What is the best translation for the phrase “The word he embodied” to Neutral Spanish, considering the best to apply? Because, as it's known, if the translation is made literally, sometimes it doesn't turn out fine or it means a different thing.
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2Could you please provide the full sentence? Context is required for the translation to be accurate. – Gustavson Nov 3 '19 at 18:17
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In addition to what @Gustavson requested, could you tell us what translation did you have in mind? Maybe it is already OK. – walen Nov 3 '19 at 22:14
The phrase you're looking to translate has a bit of a religious ring to it, to my ear. So I tried googling the phrase, along with the word Christianity. Bingo. Lots of hits. Next I put your phrase into linguee.com. Consistently, through a number of example usage sentences in the religion context, I found
personificar
For example:
The embodied Word of God: La Palabra de Dios personificada
Thus, your phrase, "the word he embodied” would likely be expressed among Spanish-speaking Christians as
La Palabra que Él personificó
I must emphasize that I'm proceeding logically, not by ear, as I have almost zero personal knowledge of Christianity in either language.
answered Nov 4 '19 at 3:25
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In Christian religion, we say "el Verbo encarnado" to refer to Christ as the embodiment of the word of God. However, "personificar" could work in other contexts. – Gustavson Nov 4 '19 at 9:36
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@Gustavson please note that the question was about "neutral spanish", in which case this answer makes more sense to me. – Vladimir Nul Nov 4 '19 at 12:02
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@Gustavson Fun fact: in my experience, in Spain "el Verbo hecho carne" is much more common than "el Verbo encarnado". I wonder if that has anything to do with "encarnado" being also the name of a color 🤔 – walen Nov 4 '19 at 13:16
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@walen Yes, I have also heard "el Verbo hecho carne", but on the Internet "Verbo encarnado" beats it 594,000 to 80,100. What is much more common is its use as a tensed verb: El Verbo se hizo carne, unless you say El Verbo se encarnó en Jesús. – Gustavson Nov 4 '19 at 14:13
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Sorry, everyone, I don't have anything in my ear for this. I just went by what I saw in linguee. Hopefully someone with a strong connection to this particular religion will be able to give us a definitive answer. – aparente001 Nov 5 '19 at 4:02
