The Seven Seas Dictionary of Proverbs & Idioms

By David Bevis

What does "echarle crema a tus tacos" mean in English? How do you say "between a rock and hard place" in Spanish? You can find these and over a hundred other sayings and idiomatic expressions here in the Seven Seas Dictionary of Proverbs and Idioms. These phrases have been compiled and translated from Spanish to English and English to Spanish by David Bevis, Seven Seas Translations Agency founding partner, then checked carefully by our team of experts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Bevis
• Release date: Aug 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311858924

David Bevis

David Bevis comes from England and currently lives in Mexico, where he works as a teacher and translator.

Book preview

THE SEVEN SEAS DICTIONARY OF PROVERBS & IDIOMS

Copyright © 2014 by David Bevis

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part, without written permission from the author.

Smashwords Edition

October 2016

blog.davidbevis.com

THE SEVEN SEAS DICTIONARY

OF PROVERBS & IDIOMS

Spanish-English Inglés-Español

Compiled by David Bevis

For Emily

Spanish-English

Preface

This dictionary is for those students of English and Spanish who have at one time or another run into the brick wall of a proverb or idiom when trying to explain themselves to a native speaker of the other language. It shows that there is occasionally a correspondence between the wise (or not-so-wise) sayings and seemingly illogical expressions of each language and will hopefully enable readers to communicate more clearly.

The inspiration for this book came to me when I was teaching some students some simple idioms in English and we began to brainstorm their equivalents in Spanish. I later took these notes onto the Twitter and Facebook accounts of my translation agency, Seven Seas Translations, and found there was quite a lot of interest in my list of proverbs and idioms. As the list grew, and became more and more complex, it occurred to me that perhaps some others might find a use for my accumulated translations. When the list reached over a hundred, it seemed that putting them into a book was the best idea.

While compiling this dictionary, I have striven to use proverbs and idioms I have actually heard,