…Hace falta el que vendrá.

I love Spanish expressions and phrases. Just as with English, sayings are an important part of any language.

This particular expression: “El que se fue, no hace falta. Hace falta el que vendrá”  means loosely: “You do not need what has already left (gone away). What you need has yet to (or will) come.” 

I was trying to think of an expression that is similar in English. Maybe: “You can’t change the past, but you can know that the best is yet to come.”

Many expressions have a very similar meaning in another language, but the setting, characters, etc of the expression change. For instance:

“Cada muerte de un obispo” literally means: “When a bishop dies”, but figuratively, the expression is trying to say that the described occurance happens very rarely.

In English, the equivalent expression would be:

“Once in a blue moon.”

While I never remember the exact science behind what a blue moon is, and eventhough it is a very different phenomenon than a bishop dying, this phrase means the same thing: a very rare occurance.

So in translation or interpreting, sometimes you have to use the more common phrase in the language you are translating to, or else the meaning is, well, lost in translation.

Like in this other fairly common expression:

“De tal palo, tal astilla” means literally: “Like the stick, so is the splinter’. That sounds very strange and foreign, but what English expression do you think  this is actually trying to convey?

How about:
“Like father like son.” Or perhaps…”The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Others are a lot closer both in meaning and in the figurative description such as:

“Andar por las ramas” which literally mean “going around/walking around the branches”.
In English, this is “beating around the bush” which is to say, talking too much and not getting at the point, or reason for the discussion. And which is completely different from “beating the bushes”, which means to look for something, drum up business, etc.

I think idiomatic expressions are a really fun part of any language. They tell a lot about a culture and how it explains its values.  There are so many expressions out there and I think it can teach a lot about language and also culture -including from your mother tongue! I will share more with you in the future. Any fun ones you can think of?  The best has yet to come, so please share.