When we want someone to look positively at a bad situation we might say “It could be worse” or “It’s not the end of the world”. In Spain, history is invoked, as in “Mas se perdio en Cuba”, which literally means “More was lost in Cuba”.
Here’s a saying that straddles the categories of anatomy and places: “Tener un ojo aqui y el otro en Pekin” literally translates to “To have one eye here and the other in Peking”. The colloquial meaning is “To be cross-eyed”.
Here are two Spanish colloquialisms involving Spanish cities:
“Pasar una noche toledana” translates to “To have a Toledo night”, with a colloquial meaning of “To have a sleepless night”.
“Ser cabezudo (terco) (testarudo) como un aragones” means “To be as stubborn as a person from Aragon”. In the United States there are several city related colloquialisms:
“A New York minute”
“Philadelphia lawyer”
“Boston marriage”
Spanish: “Irse por los cerros de Ubeda” literally means “To go through the Hills of Ubeda”, Ubeda being a town in Spain. The English equivalent is “To go off on a tangent” or “To wander off the subject”
English: “To beat (flog) a dead horse”
Spanish: “Azotar el aire” which means literally “To whip the air”
This morning one of my co-workers used the idiom “Out of the frying pan into the fire” The Spanish equivalent is “Salir de Guatemala para entrar en Guatepeor” which is a play on “mala” meaning “bad” and “peor” meaning “worse”
In English we use the saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. The Spanish Equivalent is: “No se gano Zamora en una hora” which means “Zamora wasn’t won in an hour”. Zamora is a city in Spain. In English we have another idiom involving Rome: “When in Rome, do as the Romans”. Spanish has a nearly identical saying: “Cuando a Roma fueres, haz lo que vieres” which literally translates as “When you go to Rome, do as you see”.
