{"id":647,"date":"2013-05-29T13:29:29","date_gmt":"2013-05-29T18:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interfluency.com\/?p=647"},"modified":"2021-02-21T17:21:37","modified_gmt":"2021-02-21T23:21:37","slug":"cia-and-see-ya-adventures-in-translating-abbreviations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interfluency.com\/en\/2013\/05\/29\/cia-and-see-ya-adventures-in-translating-abbreviations\/","title":{"rendered":"CIA and \u201cSEE-ya\u201d: Adventures in translating abbreviations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dear reader,<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_739\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\">The name of the agency is abbreviated, in English, as an initialism (each letter pronounced separately, &ldquo;C-I-A&rdquo;). In Spanish, the initialism is transformed into a true acronym, pronounced as if it were a word: &ldquo;SEE-ya&rdquo;.<\/div>\n<p>In an earlier column, we&nbsp;observed how&nbsp; abbreviations made up of initial letters (sometimes, initial syllables), can be divided into two subtypes: (i)&nbsp;<strong>acronyms<\/strong>&nbsp;like PIN or &nbsp;RAM, which are pronounced like words, and (ii)&nbsp;<strong>initialisms<\/strong>&nbsp;like ATM or NGO, pronounced letter-by-letter. These abbreviations present many curiosities and challenges to the translator. Here are just a few examples&hellip;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Where English uses the initialism &ldquo;UN&rdquo; for the United Nations, Spanish has<em>&ldquo;ONU&rdquo;<\/em>&nbsp;(pronounced &ldquo;OH-new&rdquo;), for&nbsp;<em>Organizaci&oacute;n de las Naciones Unidas.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>The birth of &ldquo;laser&rdquo; as an acronym for &ldquo;Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation&rdquo; was long forgotten in English by the time Spanish officially adopted&nbsp;<em>l&aacute;ser.<\/em>&nbsp; Likewise for &ldquo;radar&rdquo;, &ldquo;scuba&rdquo;, and &ldquo;MIDI&rdquo;.<\/li>\n<li>&ldquo;CIA&rdquo;, a famous initialism, is different. The agency&rsquo;s name has an official Spanish translation:&nbsp;<em>Agencia Central de Inteligencia,&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;but the Spanish abbreviation, oddly, is not&nbsp;<em>&ldquo;ACI&rdquo;<\/em>. Rather, Spanish long ago imported the initialism directly and made it an acronym:&nbsp;<em>CIA<\/em>&nbsp;(pronounced &ldquo;SEE-yah&rdquo;). An additional oddity is that the acronym is occasionally spelled&nbsp;<em>C&iacute;a,<\/em>&nbsp;which, with a period following, happens to be the Spanish abbreviation for<em>Compa&ntilde;&iacute;a<\/em>&nbsp;(Company)&mdash;and &ldquo;The Company&rdquo; is a fairly well-known nickname for that agency.<\/li>\n<li>Yet another situation is that of &ldquo;compact disc&rdquo;. This term has an accepted Spanish translation,&nbsp;<em>disco compacto<\/em>.&nbsp; As with &ldquo;CIA&rdquo;, though, the abbreviation is not&nbsp;<em>&ldquo;DC&rdquo;<\/em>&nbsp;(as you might expect) but&nbsp;<em>&ldquo;CD&rdquo;<\/em>, straight from English.&nbsp; Until about a decade ago, this was usually pronounced &ldquo;seh-DEH&rdquo; in the Hispanic world; but, more and more, Spanish speakers use English phonetics to say it: &ldquo;see-DEE&rdquo;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Much agility is needed to translate and interpret these terms. The circumstances of their birth are diverse&mdash;and so are the paths they take from one language to another.<\/p>\n<p><em>&iexcl;Buenas palabras!<br \/><\/em>Pablo<\/p>\n<p><em><em>Copyright&nbsp;<em>&copy;&nbsp;<\/em>2013 by Pablo Juli&aacute;n Davis. All rights reserved. A version of this essay was originally written for the 12-18 May 2013 edition of<\/em>&nbsp;La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee), as part of the regular bilingual column &ldquo;Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation&rdquo;. Pablo Juli&aacute;n Davis (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.interfluency.com\/\">www.interfluency.com<\/a>) is an ATA Certified Translator&nbsp;(ingl&eacute;s&gt;espa&ntilde;ol) and a Supreme Court of Tennessee Certified Interpreter&nbsp;(ingl&eacute;s&lt;&gt;espa&ntilde;ol) who also provides custom-designed cultural\/linguistic coaching and training.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear reader, The name of the agency is abbreviated, in English, as an initialism (each letter pronounced separately, &ldquo;C-I-A&rdquo;). In Spanish, the initialism is transformed into a true acronym, pronounced as if it were a word: &ldquo;SEE-ya&rdquo;. In an earlier column, we&nbsp;observed how&nbsp; abbreviations made up of initial letters (sometimes, initial syllables), can be divided [&hellip;]<\/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":[95,391,392,393,394,190,161,59,30,44,10,45,166,47,395,396,24,167,14,342,51,17,53,54,55,397,19,20],"class_list":{"0":"post-647","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-interflows-language-culture-blog","7":"tag-pablo-j-davis","8":"tag-abbreviations","9":"tag-abreviaturas","10":"tag-acronimos","11":"tag-acronyms","12":"tag-certificado","13":"tag-certified","14":"tag-cultura","15":"tag-culture","16":"tag-davis","17":"tag-english","18":"tag-espanol","19":"tag-idiomas","20":"tag-ingles","21":"tag-inicialismos","22":"tag-initialisms","23":"tag-language","24":"tag-lenguaje","25":"tag-memphis","26":"tag-memphis-translator","27":"tag-pablo","28":"tag-spanish","29":"tag-tennessee","30":"tag-traduccion","31":"tag-traductor","32":"tag-traductor-en-memphis","33":"tag-translation","34":"tag-translator","35":"entry"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>CIA and \u201cSEE-ya\u201d: Adventures in translating abbreviations - 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\/2013\/05\/29\/cia-and-see-ya-adventures-in-translating-abbreviations\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"CIA and \u201cSEE-ya\u201d: Adventures in translating abbreviations - Interfluency\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dear reader, The name of the agency is abbreviated, in English, as an initialism (each letter pronounced separately, &ldquo;C-I-A&rdquo;). In Spanish, the initialism is transformed into a true acronym, pronounced as if it were a word: &ldquo;SEE-ya&rdquo;. In an earlier column, we&nbsp;observed how&nbsp; abbreviations made up of initial letters (sometimes, initial syllables), can be divided [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/interfluency.com\/en\/2013\/05\/29\/cia-and-see-ya-adventures-in-translating-abbreviations\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Interfluency\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-05-29T18:29:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-02-21T23:21:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Pablo J. Davis\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Pablo J. 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