Relative Pronouns in Spanish Translation I

Relative pronouns serve identical functions in English sentences and their Spanish counterparts. Their task is acting as a linking word between two clauses. For example, ‘I have seen the films that you liked so much/He visto las películas que le gustaron tanto a usted.´

Some of the most commonly used English relative pronouns are ‘who´, ‘that´, ‘which´ and ‘whom´. All the English relative pronouns have a single Spanish translation, namely, ‘que´. The Spanish ‘que´ can be used to refer to both persons and things, to both singular and plural.

Translators must remember the following rules while using ‘que´ in Spanish translation:

• It is not usual to use ‘que´ with longer prepositions.
• If ‘que´ is used to refer to a thing or a place, then it must occur in conjunction with the prepositions ‘a´, ‘con´, ‘de´ and ‘en´.
• ‘que´ must always come after the preposition in a Spanish sentence. Hence, the translator will have to change the word order of the English sentence during Spanish translation. ‘The beach that I was speaking of is fantastic´ (the relative pronoun ‘that´ comes before the preposition ‘of´ and they are not juxtaposed) will be translated into Spanish as ‘La playa de que hablaba es fantástica´ (the relative pronoun ‘que´ comes immediately after the preposition ‘de´).
• ‘que´ does not serve the sole function of acting as a relative pronoun. It can also be used for comparison, as a conjunction, and in order to introduce indirect questions.