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What's the best way to translate "I have a feeling..."

This is not feeling as in feeling happy/sad etc, but instead more of an instinct/idea/guess.

Eg.

I have a feeling that someone here knows the answer to this. =)

Thanks =)

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The problem with your example is that "I have a feeling" is more of the idiomatic usage for "I think" rather than actually having a premonition about something. – Wes Freeman Jan 18 '12 at 17:22

2 Answers

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I would translate to have a feeling as presentir; here's the definition from the DRAE:

presentir.

(Del lat. praesentīre).

  1. tr. Intuir, tener la sensación de que algo va a suceder.

  2. tr. Adivinar algo antes que suceda, por algunos indicios o señales que lo preceden.

Your concrete example:

I have a feeling that someone here knows the answer to this.

would be

Presiento que alguien aquí sabe la respuesta.

As Laura has suggested in a comment, another commonly used translation would be Me parece que; in this case,

I have a feeling that someone here knows the answer to this.

would be

Me parece que alguien aquí sabe la respuesta.

Another possibility for to have a feeling would be intuir as in Intuyo que alguien aquí sabe la respuesta, but I would opt for presentir.

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Thanks, perfect =) Gotta love false cognates ^^ – Kage Jan 18 '12 at 5:27
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@Gonzalo Medina At least in Spain we use a lot "Me parece que..." – Laura Jan 18 '12 at 14:56
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@Laura I agree--I think that's more common and fits the translation closely enough, even though it's not a direct translation. You might consider using "Me parece que..." if the translation should sound natural. My Spanish is from Mexico. – Wes Freeman Jan 18 '12 at 17:20
@Laura: you're aboslutely right ;-) I've updated my answer to reflect your comment. Thank you! – Gonzalo Medina Jan 18 '12 at 22:15
up vote 1 down vote

I would translate it to

Tengo la sensación

So your sentence can be translated to:

Tengo la sensación de que alguien aquí sabe la respuesta.

Here you can see more examples of "tengo la sensación" with the corresponding Engish sentence.

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