Spanish to Luxembourgish: hace, dentro de and después de place an event on different timelines
Hace tres días looks backwards from now
Spanish Llegó hace tres días places an arrival three days before the present reference point. Llegará dentro de tres días places it three days ahead. Although both mention the same amount of time, changing the time expression reverses the message. Luxembourgish needs to preserve that direction rather than simply retain the numeral and the word for days.
The Institut national des langues Luxembourg’s lesson on temporal prepositions illustrates virun dräi Deeg for three days ago. It also gives an zwou Stonnen in an example of going to the theatre two hours from now. These expressions show why a Spanish temporal phrase should be read as a relationship to a reference point, not translated by matching its individual words.
No can mean after in a Luxembourgish time phrase
The same lesson uses no enger Véierelstonn for after a quarter of an hour. For a Spanish reader, no is conspicuous because it is also the ordinary Spanish word used to negate a clause. In the Luxembourgish phrase it is a preposition establishing a time interval after a starting point, not a refusal or denial.
Compare Spanish No salió después de un cuarto de hora with Salió después de un cuarto de hora. The first denies a departure at that stage; the second asserts it. Seeing no in the Luxembourgish temporal phrase does not establish which of those Spanish meanings has been translated. The target clause’s actual negation must be distinguished from its time preposition.
This is useful in a queue update. “The doors open in two hours” gives the reader a remaining wait measured from now. “The doors opened two hours ago” reports an earlier opening. “The doors opened after two hours” measures a delay from a previously established starting point. All can concern the same venue while supplying different instructions to somebody deciding when to arrive.
A reference point can be a previous event rather than the present
Spanish Llegó dos horas después can refer back to an earlier event in a story. The arrival need not be two hours after the moment of speaking. Translating it as an uncomplicated future interval from now would shift the whole account. Keep the event that starts the clock connected to the expression meaning afterwards.
The Luxembourgish lesson also contrasts temporal and spatial uses of the same prepositions. Virun can occur before a time expression or in a phrase about position in front of something. A Spanish translation request containing antes, hace, or delante therefore cannot be solved merely by assuming that one Luxembourgish preposition always describes one physical direction.
For a Spanish appointment message, distinguish the time remaining before the appointment, the time elapsed since a past appointment, and the delay after another event. Those relationships are more informative than the shared number of hours. The Luxembourgish words an, virun, and no must fit the intended relationship, while Spanish no must still be recognised separately when it actually negates the source statement.
Language references