Thread: HELP! help with Spanish colloquialisms

HELP!

attempting to translate old Spanish article (old like 2005 old, not OLD old)

phrase "coincide con un puente" comes up and I can't for the life of me figure out a good english translation...

seems to have to do with "coinciding" or overlapping, like something serendipitously falling on a certain occasion where something else important is happening, but not completely sure...

any help is GREATLY appreciated...




PS this is my first post so sorry if this is not the appropriate forum...

Hey There

Give us a bit of context, and the help will be waaay better...

J.

La Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT) ha puesto en marcha a las tres de la tarde la Operación 15 de
agosto, la más complicada del verano porque el cambio de quincena de vacaciones coincide con un puente.

What I have is: " at three in the afternoon, The General Directorate of Traffic (DGT) launched its 15th Operation of August , the most complicated operation of the summer due to its coincidental overlapping of with two weeks of summer vacations.


But I'm certain this is incorrect...

Ok.. I can see why you have trouble with this bit.. The puente thing, is really not clear... But I think your interpretation is ok. Though the wording in your translation needs work. Overlapping "of with"??? Coincidental overlapping with the 2 week summer vacations, I would say.

Regards

J.

This is from an article directly out of El Pais, one the daily newspaper in Madrid, so I assumed that "coincide con un puente" is a highly SPANISH colloquialism.

Also, thank you for pointing out my grammatical errors, hahah

Thank you for the help, it is GREATLY appreciated, thank you SO much Joselas!!!!

Hi!
Also, in some contexts, the word puente is any day that between a weekend and a public holiday.
e.g. Suppossing October 12th is a public holiday and October 9th and 10th fall on a weekend and the government decides that October 11th is not a working day either, then, in that case, October 11th is a puente.
What do you call this?
Regards,

In Argentina, we call it "sandwich" but I'm sure that's totally inappropriate haha!

I agree with Guadalupe, we do use "sandwitch" for those days (just because they are in-between a weekend and a holiday).

however, I think we still need more context, what sentence comes after the word puente? It is not clear to me whether it's referring to a holiday or an actual bridge. Sorry!