Confusing Headline

Posted by Difster on May 12, 2008 at 3:30am in Vocabulary & Grammar/Vocabulario y Gramática

I've been paying close attention the violence happening in Sinaloa so I've been reading the news down there. This particular headline is a little confusing for a couple of reason:

Cae presunto primo de "El Chapo" Guzman

So I get "He fall presumed cousin of "El Chapo"

Fall obviously means dead in this case since we're talking about the cousin of a drug lord. I assume it's really saying, "Cousin of El Chapo Presumed Dead" since "presumed cousin" doesn't make sense. And it's in the form of a headline so it's not "The Cousin of El Chapo Presumed Fallen."

I still don't understand the grammar behind it though. Why is it, "Fall presumed cousin?" I really just don't get the word order.

As always, help is much appreciated.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Heidita on May 12, 2008 at 7:02am: cae: get arrested, get killed
presunto: alleged

So, here it can mean

Alleged cousin of "el Chapo" gets arrested/gets killed
As ususal, the word order is quite different from the S+p+o formula in English.

here we have: verb+subject , no so unusual in Spanish, of course.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by James on May 12, 2008 at 11:08am: Heidita has explained this nicely, but I'll add two comments.

First, in this particular case the person (Alfonso Gutiérrez Loera) was captured and arrested, not killed.

Second, you said "'presumed cousin' doesn't make sense," but it does. The reporters are saying that it has not been confirmed that Loera is in fact Guzman's cousin, but is claiming to be so. Since "primo" is used somewhat more loosely in Mexico than cousin is in English, they may be saying that it isn't clear whether they are blood relatives.

Heidita has proposed "alleged" as the translation for presunto here, and while that does work, that word is usually used in reference to a crime, so I would use "purported" here. So, my translation wouild be:

Purported Cousin of "El Chapo" Guzman Captured; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Difster on May 12, 2008 at 12:37pm: Thanks guys!

First of all, "presumed dead" seemed far more likely. Secondly, I wouldn't have anticipated that 'caer' meant captured. Wow, I still have so much to learn. But that's what I'm here for; I'll keep plugging away at it.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Heidita on May 13, 2008 at 9:36am: We hope so, difster, you r questions are always interesting.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by motley on May 13, 2008 at 12:34pm: Also remember not to try to translate literally, it doesn't work, which you will find out if you use an online translator.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Difster on May 13, 2008 at 5:16pm: Oh, I already figured that out ;)

Most of the time I can glean the actual meaning out of it, but sometimes it's difficult.

Certainly when i want to say something that's idomatic in English, the actual Spanish doesn't translate over too well.

The more I learn about Spanish, the more I'm amused by quirks of English I never paid attention to before. For instance, we know the difference between "buckle down" and "buckle up" there is no linguitic clue for the English learner to know that "buckle down" means you should apply yourself to your tasks more closely and really has nothing to do with buckling at all (now). And of course "buckle up" is fine but it's not "up" anything.

Another funny thing is that we can "fill in" a form or "fill out" a form and it means the same thing.

If I think something is idiomatic, I can find the more precise words to use for the automatic translator but then it's not expressed in idiomatic Spanish either. It's the everyday use of lanaguage that I'm interested in and that's just not precise at all.; ▶ Reply to This