Este coche es una lata de mierda.

Sentence Discussions Spanish
#1
English Translation

This car is a piece of junk.

I’m unable to find any reference to “lata de mierda” in the usual places. However, Wiktionary has this to say about lata, besides “tin can”:

  1. (colloquial) annoyance, nuisance, drag (that which annoys)
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#2

Algo sea una lata means something is annoying, but ‘‘lata de mierda’’ has no other meaning besides its literal meaning. weird sentence

https://dle.rae.es/lata#:~:text=Cosa%20que%20causa%20hastío%20y%20disgusto%20a%20alguien.%20Aquello%20fue%20una%20lata.%20¡Qué%20lata!

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#3

In my opinion the topic here is on how you parse the sentence. My reasoning is as follows; because the sentence is talking about the car that is a piece of junk, the person who translated this saw it as nothing more than a big tin can, and then added to “de mierda” to highlight the negativity towards the car.
So you’d have:
(Este coche) (es) (una lata) (de mierda)
instead of
(Este coche) (es) (una lata de mierda)
Translating back into english, the result could be something like: This car is a shitty tin can

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