English Translation
Recently, I’ve been thinking about what I want to do with my life.
Wouldnẗ “he estado” be a better fit for the English perfect tense?
He estado pensando is a better match grammatically. I tried to find some insight into any semantic reasons for the choice. Punching the sentence into DeepL, that translator agrees with you, too. Linguee didn’t turn up anything useful. On the other hand, Reverso does have examples of using estuve pensando for “I’ve been thinking.” My best guess is, it owes to speakers of one or both languages being a bit sloppy about the difference between the simple past and present perfect tenses. I know that “had” and “have” frequently trip me up when I listen to other people, why not?
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I’m thinking, maybe “llevo pensando” wouldn’t be too bad either, considering “Desde hace poco, llevo pensando en ello”.
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Unless I am mistaken, I believe that the small nuance is:
- estuve pensando : the thinking is over
- he estado pensando: the thinking might still be going on
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@morbrorper I like that one. I’ll just note, for anyone else who might come along, that because “llevo” is simple present tense, it could be interpreted to mean the speaker is thinking about it now, or thinks about it habitually. I’m still unsure about what to make of Reverso’s examples of estuve pensando.
@Anxos No, he estado is an example of what English grammarians call the present perfect tense. (Spanish grammarians call it the “perfect preterit”.) “Perfect” in the sense of “complete.” A completed action is a finished action, and so the thinking isn’t going on anymore.
However, one reason for using present perfect is because the finished action has some importance or impact on the present moment. This suggests that the difference between the two sentences is that estuve pensando means the thinking doesn’t impact the present moment. Maybe to imply something like, “Yeah, I was thinking that, but I’m not going anywhere with it.” (Assuming, naturally, that the translation we’re looking at is just some hiccup or sloppy speaking.) Using he estado pensando would imply that the person reached a decision and is or will act on it.
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@AdanBelter My understanding is that there are 2 different usos del pretérito perfecto.
- the most common one, that you describe well, to narrate a “completed”, past action.
- a secondary one, where the meaning hasta hoy, hasta este momento, is implied, without any notion of completeness/closure.
For example:
- Nunca he viajado a Francia.
- Él ha visto esa película 5 veces.
El pasado hasta hoy. Which is very different from:
- Él vio esa película 5 veces.
Which implies a context where the number 5 cannot change anymore.
I have no problem believing there’s more than one use for any perfect tense, but I don’t know whether I agree about how to construe the one you’re suggesting. Maybe blame it on my insistence on the word “perfect.” Or perhaps chalk it up to the question of why this second use would exist when the simple present seems to handle it just fine in Spanish. But I’ll leave my ruminations here, just in case they’re useful somewhere down the road.
…
So, take the second example. I’ll grant that “Él ha visto esa película cinco veces” doesn’t imply closure. Even so, it could easily imply completeness. If we lump his five viewings together as a single action, or else treat them as part of a single action, then completeness may disappear from the sentence as well. But I doubt most people would do either one under most circumstances. Even if we’re talking about someone who has watched the movie five times in a row (and maybe is already watching it again!), I expect most people would still break them into separate viewings, or separate those five from any (purely hypothetical!) current viewing.
I like your first example more as a proof of your point. An action that might never happen seems, logically, like it can’t be complete or incomplete, whatever we make of closure. But the state of affairs it describes, by default, is ongoing.
I wonder how much of it boils down to the possible readings for the simple present counterparts. People often talk about one language being “more precise” than another, as if precision were a global metric. It’s not, a language’s “precision” is more often specific to the kinds of distinctions its speakers deem worth giving their attention to on a regular basis. (Just look at how developed the English honorific system is compared to Japanese!) If that’s at play here, it could have an impact on my previous allusions to sloppiness.
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