Day 64: Reviewing a Friend's Grandson
In a café in San Ángel, Mexico City, Josefina (A), a retired biologist, asks her oldest friend Eugenia (B), a former colleague of hers at the UNAM, to review her grandson's master's thesis.
How to study this lesson 3 steps
- Read the situation under the title. It says who is talking and how they know each other, which decides how politely they speak.
- Read the dialogue line by line with its translation, until every line makes sense. Point at (or tap) a Spanish word to see what it means.
- Spend at least 30 minutes listening to native Spanish, for example from the Resources page. It doesn't matter if you don't understand it yet.
Dialogue
Audio recordings are on the way. For now, each lesson is the dialogue with its English translation.
Keys: E hide English · ← → previous / next day · point at a word to see its meaning
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A
Te invité el café por interés, Eugenia, para qué te miento: quiero que revises la tesis de mi nieto Uziel.
This coffee comes with strings attached, Eugenia, I won't lie to you: I want you to review my grandson Uziel's thesis.
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B
¿Yo? El hecho de que sea tu nieto me pone en un aprieto: si soy blanda, no le sirvo; si no, te pierdo.
Me? The fact that he's your grandson puts me in a bind: if I go easy on him, I'm no use to him; if I don't, I lose you.
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A
Por eso te lo pido a ti: en cuarenta años de amistad nunca me has dorado la píldora.
That's exactly why I'm asking you: in forty years of friendship you've never once sugarcoated anything for me.
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B
¿De qué trata? No me digas que es buenísima. El que la defienda su abuela ya la vuelve sospechosa.
What's it about? Don't tell me it's amazing. His grandmother vouching for it already makes it suspect.
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A
De las lagartijas del Pedregal, en Ciudad Universitaria: cómo han cambiado sus poblaciones desde los noventa.
The lizards of the Pedregal reserve, at University City: how their populations have changed since the nineties.
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B
Buen tema, aunque la falta de datos va a ser su cruz: en los noventa casi nadie contaba lagartijas.
Good topic, though the lack of data will be his cross to bear: in the nineties hardly anyone was counting lizards.
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A
Eso creía él, hasta que encontró en el archivo unas libretas de 1994, sin firma, con cientos de lagartijas marcadas.
So he thought, until he found some notebooks from 1994 in the archive, unsigned, with hundreds of marked lizards.
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B
¿Marcadas con esmalte de uñas? Josefina, esas libretas son nuestras, y el esmalte se les caía con la muda.
Marked with nail polish? Josefina, those notebooks are ours, and the polish came off when they shed their skin.
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A
¡No me digas! Entonces cada recaptura la anotamos como lagartija nueva, y el famoso declive de Uziel...
Don't tell me! Then we logged every recapture as a new lizard, and Uziel's great decline...
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B
Es obra nuestra, en buena parte. Ahí tienes mi revisión honesta: la tesis pasa; las reprobadas somos nosotras.
It's largely our doing. There's my honest review: the thesis passes; we're the ones who fail.
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A
Se lo decimos juntas. El que se entere por nosotras le va a doler menos que el que se lo diga un sinodal.
We'll tell him together. Hearing it from us will hurt him less than having a committee member tell him.
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