and that they are his students... su and sus could be anything... I have tried appending "a Él" but that doesn't seem to yield the desired result either.

On the one hand, I just want my sentence translated, and on the other, I want some advice, so I can better help myself.

Thanks for the consideration and help.

Answer 1

With these types of sentences many times we can place one of the adjectives in front of the noun to make it less cluttered. One thing to note here is that your translation of translating gives a different meaning in Spanish from the English version, and also that verb should be in infinitive to match the remaining sentence structure. And in the English variant, his own doesn´t appear so su propio isn´t necessary in the Spanish variant.

I would say: "Él realmente se preocupa por trasladar / transferir su vasto conocimiento...." followed one of the previously mentioned suggestions.

Gracias! Qué tal: Él realmente se preocupa por transferir su vasto y ganado con mucho esfuerzo conocimiento a los estudiantes de él. - jrschenk, Jan 8, 2014

En este caso, sería mejor decir "Él realmente se preocupa por transferir a sus estudiantes su vasto conocimiento ganado con mucho esfuerzo" - 005faa61, Jan 9, 2014

Date cuenta de que "ganado con mucho esfuerzo" es una clausula entera usada como adjetivo y no se mezcla bien antes del nombre sino sólo tras de él - 005faa61, Jan 9, 2014

Entiendo completamente. Mil gracias! - jrschenk, Jan 9, 2014

Answer 2

I guess the best - and maybe only way - is to "convert" your hyphenated adjectives into "normal" adjectives.

Example: "hard-earned" = deserved or well deserved.

From my dictionary

hard-earned adjetivo

1 logrado con mucho esfuerzo

2 ganado con el sudor de la frente

I guess my zeal to keep the customer quote intact has kept me from seeing the obvious. ;) - jrschenk, Jan 8, 2014

Answer 3

I found some examples. It shows the text in both English and Spanish.

Hard-earned on Linguee

Nikki, this is a new resource for me... thank you! - jrschenk, Jan 8, 2014

You're welcome! - NikkiLR, Jan 8, 2014

Answer 4

That's a good thought-provoking question: )

I won't try to answer it but you might take a look at this discussion regarding converting English hyphenated words to Spanish palabras compuestas.

palabras compuestas

Gracias, Denny. - jrschenk, Jan 8, 2014