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2017-12-10 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

The violent alienation of “ajeno”

Enlace para español/Click here for Spanish

Dear reader,

Recently your faithful servant stumbled across a recording of a song he had heard from time to time, but has now had a chance to listen to closely. It is a jewel. Beautiful… but painful. Composed by César Calvo, sung in the bell-like tones of Susana Baca, leading exponent of Peru’s Afro musical traditions: “María Landó” is a hypnotic chant evoking the back-breaking, mind-numbing, and most of all soul-deadening work that is the title character’s lot in life. And still that of most of our kind, humankind.

After singing of dawn breaking with its wings of light over the city… and noon with its golden bell of water… and night with its long goblet lifted to the moon… the lyric turns to María “who has no time to lift her eyes, her eyes wracked by lack of sleep, by sorrows… María who has no dawn, no noon or night… For María there is only labor, only labor and more labor… y su trabajo es ajeno: her labor is not her own.”

What power, what violence, what understanding of the world is compressed into that single word ajeno “belonging to another or others, alien, foreign, unfamiliar.” Its root, Lat. alienus, also yields Engl. “alien.” (Think of how the latter word is applied to immigrants.)

Argentina’s incomparable troubador Atahualpa Yupanqui sang of the exhausted herdsman driving cattle in the hills: “Las penas y las vaquitas/ se van por la misma senda./ Las penas son de nosotros,/ las vaquitas son ajenas” (Sorrows and cattle/ moving along the same trail/ The sorrows are our own,/ the cattle belong to another).

The Roman playwright Terence gave us this moving expression of compassion, of solidarity with all our fellow mortals: Homo sum, nihil humani me alienum est—I am human, and nothing that is human is alien to me.

¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

Pablo J. Davis, Ph.D., CT, J.D., is a historian, translator, and attorney. The essay above was originally published in La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) in the Nov. 20-26, 2017 issue, as No. 257 of the weekly, bilingual column “Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation” [Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción].

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", ajeno, alien, Atahualpa Yupanqui, Certified Translator, Cesar Calvo, Davis, labor, Lando, Maria, Maria Lando, Pablo, Terence, traducción, traductor, translation, translator, women, work

2016-07-23 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

What good translation is “for”!

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

 “Latinos para Trump” read signs at the GOP Convention. Clearly it meant “Latinos for Trump” but it didn’t say that: Spanish para can mean “for” but it’s not the same “for” used to indicate support of a candidate. (An even more unfortunate version of the sign, also seen at the convention, was  “Hispanics para Trump” which didn’t even use the Spanish word for “Hispanics”: hispanos.)

Latinos-Hispanics para Trump

Scenes from the Republican Convention held in Cleveland, Jul. 18-21, 2016.

The preposition para mainly means “for the purpose of, in order to, to be used by.” Papel para fotocopiadora, “paper for  photocopier, photocopy paper”; vegetales para ensaladas, “vegetables for salads, salad greens.”

“Latinos para Trump” says something like “Latinos to be used by Trump.” It should read: Latinos por (or con) Trump.

(We’ll revisit por/para again in the near future.)

The mistranslation unintentionally said some other things, too: “This sign was not made by a Latino” or (more accurately) “was not created by a native Spanish speaker.” Even worse: “We don’t care about Latinos, we just want their votes.”

Poor translation is poison: it undermines your message; makes you look foolish; and sends adverse signals—the worst being, “We don’t care enough to do this right.”

Every time an organization assigns a translation to some employee who happens to (it is believed) “speak Spanish,” the result will almost certainly be unfortunate—and maybe deadly: imagine the mistranslation of a safety warning!

Few of us would let our brother-in-law “who fools around with electrical stuff” do the wiring of our house. Or have the neighbor who once took a CPR course operate on our liver. But, in essence, that’s what’s routinely done with translation (and its spoken cousin, interpreting). These are professional, technical skills requiring training and experience, not something you can do just because you (sort of) know a second language—and not even just from being bilingual.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", Certified Translator, Davis, Donald J. Trump, error, Hispanics, Hispanics para Trump, latinos, Latinos para Trump, Memphis, mistranslation, Pablo, translation, translator, Trump, wrong

2016-07-10 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

The position must be filled

Enlace para español/Click here for Spanish

Dear reader,

We’re about to see two political conventions whose result may not be foreordained. Many find this strange, even unthinkable. But it’s how conventions used to be—before they became blockbuster TV specials with lots of flash but no real drama.

A bilingual look at some words of the season:

Roman white toga

“Candidate” comes from the Roman custom of those seeking public office wearing a white (candidum) toga, symbolizing purity. It’s unclear if this would make apt electoral attire today.

Convention, from Latin convenire “to come together.” Spanish convención has been widely used for such gatherings for some time; in the early/mid 20th century it surpassed an older term still not entirely obsolete: asamblea (assembly).

“Convention” can also mean a broadly accepted custom, as when broadcasters say a show starts at “9PM/8PM Central” it’s understood 9PM means Eastern time. Spanish “Convengamos en que…” (Let’s agree that) uses this sense of “convention.”

Span. convenio, from the same Latin root, means “agreement” as in an international treaty or a legal settlement.

Candidate and  candidato go back to a Roman custom: aspirants to public office wore white togas. Lat. candidum meant “white, pure.” Engl. “candid” took French’s sense “frank, sincere.” Span. cándido takes up a different sense: “naïve.” Neither “candid” nor cándido generally spring to mind when thinking of politicians.

Nominee. This sense is old in English, from at least the 1680s. The Spanish equivalent: candidato, simply, or titular (el titular del partido Republicano, the Republican Party nominee). A quaint term is “standard-bearer” (“standard” a term for “flag”); Span. has an equivalent, abanderado.

Running. Candidates “run” for office (or “stand” in the UK). In Spanish se postulan or se presentan, which are both also ways of saying “to apply”—as for a job. The electorate is a strange employer, though, as it is forced to hire someone even if not satisfied with the applicants.

¡Buenas palabras! Good words!

Pablo

Copyright ©2016 by Pablo J. Davis.  All Rights Reserved. An earlier version of this essay originally appeared in the Jul. 17-23, 2016 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as number 189 in the weekly bilingual column, “Misterios y Engimas de la Traducción/Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”.  Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is an ATA (American Translators Association) Certified Translator, Engl>Span; a Tennessee State Courts Certified Interpreter, Engl<>Span; and an innovative trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and intercultural competency, with over 25 years experience. He holds the doctorate in Latin American History from The Johns Hopkins University, and is a Juris Doctor Candidate at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis (May 2017).

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", candidate, Certified Translator, convention, Davis, elections, Pablo, party, political, translation, translator

2013-12-30 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Happy New Year, Feliz Año Nuevo…!

Click here for Spanish/Enlace para español

January antique almanac

Dear reader,

This is the greeting of the moment, which in Spanish can be expressed several ways: “¡Feliz Año Nuevo!” (Happy New Year), “¡Feliz Año!” (Happy Year), or “¡Próspero Año Nuevo!” (Prosperous New Year).

New Year’s Eve is la Nochevieja in Spanish: literally ‘the old night’.

January (Spanish enero, not capitalized) is named for Janus, the Roman god of doorways, who had one face looking backwards and another forward. As most of us do at this time of year: New Year’s resolutions (Spanish resoluciones de año nuevo) appear to date back to Roman times. Breaking them is likely just as old.

The year hasn’t always started in January. Among other dates, that honor fell for many centuries to March 25, in the early springtime of the Northern Hemisphere. January 1 replaced it when the Gregorian calendar was adopted (in 1582 in Catholic countries, later elsewhere, including 1752 in England).

For dates from Jan. 1 through Mar. 24 of the years around the time of the changeover, one often sees O.S. (Old Style) or N.S. (New Style) following the date, meant as a clarification: in the Old Style, the year changed not on Jan. 1 but on Mar. 25. So, for instance, Mar. 14, 1753 O.S. would be Mar. 14, 1754 N.S.

In the French Republican calendar, after the Revolution, the year started on our Sep. 22.

The fiscal year, depending on the country, begins the first of January, April, July, or October. The school year starts in March in the Southern Hemisphere, traditionally in September in the North (though now, schoolchildren glumly face an ever earlier start, as early as the first week of August!).

Other New Years are not fixed: this year the Jewish New Year will be Sep. 24-26; the Islamic, Oct. 24-25; and the Chinese, Jan. 31.

Even birthdays can be considered, and many people do think of them this way, as the beginning of a personal new year.

In truth, every year brings many New Years. May each and every one of them, in the course of 2014, bring health and prosperity, dear reader, to you and yours.

¡Buenas palabras… Good words!

Pablo

Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT,  is an ATA Certified Translator (Engl>Span) and a Supreme Court of Tennessee Certified Interpreter (Engl<>Span). An earlier version of this essay was originally published in the Dec. 30, 2013-Jan. 5, 2014 edition of  La Prensa Latina, Memphis, Tennessee, as part of the weekly bilingual column “Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation”/Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", año, año nuevo, calendario, certificado, certified, Certified Translator, happy new year, new year, Pablo Davis, Pablo Julián Davis, traducción, traductor certificado, translation

2013-11-21 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

How to work with an interpreter

If you’re a patient or physician, attorney or client, it’s quite probable that at one time or another you’ll use the services of a foreign-language interpreter. Some ideas and suggestions to keep in mind:

  1. An interpreter converts spoken dialogue from one language to another, a translator with written text. Two separate professions, two distinct sets of skills (though there are professionals who perform both, at a high level).
  2. Whenever possible, use the services of a professional interpreter certified by one of the following: Legal: The Supreme Court of your state (Certified is the highest level, while Registered means the person has not passed all of the required examinations), the Federal Courts, or NAJIT. Medical: IMIA, CCHI, or NBCMI. (The ATA certifies translators.) These certifications represent an important level of reliability and professionalism. And they can be verified; falsely claiming certification is fraud—an illegal act.
  3. It’s very common for bilingual children or friends to be used as interpreters. In legal and medical matters particularly, this is not advisable. There’s too much at stake to leave things in amateur hands. And there are issues that minor children should not be hearing and interpreting.
  4. Though it doesn’t feel natural, make every effort to look into the eyes of the person you’re talking to, of addressing them directly as “you”—almost as if the interpreter weren’t there. The interpreter is part of the interaction, facilitating your conversation, but is not part of the conversation, so you shouldn’t look at the interpreter and say, “Tell the doctor that…”  The interpreter must use the first person, “I” (Spanish yo) except when speaking for him or herself, and then it’s the third person: “The interpreter wishes to clarify…”
  5. There are two main modes of interpreting: consecutive and simultaneous. In consecutive, an individual speaks, then pauses while the interpreter interprets what was just said. If you’re using consecutive interpreting, it’s important that you keep your sentences short, so that the interpreter can be as accurate and complete as possible. If you’re stating numbers, addresses, or dates, say them slowly. In simultaneous interpreting, the interpreter conveys what’s being said in “real time”; a skilled professional interpreter can keep up with the pace of the person, or persons, for whom he or she is interpreting, usually with just 1 or 2 seconds’ delay.
  6. Interpreting is one of the most complex activities the human brain can perform. The pressure on the interpreter is great, especially in the legal and medical fields, and is mentally and physically exhausting. Respect the interpreter’s need for breaks (or the interpreters’ need, if the interaction is lengthy and there is more than one interpreter assigned to it), not just out of concern for that person’s health, but also in order to assure the highest possible level of work.
  7. If you’re unsure a word was interpreted (translated) correctly, just politely ask to go back to it.
  8. If the interpreter pauses to ask a question or get clarification of a particular point, don’t be alarmed: almost always, that is a sign of professionalism.
  9. If the interpreter’s utterances are significantly shorter, or longer, than those of the persons being interpreted, there could be a problem. The interpreter is not supposed to give a summary of what was said, nor embellish or add to it. It’s not a matter of the word count or timing being exactly the same, but the length and degree of detail between the original language and the interpreter’s version should be roughly comparable.

Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT, has more than 25 years of professional experience as interpreter and translator. As an interpreter, he is Certified by the Supreme Court of Tennessee and has passed the Federal Courts’ Written Examination. He performs varied interpreting work, with a legal/judicial specialization as well as work in medical and other fields. As a conference interpreter, he has worked with distinguished world personalities including Rigoberta Menchu Tum (Nobel Peace Prize laureate), theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz, journalist David Bacon, the late writer Julio Cortázar, and others.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: Certified Translator, interpretation, intérprete, interpreter, interpreting, Memphis, traducción, traductor, traductor certificado, translation

2013-09-27 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Hispanic Heritage: Why Spanish Matters

La Mezquita, or Cathedral-Mosque of Córdoba, southern Spain, is considered one of the treasures of humanity and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its majestic geometry embodies the encounter of Africa, Europe, and Asia that unfolded in complex ways in medieval Spain and helped shape the modern Spanish language.

Spanish dominates foreign-language study in the US: 865,000 college students took it in 2009,  followed by French (216,000) and German (96,000). Spanish enrolls more than all other world languages combined. In K-12 public schools, the dominance is even greater: 2007-08 figures showed 6.4 million taking Spanish (72% of all foreign-language enrollment), French a very distant second at 1.3 million.

Why is the “language of Cervantes” so widely studied (if not always mastered)? Here are some of the more common reasons:

A large and growing population. The US’s Spanish-speaking population, over 40 million, surpasses all but a few Latin American countries. Many see Census numbers alone as proving the importance of Spanish and making it “the language to learn.” Not to mention geography: the US shares a border with the most populous Hispanic country in the world, and millions more Spanish speakers live in the Caribbean, not far from Florida’s shores.

Community service.  Idealistic young people in substantial numbers pursue Spanish to serve immigrant community needs such as literacy, health, legal aid, and education, or in missions of faith. In turn, those interactions often become an arena for “service learning” where classroom knowledge of the language is put to the enriching test of real-life experience.

It’s “easy”?  The perception of Spanish as easy to learn is widespread; college students typically see it as the shortcut to meeting language requirements.  It’s a half-truth: Spanish really is a marvel of grammatical and phonetic consistency, due in part to Nebrija’s 1492 Grammar (one of the earliest for a modern language) and the 1713 founding of the Royal Spanish Academy. But true mastery of the language is anything but easy to attain.

It’s “funny”? Fascination with “Spanglish”— incorporation of English words and patterns into immigrant speech—treats as odd the natural result of language contact between populations. In any case, this linguistic resource hardly amounts to a dialect, much less a separate language. Somewhat different is the popularity of “Faux Spanish”: “no problemo”, “perfectamundo”, “mucho macho”, or “el grande jefe” convey a playful, at times mocking, attitude towards Spanish and its speakers.

Laborers. Many North Americans associate Spanish with poorer, often undocumented, immigrants—an understandable perception based on current media and political obsessions, and perhaps personal experience.  In this view, the language is useful to communicate with, and manage, laborers. It’s not really a “serious” language, though: this was actually the message a prestigious private school in Virginia explicitly placed on its website in the recent past, with the boast that for reasons of academic rigor, they proudly offered only French as a foreign language. The same unexamined premise was shared by the judge in an Amarillo, Texas family court who infamously, in August 1995, ordered a Mexican-born immigrant mother to stop speaking in Spanish to her five-year-old daughter, as using that language constituted “child abuse” and would condemn the girl to a future “as a housemaid.” (Both the school and the judge did later about-faces in the light of avalanches of public criticism.)

A “quaint” culture.  It’s common to hear people express love for the culture, often in terms of salsa (cuisine) and salsa (music and dance).  Adjectives such as “colorful,” “quaint,” simple”, and “exotic” paint a Hispanic world of peasants, rural and village life, “traditions”. This view can unintentionally place Hispanic or Latino people in a primitive past, even outside of time. An associated perception sees Spanish as the language of places college students on Spring break and other tourists go to run wild, places—many of them—that the United States once conquered, occupied, or dominated. Indeed, this is the other side of the coin from language-of-manual-laborers. A long history of power relations has planted such deeply-rooted habits of thought.

Quite a mix of reasons (and it’s only a sampling)! Sincere interest in other cultures is there, as are a calling to service, faith, and love of justice. So, too, are simplistic romanticization, patronizing superiority, and power agendas.

Here are some other, crucial reasons why Spanish matters and why learning it is one of the best things you can do in the early 21st century:

A global language. Spanish now ranks second in the world in number of native speakers, with over 410 million (approximately 1 in 20 members of the human race), trailing only Mandarin Chinese. English, with over 360 million worldwide, is in third place, right behind (though when we add the number of people who speak English as a second language, it moves into second place). Portuguese, which I like to call Spanish’s “fraternal twin”—no living language is nearly so close a relation to English—has over 220 million native speakers, mostly in rising economic powerhouse Brazil; Spanish speakers can understand Portuguese to a considerable degree and have an automatic head-start in learning the language.

Economic power. The US’s 53 million Hispanics (1 in 6 people!) spend some $1.3 trillion annually; Spanish-speaking countries’ combined GDP, $3.4 trillion, equals industrial giant Germany; add sister nation Brazil, and at $5.9 trillion it matches Japan. There are countless markets to sell to, jobs to be done, texts to be translated, by people with significant mastery of the language (inseparable, in the end, from cultural understanding).

A world civilization.  Every language bears witness to a people’s experience and creativity.  For Spanish that includes ancient Iberian, Celtic, Roman, and Germanic legacies, as well as the unique Rom or ‘Gypsy’ presence (Spanish gitanos, a word derived from egiptanos and bearing witness to the passage of part of that wandering people into North Africa via Egypt); a near-millennium of Christian-Jewish-Muslim coexistence; the world’s first global empire; and, today, twenty multicultural societies of indigenous, African, European, and Asian heritage.  Just one example of the cultural richness that Spanish embodies: in societies viewed as overwhelmingly Christian, one says ¡Ojalá! (Arabic Inshallah) for “I hope so!”

The Knight of the Woeful Countenance. Likely the world’s best-known and loved work of fiction, Cervantes’s Don Quixote crowns a literature that includes the brilliant 17th-century Mexican poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; the greatest of modern stylists, José Martí, who died fighting for Cuban independence; Chile’s beloved poet Pablo Neruda, Argentina’s Jorge Luis Borges with his metaphysical mysteries, and master storytellers of our lifetime like Colombia’s García Márquez, Peru’s Vargas Llosa, Mexico’s Carlos Fuentes, Chile’s Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez of the Dominican Republic.

Recovering one’s own heritage.  Significant numbers of US-born (or raised) Hispanics are English-dominant, even monolingual (note that the Hispanic/Latino population, at 53 million, is larger than the Spanish-speaking figure of 40 million). For “heritage learners,” as the language-teaching profession calls those who grew up with significant home exposure to Spanish, learning it can be a powerful reclaiming of family and cultural legacy.

An outlook on life.  To master Spanish is to learn another way of being in the world, a peculiar combination of seriousness, humor, hierarchy, and dignity. The native English speaker learns to tuck away that ever-present, imperial pronoun “I” (the only one English capitalizes!), taking on a more sparingly-used yo: Spanish embodies a certain modesty.  One learns words for relationships and customs English can’t name: compadre or comadre if you’re their kid’s godparent, tocayo if you share the same name, sobremesa for staying at the table talking after a meal.  Saying Nos vemos mañana (See you tomorrow), one often adds si Dios quiere (God willing): a small linguistic bow to the Deity, or simply to life’s unknowns.

There are many valid reasons to learn Spanish; it’s fine as preparation for a Cancun vacation or to improve HR.  But a global economic force, a major world literature, and the quest for genuine intercultural fluency offer other motivations that can be mind-expanding, even life-changing.

Copyright ©2013 by Pablo J. Davis. All Rights Reserved.

Pablo J. Davis provides professionally-certified translation/interpreting services, and cultural coaching, through Interfluency.com. He has formal graduate training in Latin American History. A version of this article was published by The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) on Fri., Sep. 27, 2013.

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2013-06-15 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Translating “bird” into Spanish

Dear reader,

E.G., a native English-speaking friend who’s quite proficient in Spanish, asked about the differences between aveand pájaro in translating “bird”.

For starters, both originate in Latin: avis and passer (sparrow), respectively.

How do the two Spanish words divvy up the turf of meaning—what linguists call the “semantic field”

Sparrow and ostrich: in Spanish both birds are aves, but only one would typically be called pájaro. Which one?

Ave (AH-veh, as in Ave María; that ave is a different word, a Latin greeting usually translated as “hail”) is a scientific term: the taxonomic class Aves. It’s broad, covering hummingbird and sparrow, turkey and heron.  It can name categories, e.g. birds of prey (aves de rapiña), poultry (aves de granja, literally “farm birds”), or songbirds (aves cantoras).  And it is often literary or poetic in tone.

Pájaro, true to its origins, is almost always used to mean used a relatively small, flying bird, typically a songbird.  Somewhat informal, it can also be applied humorously to birds that would usually not be so called: a penguin, for instance, or a goose, or a ñañdú (the three-toed South American counterpart of the ostrich).

In English, “bird” carries singly almost all the weight that in Spanish is shared by ave and pájaro. In English, the Latin root avis appears only in scientific or technical terms such as “avian”, “aviform”, or “aviation”.

In highly informal or vulgar language, pájaro can refer to the male genital organ, a connotation not absent from English: think of “flipping the bird” for the obscene, middle-finger gesture. In some (particularly Caribbean) countries, pájaro, pato (duck) and the like can mean male homosexual.

Bird-related expressions where English and Spanish coincide include “A little birdie told me” (Me lo contó un pajarito) and calling someone “a strange bird” (rara avis).

On the other hand, Pájaro que comió, voló (literally: Bird that ate, flew away) is rendered in English simply as “Sorry to eat and run”.  And saying something is “for the birds”, or worthless, in English, has no avian counterpart in Spanish, although in Argentina the rhymed expression “Alpiste, perdiste” (literally: Birdseed, you lose) is common in a situation where someone has said something they regret, or otherwise made a mistake.

While we’re on the subject of birds, we can’t help but think of the humorous definition of Homo sapiens, often attributed to Plato, as “the featherless biped”.

¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

Copyright © 2013 by Pablo Julián Davis. All rights reserved. A version of this essay was originally written for the June 23-29, 2013 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee), as part of the regular bilingual column “Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”. Pablo Julián Davis (www.interfluency.com) is an ATA Certified Translator (inglés>español) and a Supreme Court of Tennessee Certified Interpreter (inglés<>español) who also provides custom-designed cultural/linguistic coaching and training.

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2013-05-02 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

How we “save a file” in Spanish

Dear reader,

It’s something yours truly will do in a few minutes, you will likely do more than once today… and forgetting to do it can sometimes bring real headaches.

We’re talking about one of the most common, ordinary acts of contemporary life: preserving what you’ve written or changed in a computer document: “saving a file”. This term has no single, accepted Spanish translation; rather, there are various options.

When you stop to think about it, “file” is a strange noun to use for a single document; its ordinary, non-computing meanings are a device, drawer, or piece of furniture where documents are kept; or a folder holding papers on a matter or topic. The computing sense of “file” is usually rendered as Spanish documento or archivo, with the latter increasingly dominant.

Archivo, whose standard meanings include a cabinet or archive (a room or building where many documents are held), is also a curious thing to call a letter or other simple document.

And “to save”? Here, also, there are two main possibilities: salvar or guardar.  The first directly translates “save”, but with a discordant connotation of rescue that the English word can shed. The second conveys well the notion of preserving, but with the added sense of putting away—which doesn’t quite fit, as we “save a file” frequently while working on it.

Both languages struggle with the novelty of computing: what we do when we “save a file” has no exact analogy in the world of pen and paper, or even typewriter.

¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

Copyright © 2013 by Pablo Julián Davis. All rights reserved. A version of this essay was originally written for the 5-11 May 2013 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as part of the weekly bilingual column “Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation. Pablo Julián Davis (www.interfluency.com) is an ATA Certified Translator (Eng>Spa) and a Supreme Court of Tennessee Certified Court Interpreter (Eng<>Spa).

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2013-04-12 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

How do you translate a sneeze… or a kiss?

Dear reader,

Onomatopeia, a powerful expressive resource, represents in written or spoken language a sound, action, or phenomenon. Some months back, we looked at some animal sounds, like the rooster’s “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” that Spanish expresses as ¡Kikirikí or ¡Cocoricó!

¿”¡Chuik!” ó “¡Muá!”… ?¿O tal vez, de acuerdo al inglés, “Smooch!”?

This week, let’s consider some human sounds, starting with the little explosion that is a sneeze. Spanish represents it as ¡Achís! (ah-CHEESS) or¡Achús! (ah-CHOOSS); the second, less common, is similar to English “Ah-choo!”

Since sneezing is physiological, much more than cultural or linguistic, it’s evident that each language “hears” or “interprets” the sound uniquely.

Sometimes the languages differ widely. Spanish represents a kiss as ¡Chuik! (chweek) or ¡Muá! (mwah); English, as “Smooch!” For physical revulsion, Spanish uses ¡Puaj! (pwach, with guttural Germanic/Scots ‘ch’) or ¡Uf; typical in English is “Yuk!” or its infantile adjective form, as in “That’s yucky!” The latter’s one of the first words children in Spanish-speaking homes learn from English-speaking schoolmates.

Throat-clearing, on the other hand—a physiological act, that can also be used expressively to get someone’s attention or request silence—is similar: ¡Ejem! is almost identical to English “Ahem!”

Exclamations of pain are a curious case: the Spanish speaker stubbing her toe on a rock cries “Ayyy!” (like the letter ‘I’), nothing like English “Ouch!” or “Oww!” It turns out that an act one would think purely  physiological is actually cultural, and that pain is “pronounced” differently from language to language.

¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

Copyright  © 2013 por Pablo Julián Davis. All Rights Reserved. This essay was originally written for the 21-26 April 2013 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee), as part of the weekly bilingual column “Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”. Pablo J. Davis (www.interfluency.com) is an ATA Certified Translator (English>Spanish) and a Tennessee Supreme Court Certified Court Interpreter (English<>Spanish).

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2013-01-20 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Danger! “Notario Público” Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

Dear reader,

Many of the words we explore in this column have to do with everyday culture: yapa and “lagniappe”; “¡Felicidades!”and “¡Felicitaciones!” as two varieties of congratulation; the nearly untranslatable piropo.

Much of our translation work, in contrast, is legal in nature: contracts, wills, powers of attorney, lawsuits.

Typical notary stamp in the US. The mistranslation of the title into Spanish as notario is not only incorrect, but potentially dangerous.

In that work, it’s common to have to translate the title “notary public”.

“Notary”: what a trap that word lays for the unwary!

Because the obvious, direct translation to notario or notario público is wrong.

It’s a “false friend”, linguists’ term for words with similar appearance and origins but different meanings.Thus Spanish fábrica (factory) is not fabric, a sentencia(ruling, judgment) is not a sentence (punishment), a compromiso (commitment) no compromise.

In Spanish-speaking countries, notarios (they’re público by definition, as the position requires govern­ment authorization) are lawyers specialized in legalization of documents and related matters. In Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, the title is escribano.

US notaries are not attorneys; the requirements to become one are minimal.

Thus the frequent mistranslation of “notary” as notario can, in effect, mislead Spanish speakers into thinking of these officials as attorneys.

In fact, this erroneous direct translation is expressly prohibited by law in various states, including Texas and Florida.

Our general recommendation is to translate “notary” as fedatario, the Spanish term for an official authorized to attest to the legitimacy of signatures and oaths.

¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

Copyright ©2013 Pablo J. Davis. All Rights Reserved. This essay was originally written for the January 27, 2013 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee), as part of the weekly bilingual column Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation/Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", certificado, Certified Translator, cómo, cómo traducir, Davis, English, error, escribano, español, fedatario, inglés, Julián, law, legal, Memphis, mistake, mistranslation, notario, notary, Pablo, Pablo Julián Davis, public, público, Spanish, Tennessee, traducción, traducir, traductor, translation, translator

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