Wednesday, May 28, 2008

getting these terms in your email

I used to have a "sign up for email updates" box from blogarithm on this page. I recently changed it to a feed burner service because blogarithm has been bought out. If you were getting updates from blogarithm you should keep getting them though. Or you could ditch blogarithm like I did and sign up again with the new box on the site if you want a cleaner email - the ones from feed burner look much nicer. Or you could switch over to a reader. I used to keep up on my favorite blogs through blogarithm but have shifted over completely to reading them on google reader, which I find much faster and easier.

señalado

señalado: singled out, fingered (better options?)



No, this great video doesn't use this term, but a friend who is helping the fabulous ACA media team (who did the above video) to subtitle another video of theirs asked for help with it and I've been struggling with the term. The use here is señalado as in when someone (often a demobilized guerilla or paramilitary) says oh so and so used to work with us (which is often not true). These are the best I came up with. Any other suggestions?

ACA has a ton of other great documentaries about Colombia up on youtube here. Certainly not mainstream media.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

mainstream media

mainstream media: medios dominantes de comunicación

This rendition caught my eye in the article Traducción y compromiso by Manuel Talens at rebelion.org. He actually renders it as medios dominantes globales but I think they can be medios dominantes in a local context without being globales, though more and more of course they are indeed tied to global conglomerates. El Tiempo, the "leading" newspaper of Colombia, was recently bought by the Planeta group, for example.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

the belly of the beast

the belly of the beast: las entrañas del monstruo; el corazon del monstruo; las entrañas de la bestia

I hear corazon far more in social justice contexts in Colombia. why in English it would be belly and Spanish heart is an interesting question, no? digestion vs love. or lack thereof. but as Jon points out in the comments, for Martí it was entrañas - and of the three, that first combo has the higher googlage. thanks Jon!

Monday, May 12, 2008

an injury to one is an injury to all

an injury to one is an injury to all: un daño contra uno es un daño contra todos

This famous IWW (wobbly) saying is widely used throughout the North American labor (or if you're Canadian - labour) movement. Unions in Latin America widely use the term 'agravio' for this broader sense of injury, so I used to render this as un agravio contra uno ... but really, are folks with limited literacy going to understand that? and does it have a good ring when you shout it to a crowd? not so much. my next try was lo que perjudica a uno perjudica a todos. more understandable. still not very shoutable. and kind of changes the meaning a wee bit, no? so when my friend Jeremy asked about this one, I went hunting for new options on proz. Thanks to David for this one. really, rather obvious. sometimes I make things more complicated than they need to be. but the simple part? yes, let us keep widening the 'all' in an injury to all, and make our solidarity more international.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

espantabobos

espantabobos: drizzle

not really a social justice term, but one of my favorite expressions - and wow, wouldn't it be bad news if this came up in some sticky conflict context and you didn't know what it meant and rendered it literally? This morning there was a constant espantabobos, pero como no somos bobos, sino que mas bien de Seattle, salimos de Bogotá de todas formas - y alcanzamos a ver cantidades de frailejones en el páramo. lindisimo. In my family we have a similar term in English, but for a different phenomena. A "sucker hole" is that little patch of blue in a grey sky that makes you think that it's worth going out on a hike, that surely the sun will come. ha. sucker.