Lesson Five Quiz - Question #5

Great job on the Lesson Five Quiz everyone! The only question that caused many of you problems, was question #5, so I thought I’d post a quick explanation regarding the correct answer. The question was:

5. Which of the following translations of this source text sentence is incorrect?

Antes, todos vivíamos juntos en ésta casa.

a) Before, we were all living together in this house.
b) Before, we all have lived together in this house.
c) Before, we all lived together in this house.
d) Before, we all used to live together in this house.

The correct answer was : b) Before, we all have lived together in this house.

In Lesson Five we discussed the ways verbs in English might be used to translate the imperfect tense in Spanish in 5.1 part c. These included:

The past simple (We live)
The past continuous (We were living)
Used to (We used to live)

However, the imperfect cannot be translated into the present perfect (We have lived). The present perfect is used for an action which begins in the past and continues into the present, and the imperfect cannot be used for actions that continue into the present.

We did mention that it is possible to translate the imperfect tense into the past perfect (We had lived), but only in expressions of time. For example, if the source text sentence had been:

Hacía tres años que vivíamos allí cuando subió mucho la renta.

A good translation would be:

We had lived there for three years when the rent went up a lot.

I hope that helps! Post your response here if you are still unclear at all about this question. Thank you!