Difference between trip and journey (un viaje):

So our Spanish students learning English online with us have trouble translating the term 'un viaje'. Should it be a 'travel', 'trip' or 'journey'? Well it certainly shouldn't be 'a travel': we don’t say ‘I am going to do a travel’. However we can say ‘I am going to do a trip/journey’ or ‘I am going on a trip/journey' when saying 'me voy de viaje'. But there is a difference between ‘trip’ and ‘journey’. ‘Journey’ normally is used to indicate the movement between point A and point B. This could be a very long ‘journey’ of several days, months or even years. For example, ‘it’s a long journey from England to Argentina’ by boat. A ‘journey’ could also be a very short distance like your commute to work. For instance, we can say ‘my journey to work takes me just 10 minutes’. A weekend in Rome is composed of journeys (for example, the movement from your house to arrival at your hotel), but the whole experience is a trip. So, we normally would use ‘trip’ as a countable noun when the travel is not just a movement from point A to point B but includes activities like eating or meetings and/or sleeping. So ‘trip’ has the sense that the person would be staying in a place a certain amount of time. It is the whole experience of being away. Remember, travel is normally a verb (except terms like luxury travel or business travel) so if you don’t use it as a verb you must be very careful. The instances when you can use travel as a noun is when there is an adjective before it as in ‘luxury travel’ or ‘business travel’ or ‘OAP (old aged pensioner) travel’, for example. http://www.clasesinglesonline.com/

TRANSLATING ¡ESTÁ MAL VISTO! - common error by our English students

So another common error our English clients have trouble with is translating the term 'está mal visto'. No, we can't say 'it's badly seen'. In fact, a good option would be 'it's frowned upon'. For example, we could say 'management frowns upon employees socialising by the vending machine'. Happy Thursday! 

Problems that our Spanish speaking students have with the definite article 'the'

Happy new year and festive greetings! In English, when we are referring to the next or last time period in relation to the present, the definite article should be omitted. So ’el año que viene es 2015’. Thus, 2015 is the next time period after the present when we are talking about years. Due to this we don't say 'the next year' when referring to 2015. One must simply say 'next year'. Similarly, as we are in January 'el mes pasado', is December, would be 'last month' and never 'the last month' when referencing the month before the present month. Every one of our Spanish clients makes this error at some stage more than once so please be aware of it. Do text me if you have any doubts. Hope that helps.