Translation Help "How do you say this"

Question

Hi -

Im sorry if this question has all ready been answered. I could only find an answers on yahoo but I wanted to double check on here. So I am trying to speak spanish with a few of my friends who know how to speak it and I want to ask them this:

"How do you say _____ in spanish?"

or

"Can you translate _____ in spanish?"

Something along these lines so that I can ask them in Spanish instead of english which I figured would help me more. Thanks everyone!

c: - GexThunderstrom, Sep 3, 2014

Please fill out your profile so that we may better help you .Bienvenido al fora , buena suerte amiga. - ray76, Sep 3, 2014

Answer 1

I think the only construct I use for this is: "¿Cómo se dice 'ice-cream' en español?" which is like "How is 'ice-cream' said in Spanish?'.

An alternative could be "¿Puedes traducir 'ice-cream' al castellano/español?" ('Can you translate ice cream to Spanish for me?') though that might sound weird (I might be wrong of course). You could possibly also say something rigid like "¿Cuál palabra significa 'ice-cream' en español?" and 'get the ball across the net'.

This works quite well if your Spanish friends have knowledge of the actual English word you are talking about.

In some cases, you may have to extrapolate to "¿Cómo se dice 'algo frío y guay que se puede encontrar en todos buenos refrigeradores y es, sin duda, el sentido de vida y todo estar' en español?"

or

"¿Cómo se dice 'esto' en español?" while pointing furiously at the rapidly melting ice-cream in your hand.

---

"Ah", Your friends will say. "¡Pero es la pregunta más difícil del mundo entero! Buena suerte en encontrar una respuesta satisfactoria, amigo." leaving you a sadder but wiser man.

Hope I managed to help you somewhere in there!

EDIT: On a reread, I feel that it might be possible to even say "¿Cómo se llama esto?" in that last example there. Someone correct me.