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2013-08-13 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Tuesday the 13th… the Friday the 13th of the Spanish-speaking world (and vice-versa)

ENLACE AQUI PARA ESPAÑOL/LINK HERE FOR SPANISH

Imagine you’re translating a document, from English into Spanish. Say it’s a letter, dated Tuesday, August 13, 2013 (that’s today).  How do you translate that into Spanish? Well, that’s not too difficult: you might render it as ‘martes, 13 agosto 2013’.

Martes 13, Tuesday the 13th: a combination of day and date that are the object of widely-held popular superstition in the Spanish-speaking world.

(Like November 2012, the month of January 1931 had a ‘martes 13’ – Tuesday the 13th. By the famed artist and cartoonist Florencio Molina Campos, whose humorous but loving depictions of old-time scenes and characters of the  Pampa have adorned wall calendars in Argentina for the better part of a century. Molina Campos was admired by Walt Disney, with whom he struck up a friendship.)

The bad luck commonly held to attach to ‘martes 13’ actually comes in a double dose. To the triskaidekafobia (a terrific Greek word, composed of thirteen+fear, that has the lovely property of sounding exactly like the thing it designates) that Hispanic/Latin American culture shares with Anglo-Saxon and many others across the world, is added a negative apprehension surrounding Tuesday. Tuesday aversion is not common in the English-speaking world (though in the cycle of the work week, it’s certainly not many people’s favorite day). Think of the nursery rhyme foretelling a child’s fortune from the day of its birth (“Tuesday’s child is full of grace…”), or old Solomon Grundy who was “christened on Tuesday”.

In Spanish, though, the name for the second day following the Christian Sabbath is martes, Mars’s Day.  Around this deity, most commonly known as the Roman god of war (equivalent to the Greeks’ Ares), spin a series of negative qualities: aggression, duplicity, hostility, selfishness. Reputedly despised by both his parents, Zeus and Hera, Mars could be worshipped for his valor and power (and apparently Venus did so), but perhaps more often feared. Herein lies at least part of the reason why Tuesday’s stock is so low in Hispanic-Latin American culture. “Día martes,” goes the well-known folk saying reflecting this, “no te cases ni te embarques” [On Tuesday, marry not, nor set sail].

So, thinking of all these associations, let’s go back to our little translation problem. Only now, let’s imagine the year is not 2012 but rather 1980, and what we need to ‘move across’ (the original, physical meaning of ‘translate‘) from English to Spanish is not the date of a letter but the title of a movie. Specifically, director Sean Cunningham’s newly-released horror flick Friday the 13th (still with us almost a third of a century later, having reached twelve installments and a grand total of eleven different directors; is anyone truly in suspense over whether there will be a Part 13?).

With strict ‘dictionary accuracy’, we could release the film under the title Viernes 13.  But to tap into the deeper resonances within Hispanic/Latin American culture, maybe we would better off shifting the day of the week to Tuesday and rendering the title as Martes 13.  And that’s exactly what happened in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, and other countries of the Spanish-speaking world. However, the direct or ‘dictionary’ translation was used in still other countries, including Mexico and Spain.

One result of this convoluted set of circumstances: the association of Friday the 13th with bad luck, not native to Hispanic/Latin American culture, has to some extent been ‘imported’ from the English-speaking world—due to the power of what is often called popular, and might more accurately be termed commercial, culture.

And, let us not forget, it’s due also to the influence of an often overlooked group of ‘unacknowledged legislators’: members of the translators’ profession, whose decisions can have a significant impact on human affairs. What’s at stake is clearer when we think of the texts of laws and treaties, or the way that a statesman’s words are translated in a tense international negotiation. But even in this seemingly trivial example of a movie title, there are ‘real world’ implications. People’s likelihood of making certain personal or economic decisions—travel, a purchase, an apartment rental—is influenced by beliefs regarding numbers, dates, days of the week.

More adventures in the world of translation, this science, craft, and art all at the same time! And never more challenging than when cultural phenomena are what we’re translating.

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

A version of this essay appeared at https://interfluency.wordpress.com on Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011 and Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2012.

Pablo J. Davis, PhD, CT is an ATA (American Translators Association) Certified Translator, English>Spanish, and a Supreme Court of Tennessee Certified Interpreter, English<>Spanish. With over 20 years of experience and particular specialties in the legal, business, and medical fields. Contact info@interfluency.com or 901-288-3018 if you need world-class translation or interpreting between the English and Spanish languages. Through his company Interfluency Translation+Culture, he aso delivers interactive, informative, and inspiring cultural-awareness training to businesses, churches, schools, and government agencies.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", 13th, America, American, bilingual, comparative, cultura, cultural, culture, dates, Davis, days, English-Spanish, español, fear, Friday, Friday the 13th, hispana, Hispano, inglés, interpreter, interpreting, Julián, language, Latin, Latin American, martes, Martes 13, Pablo, Pablo Julián Davis, Spanish, superstition, traducción, traductor, translation, translator, Tuesday, week

2013-01-13 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Lagniappe, beef jerky, and the Incas

A representation of the famous rope bridges of the Inca Empire, one of that culture’s many stunning achievements. From the monumental visual history of Peru,Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615) by Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala.

Dear reader,

An Argentine reader of this column asks us how to translate yapa into English. 

This fascinating word refers to a small addition of merchandise given to a customer without charge, or more broadly to any small extra amount of something.

It comes from Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire. Quechua-Spanish contact was massive from 1532; from it come Spanish words like cancha (sports field), ñato (snub-nosed), choclo (ear of corn), poroto(bean), papa (potato), and mate (an herb tea).

To translate “yapa” into English we use French: the word lagnappe (orlagniappe).  The road took several turns. Ñapa is a palatalized variant ofyapa, where the first sound is produced bringing the tongue up to the palate.

It turns out that French speakers in Louisiana, an area having much contact with Spanish, heard “la ñapa” as one word and spelled it French-style: lagnappe. In French (like Italian) ‘gn’ makes the ‘ñ’ sound (ny), but adding the ‘i’ made the pronunciation clearer for English speakers. Lagniappe can also mean tip (gratuity) or even kickback.

In Mexico, the merchant’s small gift to the customer is known as a pilón or piloncillo. The latter word also means a small pyramid-shaped mass of unrefined sugar. The connection may be that pilloncillos themselves were a typicalyapa, or perhaps from the idea of the tip that completes the mountain. (Mexico Bob’s entertaining and thorough exploration of the word pilón can be found here.)

In English, the word “bonus” is common, and the expression “a baker’s dozen” (meaning thirteen) conveys in a picturesque way the idea of a yapa.

Another Quechua-derived word, charque (or charqui) means dried and salted meat. Its English translation, as withyapa, preserves the Andean root: “jerky”and the adjectival form, as in Jamaican “jerked chicken”.

¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

Copyright ©2013 Pablo J. Davis. All Rights Reserved. An earlier version of this essay was originally written for the January 20, 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: baker's, baker's doze, bonus, charque, charqui, cultura, culture, dozen, English, español, hispana, Hispanic, inglés, intérprete, interpreter, jerky, lagnappe, lagniappe, Latin, latina, latinoamericana, Spanish, traducción, translation, yapa

2013-01-05 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Educación: education and upbringing

Dear reader,

Last week, we saw how the English expression “Congratulations!” is separated by Spanish into “Felicitaciones!” for a success vs. “¡Felicidades!” on life passages (marriage, birth of a child, New Year).

Similarly, Spanish ser and estar distinguish essence (Es mi hija, She is my daughter) from state  (Está ansiosa por algo, She is anxious about something); English has only “to be”. You “know” 3×3=9 and you “know” someone: Spanish saber and conocer, respectively. A “fish” is pez in the water but pescado on your plate.

In Spanish, educación can mean two things, represented by the photographs above. English “education” only pertains to the left side. Photo on left, photographer unknown, from Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de las Revoluciones Mexicanas (www.inehrm.gob.mx); photo on right, origin unknown. Both appear to be from the 1950′s.

 

But it isn’t always the language of Cervantes that makes the finer distinctions; in other cases, it’s Shakespeare’s that does so.

Take Spanish educación.  Like English “education”., it can mean formal study. But it’s also what parents strive to inculcate in their children—in surface matters (saying “thank you” and “please”) and deeper ones (respect, gratitude, kindness).  Manners and values: what English expresses by the word “upbringing” or, more popularly, “raising”.

To be called maleducado (literally: badly educated) is to be thought ill-mannered, disrespectful, selfish, or vulgar.  

This second meaning of educación is probably the more important one in Spanish.  To hear the expression “un hombre educado” (literally, an educated man) is chiefly to think of manners, values, character.

“Education starts in the home” is a widely shared view these days. In some ways, we can say that the Spanish wordeducación already contains this idea.

¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

Copyright ©2013 Pablo J. Davis. All Rights Reserved. This essay was originally written for the January 13, 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", certified, comparada, comparativa, comparative, comparison, cultura, culture, Davis, educación, education, hispana, Hispanic, Hispano, Julián, latina, Latino, latinoamericana, meaning, Pablo, Pablo Davis, traducción, translation, translator, words

2012-11-13 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Tuesday the 13th… the Friday the 13th of the Spanish-speaking world (and vice-versa)

ENLACE AQUI PARA ESPAÑOL/LINK HERE FOR SPANISH

Imagine you’re translating a document, from English into Spanish. Say it’s a letter, dated Tuesday, November 13, 2012 (that’s today).  How do you translate that into Spanish? Well, that’s not too difficult: you’d render it as ‘martes, 13 noviembre 2012’.

Martes 13, Tuesday the 13th: a combination of day and date that are the object of widely-held popular superstition in the Spanish-speaking world.

 

(Like November 2012, the month of January 1931 had a ‘martes 13’ – Tuesday the 13th. By the famed artist and cartoonist Florencio Molina Campos, whose humorous but loving depictions of old-time scenes and characters of the  Pampa have adorned wall calendars in Argentina for the better part of a century. Molina Campos was admired by Walt Disney, with whom he struck up a friendship.)

The bad luck commonly held to attach to ‘martes 13’ actually comes in a double dose. To the triskaidekafobia (a terrific Greek word, composed of thirteen+fear, that has the lovely property of sounding exactly like the thing it designates) that Hispanic/Latin American culture shares with Anglo-Saxon and many others across the world, is added a negative apprehension surrounding Tuesday. Tuesday aversion is not common in the English-speaking world (though in the cycle of the work week, it’s certainly not many people’s favorite day). Think of the nursery rhyme foretelling a child’s fortune from the day of its birth (“Tuesday’s child is full of grace…”), or old Solomon Grundy who was “christened on Tuesday”.

In Spanish, though, the name for the second day following the Christian Sabbath is martes, Mars’s Day.  Around this deity, most commonly known as the Roman god of war (equivalent to the Greeks’ Ares), spin a series of negative qualities: aggression, duplicity, hostility, selfishness. Reputedly despised by both his parents, Zeus and Hera, Mars could be worshipped for his valor and power (and apparently Venus did so), but perhaps more often feared. Herein lies at least part of the reason why Tuesday’s stock is so low in Hispanic-Latin American culture. “Día martes,” goes the well-known folk saying reflecting this, “no te cases ni te embarques” [On Tuesday, marry not nor set sail].

So, thinking of all these associations, let’s go back to our little translation problem. Only now, let’s imagine the year is not 2012 but rather 1980, and what we need to ‘move across’ (the original, physical meaning of ‘translate‘) from English to Spanish is not the date of a letter but the title of a movie. Specifically, director Sean Cunningham’s newly-released horror flick Friday the 13th (still with us almost a third of a century later, having reached twelve installments and a grand total of eleven different directors; is anyone truly in suspense over whether there will be a Part 13?).

With strict ‘dictionary accuracy’, we could release the film under the title Viernes 13.  But to tap into the deeper resonances within Hispanic/Latin American culture, maybe we would better off shifting the day of the week to Tuesday and rendering the title as Martes 13.  And that’s exactly what happened in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, and other countries of the Spanish-speaking world. However, the direct or ‘dictionary’ translation was used in still other countries, including Mexico and Spain.

One result of this convoluted set of circumstances: the association of Friday the 13th with bad luck, not native to Hispanic/Latin American culture, has to some extent been ‘imported’ from the English-speaking world—due to the power of what is often called popular, and might more accurately be termed commercial, culture.

And, let us not forget, it’s due also to the influence of an often overlooked group of ‘unacknowledged legislators’: members of the translators’ profession, whose decisions can have a significant impact on human affairs. What’s at stake is clearer when we think of the texts of laws and treaties, or the way that a statesman’s words are translated in a tense international negotiation. But even in this seemingly trivial example of a movie title, there are ‘real world’ implications. People’s likelihood of making certain personal or economic decisions—travel, a purchase, an apartment rental—is influenced by beliefs regarding numbers, dates, days of the week.

More adventures in the world of translation, this science, craft, and art all at the same time! And never more challenging than when cultural phenomena are what we’re translating.

© Copyright 2012 by Pablo J. Davis. All Rights Reserved.

A version of this essay appeared at https://interfluency.wordpress.com on Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011.

Pablo J. Davis, PhD, CT is an ATA (American Translators Association) Certified Translator, English>Spanish, and a Supreme Court of Tennessee Certified Interpreter, English<>Spanish. With over 20 years of experience, he has particular specialties in the legal, business, and medical fields. Contact info@interfluency.com or 901-288-3018 if you need world-class translation or interpreting between the English and Spanish languages. His company Interfluency Translation+Culture also delivers interactive, informative, and inspiring cultural-awareness training to businesses, churches, schools, and government agencies.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", 13th, America, American, bilingual, comparative, cultura, cultural, culture, dates, Davis, days, English-Spanish, español, fear, Friday, Friday the 13th, hispana, Hispano, inglés, interpreter, interpreting, Julián, language, Latin, Latin American, martes, Martes 13, Pablo, Pablo Julián Davis, Spanish, superstition, traducción, traductor, translation, translator, Tuesday, week

2012-10-09 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation: Of “piropos”, praise, and pick-up lines

Dear readers,

An attractive young woman walks gracefully down the street, inspiring a gentleman standing at a storefront to call out, “¿Qué culpa tiene el árbol de haber nacido en el campo, y qué culpa mi corazón por amarte tanto?” [A tree stands on the ground where it was born, my heart by hopeless love is torn].

That rather old-fashioned scene features a free rendering into English of the sort of elegant, even poetic, compliment known in Spanish as a piropo (original meaning: a ruby or red garnet). This gallant form of praise  for  a  lady’s  charms,  though  scarcer  than  fifty or a hundred years   ago   on   the   streets   of   Zacatecas,   Ponce,  or Maracaibo (gentlemen’s remarks to ladies in the public thoroughfare now tending to the somewhat less  poetic),  still remains part of  everyday Hispanic/Latin American culture.

http://tinyurl.com/tuejanica2 offers some vintage piropos along with poetry on the subject and reflections on the waning, if not outright extinction, of the custom.

Translators  find  a  particular  challenge  and fascination  in  words  like  piropo  that name a concept either non-existent in the other language, or not central enough to the culture to have any simple means of expression. Dictionaries offer us either explanations that don’t exactly roll smoothly  off   the   tongue   (the Oxford Concise’s  “flirtatious/flattering  comment”),  or expressions that lose the spice and charm of the original (the Espasa-Calpe’s rather flat “compliment”).Some even use the still more pedestrian translation “line,” as in something a fellow might routinely use in a bar—likely far less poetic or gallant than what’s meant by  piropo.

Your thoughts, readers? Is there a good English equivalent for piropo—the word itself, or the custom it names?

¡Buenas palabras!

Copyright ©2012 Pablo J. Davis. Se reservan todos los derechos. All Rights Reserved. A version of this essay was first published, alongside its Spanish version, in La Prensa Latina, Memphis, Tennessee, on 19 August 2012.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", America, American, certified, compliment, cultura, culture, Davis, English, español, flirting, hispana, Hispanic, Hispano, inglés, Interfluency, Julián, Latin American, latina, Latino, latinoamericana, line, male-female, Pablo, pick-up, piropo, Spanish, traducción, traductor, translation, translator

2012-05-18 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Friday thought: Why “See you Monday” ≠ “Hasta el lunes”

All over the US on a Friday like today, millions of people are wishing co-workers a good weekend and saying “See you Monday.” What if you wanted to say it to a co-worker from Mexico, Colombia, or Puerto Rico—in Spanish?  Translating directly from English, you might say, “Nos vemos el lunes” (literally: We’ll see each other on Monday) or perhaps, a little more freely, “Hasta el lunes” (Until Monday).

But to most Spanish speakers, those phrases will sound a little threadbare.  Something is missing… But what?

Just three little words:  “Si Dios quiere.”  This is how a large proportion of Spanish speakers would utter the common end-of-workweek farewell: “Hasta el lunes, si Dios quiere.”  Si Dios quiere: If God so wishes, or, in more idiomatic English, God willing.

So why is this phrase so important?  Is Latin American and Spanish culture so much more deeply religious than that of the United States? Do most Spanish speakers live in constant fear of accident and illness? Or could it be that the phrase isn’t really that important? Perhaps it’s just a little remnant, a cultural tic whose meaning is lost. Perhaps it’s like saying “God bless you” when someone sneezes, a gesture without real import.

I suggest that it’s more than that… quite a bit more.  The key lies in the discomfort that most native Spanish speakers tend to feel when they hear the phrase uttered without those three little words. It’s hard to put that discomfort into words: perhaps it’s that the phrase sounds too self-assured, too smug… too proud. Overconfident. Perhaps even a little impious, a little blasphemous. Who knows what Monday will bring? Who knows what the future has in store? Keep in mind: this is almost never a conscious thought.  Rather, it’s a deeply held, almost entirely unconscious standpoint towards life.

A close relative of this phenomenon is found in the common conversational exchange of inquiring after one another’s well-being.  “¿Cómo estás?” (How are you?) is most frequently answered not simply with “Bien” (Fine) or “Bien, gracias” (Fine, thanks), or even “Bien, gracias ¿y tú?” (Fine, thanks, and you?)—but, rather, “Bien, gracias a Dios” (literally: Fine, thank God).

These phrases wouldn’t sound natural in most everyday English-language contexts.  In certain settings it might, such as a religious community.  There, something like, “Fine, praise God!” is not unusual.  If we think of older generations—perhaps our grandparents’ generation, or that of their parents—we may also remember hearing phrases like this in English. In rural and small-town settings, folk(sy) expressions like, “Lord willing and the creek don’t rise” are still fairly unremarkable.

In ordinary, spoken English, though, responding to “How are you?” with “Fine, thank God!” makes the asker wonder if the other person has just survived an auto accident, a serious illness, or some other ordeal. Try the thought experiment yourself: or better yet, do an actual social experiment and reply, “Fine, thank God!” to the next person who asks how you are doing. Watch that person’s face and you’ll very likely see surprise or puzzlement.

Ultimately, these three little words (“Si Dios quiere” and “Gracias a Dios”) suggest a lot about what it’s like to live in the culture that Spanish language expresses.  The feelings about the world, and the premises underlying those feelings, are different.  To those who have grown up bilingual, and carry in their bones the sensation of moving back and forth across cultural boundaries—what I call Interfluency, the name of my translation and cultural-training company—there are subtly, but unmistakably, different ways of being alive in the world on one or the other side of the boundary.

In English, particularly US English, there is a confident, even bold attitude towards the future and an expectation of success. In Spanish, by contrast, there is at least a gesture of humility, a small linguistic ceremony of respect in the face of life and its uncertainties.  If this attitude can be called religious, it certainly does not belong to any one church or denomination.  “God” may be thought of as the deity or simply as a way of talking about the unknowable.

For those interested in exploring these issues, I recommend Javier Villatoro’s lovely and perceptive essay, “Dios mediante: la percepción cultural del futuro en la lengua española”—of which I only became aware as I was finishing these lines.

More broadly, I would point readers to the wisdom in the Spanish master Miguel de Unamuno, and particularly in his Tragic Sense of Life (El sentimiento trágico de la vida, first published in English translation in 1921). For me, “Si Dios quiere” has something to do with the tragic sense—tragic not in any morbid or pessimistic way, but rather in a recognition of life’s uncertainties and human limitations.

Those uncertainties, those limitations somehow find little place in contemporary US English with its sleek surfaces and aerodynamic speed. But their recognition still breathes in the very pulse of Spanish, and to have grown up in that language is to feel that recognition.

“Si Dios quiere”—like the largely passé English God willing, the Portuguese (Spanish’s fraternal twin) Se Deus quiser, the Arabic Inshallah (whose direct descendant, “ojalá” is still deeply entrenched in contemporary Spanish), the Hebrew and Yiddish Halevai—can be seen, then, as bearing witness to a deeply rooted view of life.

That it’s more than a mere verbal formula, more than an empty gesture, is borne out by the unease most people of Latin American or Iberian birth or origins feel at the bare brashness of an unqualified “See you Monday!”

*   *   *

Thanks for visiting.  Your thoughts on what’s written here, whether of the ‘Amen, brother!’, the ’I agree in part, but I wonder if you’ve considered…’ or even the ‘You’re crazy!’ variety, are very welcome. Please comment, and if you find time spent at this blog worthwhile, please consider subscribing. Nos vemos pronto: See you again soon… si Dios quiere.

Pablo J. Davis, Ph.D., CT, received his graduate training in Latin American History at Columbia and Johns Hopkins Universities and a Certificate from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina; his undergraduate studies were at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is Principal and Owner of Interfluency Translation+Culture, delivering seamless, world-class translation and interpreting to the legal community and other professions, as well as innovative, interactive, and inspiring cultural-awareness training.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: American, comparative, confidence, cultura, culture, Dios, English, español, everyday, everyday culture, Friday, future, God, God willing, greetings, hispana, Hispanic, Hispano, inglés, intercultural, Interfluency, interpreter, interpreting, language, languages, Latin, Latin American, latina, Latino, optimism, phrases, Si Dios quiere, Spanish, translation, translator, US, weekends

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