Failure and retreat in a sentence

Question

I need help translating this sentence.

"They had one more opportunity and if they failed, they were going to retreat to the south."

I translated it to this...

"Tenían una oportunidad más y si fallaban, iban a hacer su retirada hasta el sur."

Any suggestions or will this work?

Answer 1

Your translation is OK, however hasta el sur has a nuance of "all the way as far as the south" which is fine, but your English version doesn´t have this nuance. So to keep the English nuance "to the south", you just need to say al sur.

I overlooked your last clause and I agree with txustaboy that "ir" should be in conditional - 005faa61, Nov 3, 2014

Answer 2

My suggestion:

They had one more opportunity and if they failed, they were going to retreat to the south."

Tenian una única oportunidad, y si fallaban se irían hacia el sur. .

You get my vote for the única .. - annierats, Nov 3, 2014

Answer 3

Interesting question. If this is a setup to the recounting of a story where all of the events are actually in the past, then I understand the use of the imperfect. But the English sentence, without further context, can be read as the one opportunity being in the future and thus the failure and the retreat also being in the future.

My question is would that change the Spanish verb tenses?

Answer 4

Not, si hubíeran fallado... ?