What does this mean? The English translation is “I can only give up my brother for lost.” It makes no sense in English, so I was thinking maybe it is some sort of idiom in Spanish? Or just a bad translation…
You’re quite correct, dar algo por perdido is a Spanish idiom meaning “to give something up for lost” or “to accept something is lost”. So a literal translation of the sentence is, “I can only give up my brother for lost.”. However, a more natural sounding translation for an native speaker might be, “I have to accept that my brother is lost.”
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