Mexican Spanish to Serbian in Latin script: personal temperature is not the weather
Tener calor names a sensation; hacer calor describes conditions
The Diccionario del español de México distinguishes the elevated-temperature sensation in tener calor or sentir calor from the atmospheric condition expressed by hacer calor. A Mexican message can therefore describe a person feeling hot without making a general weather report. Translating only the noun calor and ignoring the verb removes that distinction. In Serbian Latin output, the person experiencing the sensation must remain identifiable when the source specifies one.
The dictionary also records emotional warmth, as in the warmth of a home, and enthusiasm in speech. These are not automatic reports of body temperature or meteorological heat. Before translating a Mexican comment about calor, determine whether it concerns a bodily sensation, the surrounding conditions, or a figurative evaluation. A description of a welcoming household should not become advice about room temperature. The surrounding verb and noun phrase help identify which sense needs a Serbian expression.
A weather sentence does not conceal an unnamed person
The RAE’s grammar glossary classifies Hace frío as an impersonal construction. Unlike a sentence with an omitted but recoverable speaker, it does not require identifying someone who performs the making of cold. This matters in translation from Mexican Spanish because Spanish permits many omitted subjects, but not every subjectless-looking sentence has the same structure. A literal personal do or make construction would introduce an agent absent from the weather statement.
For Serbian, keep that environmental report separate from what one participant feels. A cold day and a person feeling cold can be true independently; a person can feel cold indoors while other people do not. The source distinction should survive even if both languages express the predicate without an ordinary nominative subject. Adding a person where the source merely describes conditions changes the information, while dropping a stated experiencer makes a personal request sound like a general observation.
Serbian can express the person through the dative
Mirjana Danilović’s Step by Step Serbian gives Hladno mi je for I am cold and explains the short dative form in expressions of states or feelings. This provides a concrete Serbian model for a personal sensation: mi identifies the experiencer rather than a possessed object. A Mexican first-person sensation can therefore require different syntax from Spanish tener without losing the speaker. The construction is not evidence that the translation forgot to add a subject pronoun.
The textbook’s negative counterpart is Nije mi hladno. Its explanation also notes that short dative forms do not start the sentence, while long forms are available for emphasis. Thus editing a Serbian result to place mi first merely because a Mexican source begins with a personal reference can spoil the target construction. Check who feels the sensation and whether it is affirmed or denied, then preserve the Serbian placement. The attested cold examples illustrate the grammatical contrast; they are not offered as translations of the separate Spanish heat or figurative-warmth expressions.
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