In need of a quick English-Spanish translation.

November 20, 2006 1:36 PM

Please translate accurately the following English phrase into conversational Spanish: "I only stopped for coffee."
posted by jackypaper to Travel & Transportation (18 answers total)

Solamente paré para un café.
posted by invitapriore at 1:47 PM on November 20, 2006

Or, more properly I suppose,

Solamente paré para comprar un café. (I only stopped to buy a coffee.)
posted by invitapriore at 1:50 PM on November 20, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks!
posted by jackypaper at 1:56 PM on November 20, 2006

Sólo me paré por café.
posted by jesourie at 1:57 PM on November 20, 2006

Response by poster: Now I have different answers. Which is correct?
posted by jackypaper at 2:45 PM on November 20, 2006

I think it should be "el cafe" as opposed to "un cafe"
posted by Sir Mildred Pierce at 2:47 PM on November 20, 2006

Response by poster: But does Invitapriore or Jesourie provide the most accurate answer?
posted by jackypaper at 2:51 PM on November 20, 2006

I'm not a native speaker (sorry, I probably should have said that from the outset), but I can explain why I wrote what I did, and if someone who knows more than I corrects me if I'm wrong, that would be great.

Sólo vs. solamente: My understanding is that they're roughly interchangeable, but solamente is the adverbial form and is more frequently used as a descriptive word (as in "it was only 6:00", the implication being that not as much time had passed as one would think), whereas sólo is more for qualifying a limit to an activity, such as having stopped "only" for coffee.

Me paré vs. paré: Verbs of motion that involve a person's movement under their own power are usually reflexive, because they imply that the person is performing the action to themselves. So, literally, me paré is "I stopped myself", whereas paré is more frequently used to say "I stopped [something other than myself]".

Por vs. para: It's always a struggle for me to figure out which "for" is needed. I used por in this case because it's used to express cause or reason, eg. "Why did you stop?" "I stopped for coffee."

As for café, el café, or un café... Honestly, I used por café because it just sounded better to my ear. I have no idea if it's right.
posted by jesourie at 3:22 PM on November 20, 2006

Also not a native speaker, but you'd use para to express "in order to". So, if you're stopping in order to buy or get a coffee, I'd tend towards para rather than por (though jesourie's reasoning sounds good, too). Even though they both mean, roughly, "for", por and para have very specific usages and they can change the meaning of a sentence. More details can be found here.
posted by lumiere at 3:46 PM on November 20, 2006

Response by poster: Wow. para or por? The lady or the tiger?

Thanks, all, for your help.
posted by jackypaper at 5:02 PM on November 20, 2006

Best answer: jackypaper, it might depend on the country. I'd use "por", which might be incorrect, but it's more common where I live.

And to make it more casual, my version would be: "Sólo me paré por un café". In Mexico City's slang: "Nomás me paré por un café" (nomás = nada más = only).

"por café" and "por un café" is roughly the same. "por un café" is more specific, it means: for a (cup of) coffee.

"el café" is "the coffee". If you say "I only stopped for the coffee" it sounds like a coffee that is already in context. For example, you could say it while pointing to the cup of coffee you are talking about.
posted by clearlydemon at 10:10 PM on November 20, 2006

it seems like you'd like to seem casual and unexpected. you could also say 'solo pasaba a por un café' (i just came for a coffee, literally) and possibly retain the meaning ?
posted by ArchEnemy at 1:02 AM on November 21, 2006

I'm a bit late, but the translations above are more literal. The way to express it, in my opinion, depends a lot on whether you want to emphasize the stopping (i.e. I know I'm late getting home, but the only time I stopped en route was for a coffee) or the drinking of a coffee (i.e. telling the waiter that all you want to order is a cup of coffee).

In the former case, I'd say: Paré solo una vez para comprar un café (I stopped only once to buy a coffee) o Paré solo una vez para tomar un café (I stopped only once to drink coffee)

In the latter case: Solo quiero tomar un café, nada más.
posted by limagringo at 4:48 AM on November 21, 2006

Please do not listen to anyone who isn't a native speaker. (Why do people insist on answering questions they don't actually know the answer to?)
posted by languagehat at 7:05 AM on November 21, 2006

Um. I responded because I thought I did know the answer. If I felt I didn't have a clue, I would have kept my mouth shut.

For the record, clearlydemon (whose profile indicates that she's Mexican) provided the same translation as I did.
posted by jesourie at 7:40 AM on November 21, 2006

Thanks for the advice languagehat--I'll let my Peruvian wife know you think she should work on her Spanish.
posted by limagringo at 6:16 AM on November 22, 2006

Sorry, limagringo, that wasn't directed at you—I guess your name does indicate you aren't a native speaker, but I wasn't paying attention to that. Your comment sounded accurate and knowledgeable. Perhaps I shouldn't have said "native speaker," but so many people were saying "I'm not a native speaker, but..." and adding their half-informed guess that it seemed natural. Anyway, my point is: if you're just going by memories from a college class or something, keep quiet and wait for someone who actually knows (native speaker or not) to provide an answer. I mean, we're not talking about some obscure Siberian dialect; you can be pretty confident someone who knows Spanish will drop by.
posted by languagehat at 8:57 AM on November 22, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks again for the continued discussion. By the looks of things, this is the most accurate representation of what I'm trying to say: Sólo me paré por un café.
posted by jackypaper at 11:09 AM on November 26, 2006