{"id":513,"date":"2011-12-13T02:30:06","date_gmt":"2011-12-13T08:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interfluency.com\/?p=513"},"modified":"2021-02-25T06:18:42","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T12:18:42","slug":"when-does-tuesday-equal-friday-more-adventures-in-translating-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interfluency.com\/en\/2011\/12\/13\/when-does-tuesday-equal-friday-more-adventures-in-translating-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"When does Tuesday=Friday? More adventures in translating culture!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine you\u2019re\u00a0translating<\/a>\u00a0a document, from English into Spanish. Say it\u2019s a letter,\u00a0dated Tuesday, December 13, 2011 (that\u2019s today).\u00a0 How do you\u00a0translate<\/a>\u00a0that into Spanish? Well, that\u2019s not too difficult: you\u2019d render it as \u2018martes, 13 diciembre 2011\u2032, or perhaps \u2018martes, 13 de diciembre de 2011\u2032.<\/p>\n

Martes 13, Tuesday the 13th: a combination of day and date that run afoul of\u00a0widely-held popular superstition in the Spanish-speaking world.<\/p>\n

(Wall calendar for January 1931, a month with a \u2018martes 13\u2032 \u2013 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\u00a0 Pampa have adorned wall calendars in Argentina for\u00a0the better part of a century.)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The bad luck commonly held to attach to \u2018martes 13\u2032 actually comes in a double dose. To\u00a0the triskadekafobia (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.\u00a0Tuesday aversion\u00a0is\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0common in the English-speaking world (though in the cycle of the work week, it\u2019s certainly not many\u00a0people\u2019s favorite day).\u00a0Think of the nursery rhyme foretelling a child\u2019s fortune from the day of its birth (\u201cTuesday\u2019s child is full of grace\u2026\u201d), or old Solomon Grundy who was\u00a0\u201dchristened on Tuesday\u201d.<\/p>\n

In Spanish, though,\u00a0the name for the second day following the Christian Sabbath is\u00a0martes<\/em>, Mars\u2019s Day.\u00a0 Around this deity, most commonly known\u00a0as the Roman god of war (equivalent to the Greeks\u2019\u00a0Ares), 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\u00a0Venus did so), but perhaps more often feared. Herein lies at least part of the reason why Tuesday\u2019s stock is so low in Hispanic-Latin American culture. \u201cD\u00eda martes,\u201d goes the well-known folk saying reflecting this, \u201cno te cases ni te embarques\u201d [On Tuesday, marry not nor set sail].<\/p>\n

So, thinking of all these associations, let\u2019s go back to our little\u00a0translation<\/a>\u00a0problem. Only now, let\u2019s imagine the year is not 2011 but rather 1980, and what we need to \u2018move across\u2019 (the original, physical meaning of \u2018translate<\/a>\u2018) from English to Spanish is not the date of a letter but the title of a movie. Specifically, director Sean Cunningham\u2019s\u00a0newly-released horror flick\u00a0Friday the 13th\u00a0<\/em>(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?).<\/p>\n

With strict \u2018dictionary accuracy\u2019, we could release the film under the title\u00a0Viernes 13<\/em>.\u00a0 But to tap into\u00a0the deeper resonances within\u00a0Hispanic\/Latin American\u00a0culture<\/a>, maybe we would better off shifting\u00a0the day of the week to Tuesday and rendering the title\u00a0as\u00a0Martes 13<\/em>.\u00a0 And\u00a0that\u2019s exactly what happened<\/a>\u00a0in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, and other countries of the Spanish-speaking world. However,\u00a0the direct or \u2018dictionary\u2019 translation was used in still other countries<\/a>, including Mexico and Spain.<\/p>\n

One result of this convoluted set of circumstances:\u00a0the association of Friday the 13th with bad luck, not native to Hispanic\/Latin American culture, has to some extent been \u2018imported\u2019 from the English-speaking world\u2014due to the power of what is often called\u00a0popular<\/em>, and might more accurately be termed\u00a0commercial<\/em>, culture.<\/p>\n

And, let us not forget, it\u2019s due also to the influence of an often overlooked group of\u00a0\u2018unacknowledged legislators\u2019<\/a>: members of the\u00a0translators\u2019 profession<\/a>, whose decisions can have a significant impact on human affairs. What\u2019s at stake is clearer when we think of the texts of laws and treaties, or the way that a statesman\u2019s words are translated in a tense international negotiation. But even in this seemingly trivial example of a movie title, there are \u2018real world\u2019 implications. People\u2019s likelihood of\u00a0making certain personal or economic decisions\u2014travel,\u00a0a purchase, an apartment rental\u2014is influenced by beliefs regarding numbers, dates, days of the week.<\/p>\n

More adventures in the world of\u00a0translation<\/a>, this\u00a0science, craft, and art all at the same time!\u00a0And never more challenging than when\u00a0cultural phenomena<\/a>\u00a0are what we\u2019re translating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine you\u2019re\u00a0translating\u00a0a document, from English into Spanish. Say it\u2019s a letter,\u00a0dated Tuesday, December 13, 2011 (that\u2019s today).\u00a0 How do you\u00a0translate\u00a0that into Spanish? Well, that\u2019s not too difficult: you\u2019d render it as \u2018martes, 13 diciembre 2011\u2032, or perhaps \u2018martes, 13 de diciembre de 2011\u2032. Martes 13, Tuesday the 13th: a combination of day and date that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[29,30,44,10,11,45,46,36,47,48,49,50,39,14,51,52,17,18,53,54,55,19,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-interflows-language-culture-blog","7":"tag-cultural","8":"tag-culture","9":"tag-davis","10":"tag-english","11":"tag-english-spanish","12":"tag-espanol","13":"tag-folk","14":"tag-hispanic","15":"tag-ingles","16":"tag-julian","17":"tag-latin","18":"tag-latin-american","19":"tag-latino","20":"tag-memphis","21":"tag-pablo","22":"tag-pablo-julian-davis","23":"tag-spanish","24":"tag-spanish-english","25":"tag-tennessee","26":"tag-traduccion","27":"tag-traductor","28":"tag-translation","29":"tag-translators","30":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\nWhen does Tuesday=Friday? More adventures in translating culture! - Interfluency<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/interfluency.com\/en\/2011\/12\/13\/when-does-tuesday-equal-friday-more-adventures-in-translating-culture\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When does Tuesday=Friday? More adventures in translating culture! - Interfluency\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Imagine you\u2019re\u00a0translating\u00a0a document, from English into Spanish. Say it\u2019s a letter,\u00a0dated Tuesday, December 13, 2011 (that\u2019s today).\u00a0 How do you\u00a0translate\u00a0that into Spanish? Well, that\u2019s not too difficult: you\u2019d render it as \u2018martes, 13 diciembre 2011\u2032, or perhaps \u2018martes, 13 de diciembre de 2011\u2032. 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