When I saw her standing there - ¿cuando la vi allí de pie?
One problem people have when learning another language is wanting to put all the words they are thinking in the original language into the new one. It doesn't always work that way.
One example of this is the English verb "to stand". It usually isn't translated into Spanish unless you want to make a very definite point of the fact that the person is standing and not sitting or lying down. For example:
English
1. Juan? He's the man standing next to Pedro.
2. Here's a picture of Vanessa standing next to an elephant.
3. We stood in line for 3 hours to get into the cinema.
Spanish
1. ¿Juan? Es el hombre que está al lado de Pedro.
2. Aquí hay un foto de Vanessa al lado de un elefante.
3. Esperamos en la cola tres horas para entrar en el cine.
In examples 1 and 2 we can see that they are standing so from the Spanish language point of view, there's no need to mention it. And the same for number 3: when you wait in line to go to the movies you usually are standing, so there's no need to mention it.
You should de a Google search for the phrase "de pie" (meaning "standing" or "on foot"). You'll see that it doesn't give very many examples describing people who are standing somewhere. Mostly it comes up in the verbal phrase "ponerse de pie" which means to "stand up".
By the way, regarding the title: I looked for Spanish translations of the words of the old Beatles' song and found one that said "cuando la vi allí de pie" and another which said "cuando la vi parada allí". Both translations are very forced and literal and in Spanish sound more like "when I saw her there on foot" and "when I saw her there not moving" - quite different from the original English lyrics written by John and Paul.
Brad
