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I am bilingual and spend a lot of time interacting with people who are not. ‘Buscar el auto’ Means, literally ‘To look for the car’. The question ‘Puedo buscar
by hisnameismanuel 8y ago
I am bilingual and spend a lot of time interacting with people who are not.
‘Buscar el auto’ Means, literally ‘To look for the car’. The question ‘Puedo buscar el auto’ means ‘can I look for the car.’
As an English speaker you might see that it’s possible to understand this as ‘search the car’. Wrong. In Spanish, if you ask this question… … (and this is key) … … the car cannot be present.
If you are to ‘buscar el auto’, it means
a) There is a car that is familiar to you
b) It is somewhere, but you don’t know where it is.
The article’s use of ‘find’ was close but it missed the mark. ‘Look for’ is the most accurate translation.
A Spanish speaker at this point would have NO idea what the policeman is trying to say. (‘What is this car you’re talking about? Why are you asking me if you can look for the car?')
Moreso, a Spanish speaker with no understanding of how English works would simply not make the link from ‘buscar’ to ‘registrar’ (which is the word the policeman SHOULD have used) even despite the policeman being present and car searches being a normal thing.
The two words are just too far off.
The reason he's saying 'Si' is because this is what one does in Spanish to jog along a conversation where one
a) Is not following
b) Doesn't think there is any hope of asking for clarification without making the conversation even more difficult.
- cwp 8y agoYup, spot on. The meaning of "buscar" is really narrow, "discover the location of a thing", so even if the officer pointed at the car while saying "puedo buscar el auto", the only reasonable response would have been, "Huh? It's right here!"
- StavrosK 8y agoBasically, "can I look for the car?". "What do you mean look for it? It's right here!"
- lostlogin 8y agoI regularly interact with people who speak no English in healthcare. It’s amazing how confused a situation can get and how far a conversation can apparently progress with someone saying ‘yes’ in answer to a question that isn’t understood. It’s a trap for the unwary. Getting in the habit of phrasing questions such that ‘yes’ or ‘no’ are not the answer is a good habit in this setting, but it’s a slow way of having a conversation.
- pdkl95 8y agoThis is one of the reasons the concept of informed consent is necessary in medical an other important situations. Life is complicated, and a lot of harm can be done if important questions understood incompletely, hastily, or even not understood at all. If it's important, there is a duty to take the extra effort to verify there has been a true "meeting of the minds".
- TheSmiddy 8y agoWhenever I feel like I'm not being understood I always ask the same question twice, but phrased so that yes to the second question means no to the first. This way if they're just 'yes'ing their way through the conversation I can catch it and slow down to ensure they're actually understanding me.
- splintercell 8y agoMy maid does not speak any English, only Spanish, using Google translate is not perfect, but whenever I want her to understand something properly, I ask her to repeat what she understood, and that works out fine.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoWhen my children were little, my standard was "repeat it in your own words" to make sure they weren't parroting it back at me without comprehension.
- lhorie 8y agoThere's another meaning for buscar: to go get something of yours that you left somewhere. So "puedo buscar el auto?" could also be interpreted as "can I go get my car?", to which "si" is a perfectly expectable answer.
- CPLX 8y agoI speak Spanish as well. My translation of it would be "try to find" which I assume is related to what the article was trying to say. In either case we agree.