Quote from Jose "Pepe" Mujica

Question

I am translating an article for work, which contains the following quote from Uruguayan president, Jose Mujica. I am struggling to accurately translate it. Thank you!

"Una vez que te enteraste que hay cerca de 200 tipos que se la comieron de garrón y que fueron tirados como tarro al basural, y vos pudiendo hacer algo que no pudieron hacer los otros por contradicciones electorales, ¿no das una mano por cobardía? [...] No se puede ser en el mundo un alma tan podrida.”

Could you also post what you have so far in English? - Jubilado, Oct 13, 2014

Answer 1

Sometimes this kind of Spanish can be very complicated and hard to translate so if you're gonna translate Mujica's quotes you're going to go crazy ^.^, anyway here my attempt

'200 tipos que se la comieron de garrón' would be something like '200 guys got into trouble(or something I don't know the context) without having anything to do with it'

'que fueron tirados como tarro al basural' - 'they were thrown like trash can to the garbage dump'

'¿no das una mano por cobardía?' - don't you give a hand by cowardice ?

'No se puede ser en el mundo un alma tan podrida' would be 'the people in the world cannot being(or having) such a rotten soul' (he literally is saying that some people are 'rotten soul' jeje)

Cheers, Pablo, I'm glad to see you found it hard too.. - annierats, Oct 13, 2014

I speak so because Uruguayans and Argentinians we speak almost in the same way but it's hard to translate :D - 003e54f5, Oct 13, 2014

Answer 2

Ok, I'll have a go, but , without context and having no idea about the political situation in Uruguay it is a bit random, I don't know what José Mujica is referring to. I'm also uncertain about' comer de garrón' but I think it can refer to going through something horrible.

Once you've understood that there are around 200 chaps/persons, who were forced to endure/go through this situation and who were just chucked out like rubbish to the tip, and you might have been able to do what others couldn't, for reasons of difficulties with the elections. Are you too cowardly to help us? There can't be a more rotten soul in the whole world.