Spanish to English hurto

[allisonhm]

Me confesó que escondía sus hurtos en la alacena.
	He confessed to me that he would hide his stolen goods in the cupboard.

If you would like to say that he "would hide" his stolen goods, the verb form should be "escondería" and not escondía. The way the Spanish sentence is written conveys the meaning... that he/she was hiding (escondía) the stolen goods.

 

[swift]

Hi, and thank you for your comment.

I think I disagree with your analysis, since would is also used to express past habits. @fenixpollo, what’s your take on this?

 

[allisonhm]

I definitely see your point, but I personally would not say that (would hide) in English... but rather he was hiding or he used to hide.

 

[fenixpollo]

Swift is correct that the English sentence could easily refer to recurring actions in the past, where "would" is a synonym of "used to".

However, allisonhm has a point. There are no time markers in the sentence that might signal that it is written in past tense, so the reader is more likely to interpret "would" as conditional tense rather than past tense.

I'll change it for the sake of clarity. The change will be reflected after the next dictionary update, within a month or two.