Spanish to Danish: choose the relative connector from its role
Spanish que can describe a person or a thing
Spanish relative que can refer to people as well as things, as the RAE explains. It connects a description to an explicit or understood antecedent. A Danish translation should not choose between som and der merely by asking whether that antecedent is human. The Danish Language Council explicitly says that the relevant distinction in its example is the relative element’s grammatical role inside the subordinate clause.
When that role is subject, the Council permits both som and der in the illustrated construction. Its phrase de personer der kom til mødet identifies people who came to the meeting. The people perform the coming. A Spanish description with the same relationship needs to preserve that subject role, rather than selecting a connector through a person-versus-object rule.
The noun described can be the object instead
The Council contrasts subject relatives with an object description such as den reol som vi vil købe, identifying a shelving unit that the speakers intend to buy. The shelving unit does not perform the buying. This construction allows som rather than the subject use of der. Spanish que can occur in both types, so the identical source word does not establish an identical target connector.
For a Spanish message identifying a colleague who called and a colleague whom someone called, the participants differ even though the same colleague noun may appear. First establish whether the described person performs or receives the action within the relative clause. The main sentence’s subject does not automatically answer that question, because the embedded description has its own participant structure.
Omission and coordination have limits
The Danish advice notes that non-subject som can often be omitted, especially in speech and informal writing. Its absence does not necessarily remove the connection to the preceding noun. But the same source gives restrictions after a coordinating conjunction: som is required there even in the subject example it discusses. A source Spanish repetition of que therefore should not be shortened through a universal delete-the-connector rule.
This is useful in a description containing two facts about one person. Keep both facts linked to that person and preserve their coordination. If the target construction requires connecting material in the second description, retaining it is grammatical structure rather than unnecessary repetition. The reader must still know whether both descriptions concern the same referent.
Som der is not always redundant
In another answer, the Council distinguishes disfavoured combinations from legitimate existential constructions. When der is independently needed as a formal subject, it can coexist with som. A Spanish relative describing a place where something exists is therefore not automatically equivalent to a relative in which the place itself acts as subject. Removing der solely because som is already present can leave the target clause incomplete.
For Spanish-to-Danish identification phrases, recover the antecedent, its role in the embedded clause and the connection between multiple descriptions. Spanish que covers relationships that Danish expresses through different constructions. Preserving those relationships produces a more useful result than choosing som for people, der for objects or one fixed equivalent for every occurrence of que.
Language references