The English translation must be "the" family? The is not justification for translation la as mi.

Hola Johan,

I imagine you are still referring to the same comment you posted previously. See the answer from before here:

"Hola Johan

I imagine you are referring to this question "Normalmente ceno con la familia por la noche."

We could say "...con mi familia", but when it is obvious that you are referring to your own family, in Spanish we don't need the possessive "mi", we use the article "the" instead. But both would be correct, though.

Hope this helps.

Inma"

Hola Johan,

I thought you might be interested to compare this to another frequently-used situation where Spanish does not use the possesive but English does, which is when referring to parts of the body. 

If you go to the doctor because you have a pain in your knee, you would tell say "my knee hurts". In Spanish you would say "me duele la rodilla". 

If you hear news that your friend Pedro had an accident, you might hear "Pedro se ha roto la pierna" or "Pedro tiene el brazo roto" - but you would never translate these as "Pedro has broken the leg" or "Pedro has the broken arm"

Saludos

Shui