Pablo Davis

2016-11-06 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Grammar and the “president elect”

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

By the time these lines (written on Sunday) reach you, the election will be over—and all I can say is, I told you so. Which reminds me of the brilliant quip by St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Dizzy Dean who said, before the 1934 World Series against Detroit, “This Series is already won”—then added, “I just don´t know by which team.”

ballot-into-ballot-box So, as you read this, there will (presumably) be a president-elect. The term’s a bit odd: if a candidate is “elected,” why the form “elect”? (Spanish similarly has presidente electo where you might expect elegido.) The answer lies in the difference between “strong” and “weak” verbs in Germanic grammar, which is the main structure for how English works.

A weak verb forms the participle by adding an ending, typically “ed,” to the verb stem without changing the stem. Thus “bake” becomes “I had baked” and the participle can also act as an adjective: “baked chips.”

On the other hand, strong verbs like “seek,” “sink,” and “bind” form irregular participles, short and punchy: “sought,” “sunk,” and “bound.” So, in English, the verb “elect,” while normally weak, in the phrase “president elect” behaves as a strong verb.

In Spanish, the equivalent principle derived from Latin grammar refers not to verbs, but rather to participles, as strong or weak. Many verbs have both forms. Elegir (to elect or choose) yields me habían elegido (they had chosen me) in weak form, and presidente electo (president elect) in strong form, as an adjective. Habían freído las papas (they had fried the potatoes) but papas fritas (fried potatoes). Span. conquista and Engl. “conquest” both embody a strong form of verbs derived from Latin conquirere. Span. convencer gives convencido (convinced) but the strong form convicto (convicted); the English noun “convict” also derives from the strong form.

From “president elect” to “convict” in the same column—sadly, in 2016, regardless of who won, it doesn’t seem like such a big leap.

2015-02-17 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

So who is this Joe Blow, anyway?

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

What do you call someone whose identity you don’t know? What about someone who doesn’t exist? How do you refer to someone whose name you can’t quite remember? These and other, similar, sorts of linguistic situations, each subtly different from the others, are surprisingly common—and they’ve given rise to an amazing panoply of pseudo or quasi-names.

El nombre ficticio de "John Q. Public" es muy usado en EEUU en el ámbito publicitario y en el gubernamental.

The fictitious John Q. Public and his somewhat lesser-known sister (or perhaps spouse) Jane are commonly used in advertising and government communication.

You can say a selective employer “won’t hire just any Tom, Dick or Harry”—or “any Joe Blow” or “Joe Schmoe.” A Hispanic name that expresses ordinariness to the point of anonymity is Juan Pérez—akin to “John Smith.” In a somewhat more formal vein, advertising and government language often makes use of a fictitious “John Q. Public” and, somewhat less commonly, “Jane Q. Public.”

The heritage of Arabic, which medieval Spanish speakers lived cheek-to-jowl with for eight centuries (to A.D. 1492), gave the language such anonymous or “placeholder” names as Fulano (or Fulano de Tal), Zutano, and Mengano. Their sisters might be Fulana, Zutana, and Mengana. There are many others.

What if someone’s name is on the tip of your tongue? English has “What’s-his-name” or, even less elegantly, “What’s-his-face” or the potentially insulting “So-and-so.”

Coso in some Spanish-speaking countries can refer to someone in this situation (or when the thing you can’t quite remember is the name of an object—as in English “thing-a-ma-jig”). Fulanito and Fulanita can serve the same function for a person.

When you want to wash your hands of something, as in “Let George do it”, Argentine and Uruguayan Spanish offers a series of funny names: Que lo haga Magoya (Let Magoya do it). This imaginary sucker is also called Montoto, Mongo, or Mongo Aurelio.

These characters can reappear when you don’t believe a word someone’s saying: Andá a contarle a Magoya (Go tell it to Magoya). Or—and here the name’s not anonymous, but the phrase expresses the height of futility—Andá cantarle a Gardel (Go sing to Gardel), the greatest tango singer of all time. An English equivalent, popular from around the Spanish-American War to World War I, but still used: “Tell it to the Marines.”

Yet another situation where we come up with a quasi-name is when we prefer not to overtly identify someone, but speaker and listener are both well aware of who’s being discussed—indeed, this person may himself or herself be present: “You-know-who got up on the wrong side of bed today,” which in Spanish might go this way: Uno (or female Una) que yo sé se levantó con el pie izquierdo.

Finally, the reverse also happens: we use the name of a real person to designate a category of persons. Phrases like “The Lebron Jameses and the Kobe Bryants of the world” are much used in English, though not absent from Spanish: Los Lebron James y los Kobe Bryant del mundo.

Good words! / ¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is a Certified Translator (ATA/American Translators Association) eng>spa and a Certified Interpreter (Tennessee State Courts) eng<>spa, as well as a recognized trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and cultural competence. He has over 25 years experience in these fields. An earlier version of this column was written for the Feb. 22-28, 2015 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as part of his bilingual weekly column Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation/Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción.

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

Happy New Year, Feliz Año Nuevo…!

Click here for Spanish/Enlace para español

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.

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

Magna Carta at 798: what remains of this tower of human liberty?

Today marks an important anniversary; and exactly two years from today, we will reach an extraordinary chronological milestone: 800 years since the signing of Magna Carta.

Apart from Biblical matters, the commemorations of such ancient events is unknown to us. We’ve seen a bicentennial (1976, Declaration of Independence), quadricentennial (2007, founding of Virginia), and quincentennial (1992, Columbus’s landing).

The barons who forced King John to sign Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215 were fighting for what they saw as their rights and prerogatives as noblemen. They could not have known that the document would become immortal, serving over the centuries as a touchstone in the struggle for human liberty and constitutional government.

Magna Carta is three centuries older than the oldest of these!

Does anyone care? We should. To do otherwise is to toss part of our birthright on the trash-heap.

What is the document about? Strictly speaking, it was a peace treaty between English nobles in revolt against arbitrary royal power, and the monarch, John (“Bad King John,” to countless generations of English schoolchildren, in contrast with “Good Queen Bess”).

After their victory at Runnymede, the rebels forced John to sign a declaration of rights and liberties the king would be bound to respect.

Written in Latin, the Magna Charta Libertatum (Great Charter of Liberties) contained 63 articles, most famously the 39th:

“No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” The 40th article is often cited as well: “To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.”

The “freemen” referred to were, of course, English barons. Still, in that localized conflict in A.D. 1215 between two groups of the privileged, is the germ of constitutional law, the model of due process and the ultimate source of our Bill of Rights. Magna Carta establishes the bedrock principle that no one—not even the sovereign—is above the law.

It contains a great deal more, including the remarkable 61st article, establishing a committee of 25 barons charged with seeing to the faithful observance of the entire charter, and authorized to petition for redress—even to rise up against the king should sufficient remedy not be obtained. And a closely related (and almost entirely neglected) document, The Charter of the Forest (1217) recognizes the rights of ordinary people to a share in the commons, that is to resources essential to economic survival (at that time, such resources as access to water in streams, to wood for fuel, to forage for their animals).

History shows us that the rights fought for at Runnymede, and whose recognition was wrested from King John on the battlefield and at the negotiating table, would have to be fought for over and over again. Magna Carta may be immortal—a document and a human achievement for the ages—but the powerful have not accorded its principles perpetual respect. Other people at later times, and even in other places, have asserted them anew and sometimes they have won: the English Bill of Rights culminated one such struggle (1689); on these shores, the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Bill of Rights (1789) announced and culminated (respectively) another. And in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Eleanor Roosevelt and others consciously looked to Magna Carta for inspiration.

When the eight hundredth anniversary comes round, will Magna Carta be widely published? And the rest of the charter? Indeed, will the milestone even be noted? A survey of websites today on both what passes for Left and Right in US politics shows no mention of the anniversary.

Most crucially, will we debate whether the rights enshrined in Magna Carta still stand? In the US, the groundwork has been laid for a state of exception by reason of a “war” vaguely defined, against no specific enemy, and of quasi-perpetual duration. A Republican president launched, and his Democratic successor has deepened, the practice of perpetual imprisonment without charge, and even of summary execution, as legitimate presidential powers.

Magna Carta’s 800th anniversary is likely to be an occasion for empty grandiloquence. What it can and should be, rather, is a moment for genuine questioning of the exercise of power in a constitutional republic, for an honest stock-taking of what is left of the ancestral liberties that the people must not allow to slip away out of some combination of apathy, distractedness, ignorance, and fear.

Copyright © 2013 by Pablo Julián Davis. All rights reserved. An earlier version of this essay was originally written for the June 16-22, 2013 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee), as part of the bilingual column, A Mi Modo de Ver/The Way I See It. 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. He holds the Doctorate in History from The Johns Hopkins University.

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.

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).

2013-04-15 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

After the meal, the lovely (and untranslatable?) ‘sobremesa’

Dear reader,

Imagine a tasty and pleasant meal shared with friends, or at a family reunion. Dessert is finished. Now comes coffee, or perhaps cordials… maybe some other confection… and more coffee… And all the while, the conversation rolls on, the stories, the jokes.

Spanish has a term for it: la sobremesa, when the talk and the laughter are just more food and drink.

After the meal, that long session of coffee, or tea, or wine, or dessert, or a combination of these… but conversation as the main dish. It’s the ‘sobremesa’ so important in Spanish/Latin American culture… and virtually untranslatable into English.

How to translate this lovely, expressive word into English?

That’s quite a puzzle, because sobremesa simply has no exact equivalent in English—not even a fairly close one.

The attempts at translation we’ve seen (“table talk,” “after-dinner conversation,” and “sitting on after a meal,” among others) describe it, barely. And, really, la sobremesa is more than any of those things!

But, phrases like these may be the best we have. Sometimes that’s how we translate, by describing, even if the result is inexact and clumsy.

At other times, the foreign word is used directly. It typically happens when the translator has the need, or luxury, of emphasizing how different the other culture is: this is the case of many novels and anthropological accounts.

It’s an intriguing question, why one language lacks a word for something another names. Clearly, English speakers have “sobremesas,” though likely less frequent and less lengthy. Our sense is that it doesn’t quite have enough importance, in this culture, to have “rated” being given a name.

¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

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).

2013-03-26 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Translation and interpreting: two different professions

Dear reader,

Someone who asks, “Could you translate what that man is saying?” is understood. But the request is really to “interpret”.

The famed School of Translators of Toledo, 16th century

A translator converts the sense of a text from the language in which it’s written or printed, into another language; interpreters do something equivalent, but far from identical, with spoken language.

“Translate” comes from Latin: trans- (across, from one side to the other) and latus (carried); the Spanish (and numerous other languages’) equivalent, traducir, has a different Latin origin using ducere (to guide or lead).

The derivation of “interpret” is quite different: inter(between) and pret (business, negotiation, price), thus, an intermediary. A small but key point: the correct noun for the activity is “interpreting” (“interpretation” has other meanings that can cause confusion).

Translator and interpreter: two distinct professions, and not all practitioners of the one can do the other well. Some differences:

* Translation is usually unidirectional (into the translator’s native language), solitary, primarily intellectual-cognitive, takes much time but is not done in “real time”.

* Interpreting goes in both linguistic directions, is inherently social or public, less consciously cognitive than intuitive, must be done almost instantaneously and in the flow of the spoken language: a kind of performance.

Both are difficult, requiring much knowledge, experience, subtlety, and judgment.

As to the relationship with time, the translator is something like a painter or sculptor, the interpreter like an actor or dancer.

¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

Copyright ©2013 by Pablo Julián Davis. All rights reserved. This essay was originally written for the 31 March 2013 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as part of the weekly bilingual column, “Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”.

2013-02-04 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Did you see the Cuervos win Super Tazón XLVII?

Dear reader,

For the Spanish-speaking world, the game in which the champion of a league or tournament is decided is known as la final.

In the United States, where P.R. is an art and a science, baseball since 1901 has had its “World Series”, a somewhat immodest name.

And for nearly a half-century now, the NFL’s final game has been known as the Super Bowl. Further marketing brilliance: numbering them with roman numerals: last Sunday’s edition was Super Bowl XLVII… letters that announce an event of historical, or imperial, dimensions.

“Bowl” originally meant just a stadium (first, apparently, was Yale’s), due to the hemispheric, amphitheater shape.

Beginning in 1923, the term names a championship game, the Rose Bowl. The Sugar Bowl and Cotton Bowl followed, and dozens more; and in the ‘60s, the NFL’s Super Bowl. (Curiously, the first two Super Bowls, in which the Green Bay Packers defeated first the Kansas City Chiefs and then the Oakland Raiders, were not called by that name; the term “Super Bowl,” and the corresponding roman numerals, were applied retroactively in 1969, the year the New York Jets shocked the sports world by defeating the mighty and heavily-favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.)

Spanish-language contact with American football is recent; only in the ‘80s did Super Tazón come into use: tazón,augmentative of taza (cup), refers to a deep plate or bowl. But Super Tazón is not nearly as widely used in Spanish as the direct calque from English, “Super Bowl”, with its prestige and powerful connotations.

Both Super Bowl teams’ names have a Hispanic connection: the Ravens (Cuervos), allusion to Edgar Allan Poe, who deeply influenced Spanish American literature, and the Forty-Niners (almost never translated into Spanish), reference to the Gold Rush that descended on California after Guadalupe Hidalgo, the treaty that ended the US-Mexican War.

¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

Copyright 2013 by Pablo Julián Davis. All Rights Reserved. This essay was originally written for the Feb. 10-16 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee), as part of the weekly bilingual column “Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción/Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”. Pablo Julián Davis (www.interfluency.com) is an ATA Certified Translator (English>Spanish) and a Supreme Court of Tennessee Certified Court Interpreter for Spanish and English.

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Grammar and the “president elect”

So who is this Joe Blow, anyway?

Happy New Year, Feliz Año Nuevo…!

Magna Carta at 798: what remains of this tower of human liberty?

Translating “bird” into Spanish

How we “save a file” in Spanish

After the meal, the lovely (and untranslatable?) ‘sobremesa’

How do you translate a sneeze… or a kiss?

Translation and interpreting: two different professions

Did you see the Cuervos win Super Tazón XLVII?

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