La and el uses
Hey,
I don't understand why use la in here:
Se duerme mejor con la conciencia tranquila.
Doesn't it translate to: One sleeps better with the clear conscience. But the actual translation i saw is: One sleeps better with a clear conscience.
3 Answers
In English there is a saying you sleep better with a clear conscience.
In Spanish they say -. Se duerme mejor con la consciencia tranquilla.
Idiomatic expressions are not direct translations.
Often prepositions are different too
I was always saying a este momento which is a translation of the English at this moment, but the Spanish say en este momento.
This reminds me of the difference in articles in English......
Why do we say...
"To tell a lie", but then we turn around and say, "to tell the truth".
One doesn't normally say, "to tell the lie" or to tell a truth".
Weird!
I don't understand why use la in here: Se duerme mejor con la conciencia tranquila. Doesn't it translate to: One sleeps better with the clear conscience. But the actual translation i saw is: One sleeps better with a clear conscience.
Sagi:
In general, it is best not to even think about literal translations. When you first start studying Spanish, some of the sentences are so simple that many of them can be translated literally and still appear to make sense and sound natural in English. However, these simple sentences, used for educational purposes only, give you a false sense of reality.
Once you progress to the point where you are reading novels, newspapers or magazines - the stuff of real life- it is rarely advisable to translate sentences literally. And if you are lucky enough to have a good English translation of a Spanish novel, for example, you will see that very, very few of the sentences are translated literally.
Just learn Spanish sentences and what they "mean." (and I purposely didn't say "mean in English") The sooner you can start to "think in Spanish" the better.
Here's a little example:
Tengo frío
Literal translation: I have cold
Common English translation: I am cold
Thinking in Spanish when you read "Tengo frío" : ¿Dónde está mi abrigo? 
When you become more advanced in Spanish you might think:
Hace tanto frío que se me ha puesto la carne de gallina. (Google Translate it if you need to)
Don't worry about the literal translation or try to reconcile the Spanish and English sentences word for word. Just focus on learning how things are written or spoken in Spanish. Period.
