unas escobillas
Sé que mucha gente está ocupada hoy, el día antes de la Navidad, con otras cosas y no está aquí, pero me gustaría hacer una pregunta. Vi la siguiente traducción.
No espere hasta un día lluvioso para cambiar unas escobillas ya gastadas.
Don't wait until a rainy day to change worn-out windshield wipers.
Mi pregunta tiene que ver con la palabra unas aquí. ¿Es necesaria? ¿Por qué no se omite, o no se usa el artículo definido (las)'
11 Answers
Ah, gotcha.
I guess I'm not making myself clear and it's off-topic now anyway. The point I was trying to make was that if the sentence referred to replacing the bristles on a worn out broom, rather than to windshield wipers, then replacing some of the bristles might make more sense.
James Santiago said:
The only reason that I asked if someone had correctly translated the escobillas correctly was that I thought we had an earlier thread about excobillas being the straw that made up a straw broom (escoba). In that context, the unas makes more sense.I'm not sure what you mean. An escobilla is a small brush, but even if it referred to the individual bristles of a brush or broom, how would unas make sense in the context of windshield wipers? Most cars have two wipers (a few have three or one), so unas seems very out of place here to me. I guess I didn't make it clear why it seemed so odd to me, but it is because wipers come in pairs, and we usually only refer to one car at a time when discussing changing wipers, so it makes no sense (to me) to talk about replacing "some" wipers.
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The only reason that I asked if someone had correctly translated the escobillas correctly was that I thought we had an earlier thread about excobillas being the straw that made up a straw broom (escoba). In that context, the unas makes more sense.
I'm not sure what you mean. An escobilla is a small brush, but even if it referred to the individual bristles of a brush or broom, how would unas make sense in the context of windshield wipers? Most cars have two wipers (a few have three or one), so unas seems very out of place here to me. I guess I didn't make it clear why it seemed so odd to me, but it is because wipers come in pairs, and we usually only refer to one car at a time when discussing changing wipers, so it makes no sense (to me) to talk about replacing "some" wipers.
James Santiago said:
Sally said:
I don't know the rule as to why they would not use las or if there is a rule that applies here.Try reading it out loud with the word unas and then with las. It changes the tone. In my opinion unas implies that they are just some old worn out wipers.
I see what you're saying, Sally, but when we talk about wipers, we usually refer to the specific pair on someone's car, so it seems odd to refer to them in such an abstract way, as if they were advising us to go out right now and find some old wipers and change them, even if they aren't on our own cars. I just wanted to know if it sounds natural to a native speaker (you're close), because it sounds odd in English as "some."
That's weird. I didn't even see this post when I replied earlier. Well if you think "some" sounds odd in English, scratch what I said the English version should be! 
Would the rule, "When speaking in generalities the noun needs an article." be the reason? Like how, "Music calms me." translates, "La musica me calma." No, then I guess it would be the definite article. I don't know, but I tried it all three ways; no article, las and unas. and unas is the only one that sounds right. Language is a funny thing there are rules upon rules but they may or may not cover everything. I studied Spanish in high school (what a joke) and a good language school; then I moved to a small Mexican village. So much of what I know is by feel, though I do have a good foundation in the grammar.
Sorry, I didn't catch that it wasn't your translation.
The only reason that I asked if someone had correctly translated the escobillas correctly was that I thought we had an earlier thread about escobillas being the straw that made up a straw broom (escoba). In that context, the unas makes more sense.
James Santiago said:
As I said, I found the two sentences together, one given as the translation of the other. The word I have always heard for windshield wipers is limpiaparabrisas (or limpiadores in Mexico), but that wasn't my question. I just assumed that escobillas was used somewhere in that meaning. If it isn't, that would be good to know, too.By the way, I like the double-compound nature of the word limpiaparabrisas. If we had a product that protected windshield wipers, I wonder if we could call it a protegelimpiaparabrisas. And if we had a container that contained this product, would it be a contieneprotegelimpiaparabrisas? Starting to look like German!
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I don't know of any rule either. Both articles sound fine to me. There might be something to what Sally said. Maybe the English version should've been, "...some worn-out windshield wipers."
Sally said:
I don't know the rule as to why they would not use las or if there is a rule that applies here. Try reading it out loud with the word unas and then with las. It changes the tone. In my opinion unas implies that they are just some old worn out wipers.
I see what you're saying, Sally, but when we talk about wipers, we usually refer to the specific pair on someone's car, so it seems odd to refer to them in such an abstract way, as if they were advising us to go out right now and find some old wipers and change them, even if they aren't on our own cars. I just wanted to know if it sounds natural to a native speaker (you're close), because it sounds odd in English as "some."
I don't know the rule as to why they would not use las or if there is a rule that applies here.
Try reading it out loud with the word unas and then with las. It changes the tone. In my opinion unas implies that they are just some old worn out wipers.
As I said, I found the two sentences together, one given as the translation of the other. The word I have always heard for windshield wipers is limpiaparabrisas (or limpiadores in Mexico), but that wasn't my question. I just assumed that escobillas was used somewhere in that meaning. If it isn't, that would be good to know, too.
By the way, I like the double-compound nature of the word limpiaparabrisas. If we had a product that protected windshield wipers, I wonder if we could call it a protegelimpiaparabrisas. And if we had a container that contained this product, would it be a contieneprotegelimpiaparabrisas? Starting to look like German! 
limpiaparabrisas
[url=http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltConsulta'TIPO_BUS=3&LEMA=escobilla]escobilla[/url]
Are you sure from the context that it is referring to windshield wipers?
