From the mailbox:
In translations of the Gettysburg Address, where the speech starts out, "Four score and seven years ago ..." why in the Spanish translation does it always say, "Ochenta y siete años ha, nuestros padres crearon ..."? How does the ha work here? Do you know the rule? I cannot find it.
That's an interesting question. You've run into a rare usage of haber, of which ha is the third-person singular form (except when it's in the hay form). In this usage, ha serves as an
impersonal verb indicating the completion of a period of time, so you can translate it as "ago."
There's no need to learn a grammar rule here. This is a verb usage unheard of in everyday speech, and as far as I've been able to find its use in writing is limited to literary use.
When I did a quick search, the first translation I found of Lincoln's speech used a more typical construction, starting with "Hace ochenta y siete años." In the translation you found, the ha lends a literary flavor in the same way that saying "four score and seven years" does rather than the more pedestrian "87 years," and I suspect that's why the translator used it.
Comments
Ref: Gettysburgh Address in Spanish.
I am not an expert, however I have read that in compound sentences, no words may come between the auxiliary and the participle. e.g. yo he siempre dicho is not heard in normal Spanish. This rule is occasionally broken in literary style with such words as todavía, aún, ya, nunca, jamás. “Grammar of Modern Spanish by John Butt & Carmen Benjamin.(14.8).
I would use either “ya” or just simply “atras” instead of ha with the coma. From a native perspective, the translation comes across very awkwardly.
I definitely agree, although this is a very common way of translating Lincoln’s words. But then again, we would never say “four score and seven years” in English unless we wanted some sort of literary effect.
I agree with Gerald Erichsen, that this is an apt, literary translation of the current, everyday expression “hace 87 años.” Similar expressions like “muchos años ha” have an archaic ring quite in keeping with “four score and seven years ago.” Miguel de Cervantes used this expression in the opening sentence of Don Quixotte, Part I, Chapter reads: “En un lugar de la Mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero…”