Operating in different languages can be a complicated matter. I was in the UK recently, trying to make an internet connection with a dongle (USB modem). I couldn’t get it to work so I took it to the shop, where I was told that it had been suspended because it hadn’t been used for several months and that I would have to get a new SIM card (free) and pay money into the account for the time that I wished to use it. I did so. (It still didn’t work, but that’s another story.)
I mentioned this to a friend, and said quite spontaneously that I had taken my dongle to the shop because it had to be charged. She asked in surprise whether it didn’t charge from my computer’s USB port. I was a bit confused, then I realised that I had said ‘charge’ as an equivalent of the Spanish ‘cargar’ but that this process is called ‘topping up’ in English. My friend had quite reasonably taken ‘charge’ to refer to electrical charging, which is also ‘cargar’ in Spanish.
