What is the most common way in Spanish to express "have (someone) do (something)"? For example, a boss might say to his secretary:
Have the marketing manager come see me ASAP!
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2 Answers
It whould be:
Que el gerente de marketing venga a verme cuanto antes
A literal translation would include "Haz" like this:
Haz que el gerente de marketing venga a verme cuanto antes
But it lays the responsibility directly on her shoulders, and you actually don't care who does it, you just need it done. It's not wrong, but sounds weird and a native won't ever say it that way. If you want the one you are asking to do something to do it herself, you add the infamous "I want YOU to do X":
Quiero que [tú/vos] hagas venir al gerente de marketing cuanto antes
and if you want to make it literal (and turn your request into a command, and sound passive-agressive):
Quiero que [tú/vos] personalmente hagas venir al gerente de marketing cuanto antes
So to put it simple, in spanish if you want something done, you just command the universe for it to happen:
Que X haga Y
If you say that to somebody, it is implied that you want her to ensure it happens. It she does it herself, or in a team, or someone else does it, you dont mind.
Also, we don't have an exact, perfect translation for marketing, we use the English word, and the same goes for software and some other "modern" things, but if we where to translate it, it would probably be "mercado". We cannot use a gerund as a substantive in spanish, nor can we create gerunds on substantives as easy as in English because they doesn't sound natural at all.
When we deal with (regular) verbs, we add ando or endo for the act, and ción or ento. Why two forms for each? The anwser is that it's inherited from the Latin language, in which it does make some sense.
This is the word planning as used when someone is planning something:
Planificando
And this is planning as the abstract construct:
Planificación
Another examples:
Naciendo/Nacer, Curando,Curación
Finally, to turn a substantive into the abstract act of... as it if were a verb, you add eo at the end, or _deo if it doesn't end in a consonant:
Market/Marketing: Mercado/Mercadeo
But this almost never has meaning for us, sounds weird and we do it very rarely.
Edit: "Cuanto antes" is short for "Cuanto antes sea posible" (As soon as possible).
I would translate it as:
Haz que el gerente de mercadeo me venga a ver lo antes posible
