How to Translate a Paragraph Into Spanish

Spanish translation requires an advanced knowledge of grammar.

Spanish is a romance language. This means that it is related to Latin in its grammatical makeup. By comparison, English is primarily a Germanic language. Because the sentence structures and placement of words in the two languages can be quite different, it is tricky to translate Spanish into English. Ensure the best possible translation by breaking down the English sentences into parts and translating the parts individually.

Things You'll Need

• English-to-Spanish dictionary

Instructions

1. Read through the first sentence in English and make note of the subject and the main verb. For example, the first sentence may say, "The big dog caught the bird."

2. Translate the subject and verb into Spanish, forming a basic sentence. Account for any articles and genders related to those articles, as these are absent from English. For the above example, "the dog" translates to "el perro" and "caught" translates to "cogio." This basic phrase combines in the same way English does, so it reads "el perro cogio."

3. Read through the first sentence in English again and make note of any adjectives associated with the subject. In the example, "big" is an adjective describing the dog.

4. Translate the adjectives and verify their proper gender agreement and position with the noun and verb. Our example translates to: "El perro grande." If you are unsure of the adjective's proper placement, enter the complete noun and adjective into a translator such as Google translate and check its accuracy.

5. Read through the first sentence again and make note of any direct or indirect objects or dependent clauses. Here, the direct object is "the bird."

6. Translate the objects and clauses, placing them in their proper positions. In the example, "the bird" translates to "el pajaro." Similar to English, direct objects are placed after the subject and verb, so the final sentence reads, "El perro grande cogio el pajaro."

7. Repeat these steps with each sentence.

Tips & Warnings

• When translating anything into another language it is important to know the grammatical usage of all words.

• To ensure accurate verb usage, conjugate the verb into English first, then refer to a Spanish verb dictionary for the proper conjugation in Spanish.

References

• Merriam-Webster's English-Spanish Translation Dictionary

Resources

• Google Translate
• Spanish Verb Conjugation Dictionary