Preterito perfector compuesto question

Question

why do we use preterito perfecto compuesto for 'I saw' and 'I found', i thought 'i found' would be encontre and 'I saw', yo vi not he contrado and he visto. thanks!

Answer

Hola MichelleLiterally yes, you're right, "found = encontré", "have found = he encontrado" and " "saw = vi", "have seen = he visto". However, we try to use the most natural translations in English, and in these instances the preterite sounds more natural in English. When this happens, in order to clarify it for students, we add a hint saying which tense you must use. This is why we added the hints here indicating to use the present perfect / pretérito perfecto compuesto.I hope it clarifies it.SaludosInma