Idiomatic ways of saying "As we talked about ..." / "Like I said ..." / etc

Question

I am trying to determine how to best translate the English phrases "Like I said [just now] ..." or "As we discussed [previously] ...", which indicate that what follows has already been said at some point in the past.

Por ejemplo:

"As we talked about yesterday, the cows are not producing milk."

________?________, las vacas no producen leche.

"Like we discussed Tuesday, we should burn all of the documents."

________?________, deberíamos quemar todos de los documentos.

Like I said [just now], I don't want to buy your dirty socks.

________?________, no quiero comprar sus calcetines sucios.

My first guess, attempting a direct translation was something like: "Como discutimos ayer ...", etc. Is "como" the right word to use here for "as/like"? Are there more idiomatic/natural ways of expressing this in Spanish?

Answer 1

Any of the following translations are valid for each of your sentence:

"As we talked about yesterday, the cows are not producing milk."

• Como ya hablamos ayer, las vacas no producen leche.

"Like we discussed Tuesday, we should burn all of the documents."

• Tal y como discutimos el martes, deberíamos quemar todos los documentos.

Like I said [just now], I don't want to buy your dirty socks

• Como ya he dicho, no quiero comprar sus calcetines sucios.

• Como ya le he dicho, no quiero comprar sus calcetines sucios.

• Como le acabo de decir, no quiero comprar sus calcetines sucios.

Here are some differences between each form:

• Como: The most neutral form to introduce a previous situation

• Como ya: It puts some emphasis to something that has already been introduced.

• Tal y como: Totally interchangable with the previous one.

Despite the little differences, the three are interchangable with each other.

I would use como as the formal way. Sometimes, to put emphasis might be taken as a provocation. Depends on the situation. So rather use the neutral one.