English Translation
He’s away at the moment.
It’s like saying, “You find him away at this time”
No, the verb is encontrarse: to be [located]. Note that the Spanish sentence doesn’t have an object, and plain encontrar is a transitive verb.
Perhaps a native speaker can explain it better.
I can’t but agree with you @morbrorper : )
“Encontrar” has many meanings (see RAE’s entry), and its pronominal form “encontrarse” has a few as well, and they do not always match with the English “to find” (or rather, as it is often the case with translations, a word can be translated into multiple ones, and different words can be translated into it).
In this case, rae’s definition is “prnl. Hallarse en cierto estado o lugar.” - “to be in a certain place or state”. For example, you would also translate “to be” as “encontrarse” in “He is feeling unwell” - “Se encuentra mal”.
All that said, if you find this a bit complicated, you can also translate it as “Esta fuera por el momento” or “Esta fuera por ahora”. Both of them are also correct, but perhaps a tad less formal.
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