Thread: Ayuda traducción

I agree with diegonel.

¿Cúal(es) ha(n) sido el principal motivo(s) suggests that there were several possible reasons and the question is: which reason(s) applied.

My suggestion: "What has been the main reason, or reasons, that you have not participated." algo asi.

Originally Posted by diegonel

HI Californian,
I think it is better this order: "What have your main reasons been for not participating?"
Anyway, I'd go with " What are the main reasons that led you to not participate / led you not to participate?"

Your option is a little more formal in my book and I do not necessarily disagree with this option except that I think it should be singular.

In other words, there should only be *one* main, *number one* reason for anything. The rest cannot be also number one. So even the Spanish phrase while grammatically correct in my view does not meet the common sense test.

If we are asking for the reasons (regardless of being the main reason or not) then the word "main" should be excluded from the phrase/question.

I respectfully disagree Californiaman. Consider that you can have several main reasons, just as you can have several secondary ones. There could be several equally important, or main reasons.

Either way you go is OK. You cannot say that either is wrong.

Here's my reasoning:

Example 1: I'd love to move away from the city but my wife loves it here; I like my job; and my doctor is here. Keeping my wife happy, staying with my job and being close to my doctor right now are all important to me and are the main reasons I cannot leave.

Example 2: We know that several factors influenced you to skip the seminar; the distance you'd have to travel, the dates, the schedule, the speakers, the topics to be discussed and possibly others. In order to better plan our next seminar but we'd like to know which of these were the main reasons you did not participate.