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latinoamericana

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

2012-10-09 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

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