quizzing yourself

There's really no way of getting around studying lists to improve your handle on obscure terms (I have spent far too many hours of my life studying Sp/En lists of obscure legal terminology). With web 2.0 there are at least now new ways of doing flashcards. In the past I've recommended quizlet. Now there's also verbalearn - that you can also download onto your ipod/etc. Haven't tried the latter, but seems worth a go if you're studying for a certification exam (and yes, I do think it's worth working your way up the interpretation certifications ladder, even if you're mostly a movement interpreter - but of course, I did work my way up the ladder and then jumped onto the much longer ladder of graduate school, so who am I to say). (I added both of these to the good tools sidebar section)

more useful tools

I put four new sites in the tools section on the sidebar

For pronunciation there was already forvo, which is nice because people all around the world add to it (you can to), but I added howjsay because I've found it has more of the words I'm looking for (such as amortize). It has a lovely British accent in English.

For strange expression and idioms in English try what does that mean?
for example: "if wishes were horses this beggar would ride"

For mysterious acronyms try this finder

and someone worked to make google translator prettier and easier to use as an online bilingual (or lotsa lingual at once if you like) dictionary - shame they picked the horrible name nice translator

tipping point

tipping point: punto crítico, momento clave del cambio

the latter I think works for when this term is used in marketing (as in when so many people have ipods, suddenly everyone has them), and the former for the climate crisis, as in what may well happen in 96 months (see onehundredmonths.org)

according to wikipedia: The tipping point in the study of the Earth's changing climate is the point at which change due to human activity brings about sufficient new processes in nature to make any human reversal of the change impossible.

punto limite and punto de inflexion both seem to mean different things, mathematically.

climate crisis

climate crisis: crisis del clima

love this video - I think it does a great job of breaking it down and explaining the tipping point (punto limite? other suggestions?). anyone want to help translate it into Spanish? if you can do the whole thing, or just part, email Leo@wakeupfreakout.org


Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

creepy

creepy: hormigueante

creepy, according to wiktionary:

1. producing an uneasy fearful sensation, as of things crawling over one's skin
2. strangely repulsive

my friend Jonathan suggested the dictionary site Tomisimo, which came up with hormigueante. good! much better than what word reference came up with (espeluznante)

(thanks to the fab beehive collective for the image)

cheesy

cheesy: cursi

cheesy, according to the wiktionary = of poor quality through being overdramatic, excessively emotional or clichéd

cursi, por la RAE = Se dice de un artista o de un escritor, o de sus obras, cuando en vano pretenden mostrar refinamiento expresivo o sentimientos elevados.

Pueblos Originarios

Pueblos Originarios: First Peoples

A term that I had rarely heard in English for indigenous peoples (note the importance of the s and the end of peoples) until I moved to Canada, where it is common. It is slowly becoming more common in the U.S. and in Spanish.

The struggle of First Peoples in Colombia is still very very hot. Amazingly, after pulling together 30,000 people for a several day march, they were stood up by president Uribe on Sunday, and continue to face repression like the bullets shot straight at the crowd shown in the video below. If you're a U.S. citizen please support this brave struggle with this quick click action organized by the Lutherans to write a letter to the ambassador. Or if you haven't done the witness for peace quick click to the State Department, please do that one instead. Good updates on the situation here.

bastón de mando

bastón de mando: (ceremonial) staff of authority



Kudos to CNN for showing this clip of activist video - it has forced Colombia's president Uribe to sit down and talk with indigenous protesters. Here's hoping something comes of that. And much strength to the brave protesters, especially those taking video like this! They are still facing repression, you can take a quick click minute to support them here. Thanks.

waterboarding

waterboarding = el 'submarino'; asfixia "simulada" (?!) con agua

The mainstream media claims that it is "simulated", but I personally would not include that word in the definition at all - if you must include it, certainly put in the scare quotes.

concientizar

concientizar: raise awareness

segun wiktionary (check out their conjugation table): provocar que alguien tome conciencia de algo.

relatedly, la conciencia publica is public awareness.

como se ve en la foto, there are lots of creative ways to do it.

desplazado

desplazado: displaced person; person who has been displaced (ie. forced to flee their home, land and community)

the latter takes longer to say if you're doing simultaneous, but emphasizes the person before their status


Errante Diamante from B a s t a r d i l l a on Vimeo.

solidaridad

solidarity: solidaridad

Yes, yes, this one is obvious, but I'd like to point you to a good tactic when working on translations - comparing definitions like this one in the English and in the Spanish versions of wikipedia. It's useful and fun to see how different they are, even for cognates like this one. A good reminder of how words and language are always exist as part of larger social fabric - and as much as we try to build bridges through translation, there are always gaps to mind.

asistencialismo

asistencialismo: charity

On proz I found cult of dependency, and welfarism - neither are quite it, and I don't think would be well understood by most English speaking audiences. Charity will work in most contexts I think, though you may have to add charity attitude or mentality, etc.. Really, it's more like "hand-out-ism" - but I can't quite imagine that will catch on!

cognitariado

cognitariado: cognitariat

(image from the fab phdcomics)

This is a term invented by Franco Berardi, alias Bifo¸quien describe esta "clase virtual" en su libro La fábrica de la infelicidad, subtitulado Nuevas formas de trabajo y movimiento global.
En este articulo Casado Da Rocha cita a Bifo definiendo el cognitariado como: "trabajo cognitivo dotado de un cuerpo social y carnal, que es sometido conscientemente o no al proceso de producción de valor y de mercancía semiótica, que puede ser sometido a explotación y a estrés, que puede sufrir privación afectiva, que puede caer en el pánico, que incluso puede ser violentado y muerto. La clase virtual ha descubierto un cuerpo y una condición social. Por eso ha dejado de sentirse clase virtual y ha empezado a sentirse cognitariado." (11)

Sigue Casado Da Rocha diciendo "Claro que el trabajo siempre es cognitivo. Como dice Bifo, hasta la producción de una flecha de piedra por parte del hombre de Neanderthal conlleva el empleo de una inteligencia. Pero el cognitariado, presente o futuro, se caracteriza por "un empleo exclusivo de la inteligencia, excluyendo la manipulación física directa de la materia." (97)"

Here's an interview with Bifo in English, and another, in both he defines the concept more at length.

more tools

more online tools for translators - with descriptions taken directly from a list posted at
Dumb Little Man


• Dictionary.com
  Dictionary.com is probably the most common and most comprehensive of all the dictionary tools available. Apart from giving the word meanings and pronunciation, it also provides various tools (like the dictionary.com toolbar), RSS feeds to improve vocabulary and word explorer podcasts.
  


• Merriam-Webstar Online
  Merriam-Webstar Online is a huge online resource for learning and improving your English. It provides dictionary and thesaurus which includes spanish-english and medical dictionaries. You can easily look up words and listen to their pronunciation. Further it provides other resources like crosswords and word games. It also has a visual dictionary which combines words with images.


• MetaGlossary
  MetaGlossary.com approaches the task of finding meanings of words in a different way. It aggregates various links on the web which provide an explanation to the term and shows the results. Hence it does the job of pulling definitions of the word from the entire web.


• Thsrs
  Thsrs helps you to get shorter synonyms of long words. Although it's not dead accurate but still can be useful at times. It also provides a browser plug-in to easily look up shorter synonyms of words with a right click.


• Wordsmith
  Wordsmith is a nice resource for new words, especially its ' A Word A Day ' newsletter, which is immensely popular and delivers new words everyday to your email inbox.
• 
  Ninjawords
  
• Ninjawords, like Definr, claims to be a very fast dictionary. Although it doesn't show words as you type like Definr but is certainly very fast in displaying the meanings and synonyms once you hit enter. It also has a random tab which can be used to play around and learn new words.


• Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus
  Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus is a free-to-try visual tool which shows related words in an interactive map and helps you to easily find their meanings and listen to their pronunciation.


• AskOxford
  AskOxford is the online version of the famous dictionary by the Oxford University press. It's comprehensive without a doubt and includes various other vocabulary resources and a quotations dictionary.


• Alpha Dictionary
Alpha Dictionary doesn't directly show you the meaning of a word. Instead it searches all the available online dictionaries (most of them) and displays the results in the form of links to the meaning of that word in those dictionaries. So choose your favorite dictionary (if at all you have one) and click on the corresponding link to view its meaning.

beachhead

beachhead: cabeza de playa

Well I for one wouldn't have guessed this would be a literal translation, but what do you know - it is. And yes, I agree with a recent El Tiempo editorial that "El presidente Uribe ha aceptado que Colombia se convierta en la única cabeza de playa que le queda a Estados Unidos en el subcontinente americano."

token

token: cuota

I've often wondered how to say token, you know, the one woman on the panel, the one person of color, the one youth - not that aiming for diversity in our organizations is meaningless, but it can be counter productive when it turns into a de rigueur nod that doesn't question the underlying system of domination that makes it more likely that the panel will be a bunch of older white guys. Anyways, in Colombia the only Afro-Colombian in the cabinet is Paula Marcela Moreno, the Minister of Culture. She was recently asked in an El Tiempo article if 'se siente cuota de los democratas' (as in, was she appointed to appease US Congressional Democrats concerns about racism in Colombia and the far greater impact of the conflict on Afro-Colombians). Her answer was 'yo me siento cuota de Dios'. Odd.

jaque

jaque: check

By now you must have heard of the spectacular rescue of Ingrid Betancourt, the three U.S. mercenaries (no, I don't think they should have been kidnapped, but by definition that's what they were, I consider 'defense contractor' a euphemism), and 11 military men. Of course I'm very glad they're out, but the timing of it was quite something. Coincidence that it came right after a particularly difficult week for Uribe? Last week the Yidispolitica scandal got blazing hot as the Supreme Court confirmed that indeed the Congressional vote that allowed him to run for a second term, that passed by one vote, was rigged and Yidis sold her vote. As in, though he won the second election, it was not legally held. And then there's the 'only in Colombia' bizarre Tasmania scandal. A former paramilitary thug named Tasmania was before saying that the supreme court was trying to get him to falsely accuse Uribe, but now he says that Uribe's men (his cousin Mario Uribe actually, who is in jail for parapolitics) got him to say that. If you can follow all of that back and forth, which I can't really. At any rate, it was looking hairy there for a few days for ol' Alvaro - but what do you know, now after this rescue he's the big hero. Since the infiltrators who pulled off the rescue had been in there for years, presumably Uribe called the timing. In case you had any doubts about what an amazing chess player the man is, he called it Operacion Jaque. And he took the Queen.

from Diccionario Espasa:
me dio jaque, he put me in check
tener/traer en jaque, to bother, worry
and of course check mate is jaque mate

global village

global village: aldea global

Segun wikipedia, "es un término posiblemente acuñado por el sociólogo canadiense Marshall McLuhan. Este concepto se refiere a la idea de que, debido a la velocidad de las comunicaciones, toda la sociedad humana comenzaría a transformarse y su estilo de vida se volvería similar al de una aldea. Debido al progreso tecnológico todos los habitantes del planeta empezarían a conocerse unos a otros y a comunicarse de manera instantánea y directa."

Of course lots of people don't have that kind of access. As one of my favorite geographers, Cindi Katz, argues, while the world is getting smaller for some, it's becoming much larger for others (see the recent hardening of Fortress Europe).

But really I blogged this term because I'm still mulling over vereda. Thanks to all who have commented on that post. My current favorite is rural township, but I'd love more thoughts. Anyways, when I saw aldea global in the paper the other day it struck me that it's odd that aldea seems to only get used figuratively in Colombia.

miembra

miembra: member

yes, yes, I know, the Real Academia does not recognize this as a real word. and what do you know, there are hardly any women in the RAE. but doesn't it seem ridiculous to you to interpret for a large women's organization and have to call them all miembros? the joys of patriarchal language. well apparently I'm not the only one who'se annoyed. recently the Spanish Minister of Equality (how cool is it that there's a ministry like that?) used 'miembros y miembras' in a speech and set off a whole discussion about this word in Spain.

how we say the world shapes how we see the world shapes how we can be in the world.

online tools

The Firefox search bar is a wonderful thing. I use Firefox because of the beauty of open source, but I also love it for making amazing translation tools easy to use. The search I use most is Wordreference. I set up a separate one for Sp>En and one for En>Sp. If you don't already have it you also must must set one up for the all powerful RAE. There's the obvious dictionary.com (actually, to get there in firefox you can just type dict and the word in the address bar), and thesaurus.com. There's also definr. For fun I like the urban dictionary. What I've given you so far are links to the main sites for these pages. Some of these, like wordreference (at the very bottom of a page once you look up a word), have quick links on their pages for adding it to your firefox search bar. The RAE search is here (huge kudos to the designer). For others go here and search for them under all add-ons (lots of other cool ones to get while you're there).

Not in the search bar but also cool: Visuwords graphs a word's relationship to other words. The visual dictionary is good for learning terminology for tests (in theory these types of dictionaries are also good for when you know what it looks like and not what it's called - though I've never had much luck using them that way). If, like me, you still wonder if you want to lie or lay down, check out confusing words. And for pronunciation dudas try the cool collective project of forvo.

Procurador General

Procurador General: Inspector General; Attorney General

I've usually seen Procurador General rendered as Attorney General, but on Colombia Reports I recently saw it as Inspector General. It got me to thinking. The mission of at least the Colombian procuraduría does seem more in line with the definition of an Inspector General that that of an Attorney General. Thoughts? Either way the procuraduría would be the Office of the ... And as if you needed one more sign of just how corrupt the Uribe administration is, the brother of the procurador was recently arrested.

wildcat strike

wildcat strike: huelga loca (Col)


A wildcat strike is a walkout that is not authorized (or supported) by union leadership. Often definitions say that for it to be wildcat it has to happen during a valid contract - but workers often claim that management or union leadership has broken the contract. I would also argue that if workers walk out after a contract has expired, but without elected leadership support, it would be wildcat. At any rate, in the US, under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), federal courts have held that wildcat strikes are illegal and that employers may fire workers participating in them. Some might argue wildcat is a derogatory term, though I think it's a fantastic fierce image. This Spanish version is more obviously derogatory. Anyone know better renditions?

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.