We must turn off the faucet and save water.
For the above construction, which of the below is more appropriate?
Debemos cerrar el grifo y ahorrar el agua.
Debemos cerrar el grifo y ahorramos el agua.
asked Apr 4, 2014 at 14:13
1 Answer
I would translate the original sentence,
We must turn off the faucet and save water.
as "Debemos cerrar el grifo y ahorrar agua", but more likely, as @fedorqui comments, I would write "Debemos cerrar el grifo para ahorrar agua", as "ahorrar agua" is the reason we must "cerrar el grifo".
answered Apr 4, 2014 at 15:55
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1I think your translation is better as you first propose it. The imprecision that you point out is also present in the original english sentence, so I think that shouldn't be removed. Else, it looks like you're really translating: "We must turn off the faucet to save water"– pHontaCommented Apr 5, 2014 at 1:03
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Well, that's the "literal" translation, and I said almost as much. But it's not the sentence I would write. I'm not a translator, so I can't really say what is better in this case. Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 20:26
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Well, it's literal but that is only bad if you lose or change the meaning of the sentence on the literal translation. As I see it, in this case, you would be changing the meaning of it by not using the literal one. I guess we would need to know more about the context. However, I did upvote your answer, so don't take this as anything but a bit of nitpicking ;)– pHontaCommented Apr 6, 2014 at 11:08
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Lo más correcto sería : Debemos cerrar el grifo y ahorrar agua. No hay que poner el artículo delante de "agua". Commented Oct 14, 2015 at 16:46
Debemos cerrar el grifo para ahorrar agua.orDebemos cerrar el grifo y así ahorrar agua.We must turn off the faucet and save ourselves some water