future or conditional

Julie F.B2Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor

future or conditional

Hi I have a question about the translation below.
Será mejor que tú ________ tu carrera universitaria pronto.You'd better start your university studies soon.(HINT: Conjugate "comenzar" in El Presente de Subjuntivo)I would translate as it will be better that you start your university studies soon but you have translated with would be - (is this a mistake on the question given in the test?)
if it was conditional ie sería mejor que ......then I would translate -it would be better that you start .....
Please can you clarify this for me thank you juliecomiences
Asked 1 year ago
SilviaNative Spanish expert teacher in KwiziqCorrect answer

Hola Julie

The construction with "it will be better that" is a literal translation from the Spanish - the English we give is not at all literal.

Idiomatically in English when we use an impersonal expression like this one, it's always "it would be better" (which is neither the translation we give nor the translation that you propose). If you want to use the simple future in english then the grammatical and idiomatic construction would be "it will be better TO START xxx" so no use of "that" - to use "that" you need to use "it would be better".

There is no direct literal translation of this sentence possible because English tenses don't get used in the same constructions as the Spanish ones.

Un saludo

Silvia

future or conditional

Hi I have a question about the translation below.
Será mejor que tú ________ tu carrera universitaria pronto.You'd better start your university studies soon.(HINT: Conjugate "comenzar" in El Presente de Subjuntivo)I would translate as it will be better that you start your university studies soon but you have translated with would be - (is this a mistake on the question given in the test?)
if it was conditional ie sería mejor que ......then I would translate -it would be better that you start .....
Please can you clarify this for me thank you juliecomiences

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