The Challenges of Adverbs in Spanish Translation III

If an adverb is being used to qualify a verb, then it is customary to place it immediately after the verb. On the other hand, if an adverb is being used to qualify an adjective or another adverb then it is customary to place it immediately before the adjective or the adverb in question. These two rules apply to English sentences and their Spanish translations.

However, there are several exceptions to both the above-mentioned rules, one of them being that adverbs that consist of two or more words should be placed at the end of the sentence. This rule, too, has its own exception, because two juxtaposed adverbs may be placed at the beginning of a sentence for the sake of emphasis. Once again, these exceptions are as valid in the case of English sentences as in the case of their Spanish translations.

We shall now examine an instance where the English word order is reversed in the Spanish translation. This happens when only a ‘no´ and an adverb are used to form an English sentence. Thus, the English ‘not yet´ will be translated into Spanish as ‘todavía no´. Similarly, the Spanish translation of the English ‘not tomorrow´ will read as ‘mañana no´.

Spanish adverbs, unlike English adverbs, never separate the two parts of a compound tense. The correct Spanish translation of ‘I have always liked to travel´ will, therefore, be ‘Siempre me ha gustado viajar´. The Spanish translators should also keep in mind that an adverb is required after a verb in English while it would be customary to replace the adverb with an adjective in the Spanish translation.