primera linea: front line vs. first line

I have been seeing a lot of use of the false cognate of "first line" in coverage of the general strike in Colombia. I actually do like that mistranslation because in English it sounds new and different and does not have the military baggage of the term frontline - but really the term in English is frontline. The other advantage of using this neologism of first line is that now Colombians have created fabulous 'second lines' of musicians and other groups - though some are calling themselves different types of 'first lines,' such as the legal first line, academic first line, etc). But I wonder how much is lost by not using the term English speakers are used to hearing vs what is gained by creating this false cognate neologism.

settler colonialism: colonialidad de asentamiento

I've heard colonialidad de colonos, but colonos and colonias mean totally different things, so that doesn't really work - a point made by Sofia Zaragocín at this panel session entitled 'Sentir-pensar la traducción: geopolitics of knowledge and south-north dialogues', which was part of the fabulous Segundo Encuentro Latinoamericano de Movimientos Socioespaciales y Socioterritoriales (all of the videos of which are on youtube).

 

This rendition, colonialismo de asentamiento, is what Pilar Riaño uses. Suena raro, but that's probably better! Hopefully it will help listeners realize that it's something odd, and not what they're used to thinking of necessarily since settler colonialism was not the main model in Latin America. 

 

We had a great discussion about this term in this wonderful twitter thread, it's well worth reading the various strands of it (no twitter account required).

sousveillance: sousveillance (vigilancia inversa)

I was reminded of this term by the anti-racism daily, an email I appreciate receiving and recommend. In it they describe sousveillance as "people capturing stories with their own devices (usually smartphones) that will likely counter or disprove the facts presented by those with more power and privilege (Nieman Lab)." The article they link to there has another great description: "Surveillance is looking from on high. It’s what security cameras and dash cams and body cams do, it’s what dash cams and body cams do, and blue light security cameras. It’s what the “authoritative gaze” is, but sousveillance is quite different. It’s looking from below, and it’s attempting to counter an official report that may have been lies." 

I thought at first that the translation might be contravigilancia - but I think that's actually counter-surveillance, which is to say efforts to prevent surveillance from above, rather than doing your own surveillance from below. So I did one of my favorite tricks, I went to the wikipedia entry in English and then followed the link on the left to the Spanish entry and, what do you know, the French word is also imported into Spanish. But for those who don't know it (most of us probably) you could first render it as vigilancia inversa.

Protester's videos of police terror in Colombia have been so important in the last few weeks, and offered powerful sousveillance - yet I find myself less and less able to watch the videos of police terror and torture, and find them more and more traumatizing, so not including one here. Still, grateful for the citizen journalists doing this important sousveillance. If you are on twitter please follow me @spaceforpeace where I'm tweeting regularly about the protests (mostly without the difficult videos).

defensoría (Col): human rights ombuds (rather than gendered ombudsman)

I appreciated a recent article by Erika Moreno about the human rights ombuds in Colombia, and am shamelessly reposting it entirely below because it is behind a paywall. But I was surprised that she used the male gendered term ombudsman. For a while I was using ombudsperson, but more and more now in the US the term ombuds seems to be used instead. It also works better when referring to an entire office and not just the one person heading it. In the US we are used to newspapers and universities having an ombuds. I appreciated the definition given by Oregon State: "An Ombuds is someone who helps people to informally resolve conflict by facilitating communication to help all parties reach mutually satisfactory solutions." Because English speakers will be used to those sorts of broader uses of the term, it seems important to add the term human rights when rendering defensoría, even if it gets left off in Spanish. If I were doing simultaneous interpreting I might add it on the first few times and then start dropping it. I'll note that wikipedia, in their interesting article on ombuds offices around the world, renders the full term, defensoría del pueblo, as the people's defender. In a written translation you might first render it as that, and then add on human rights ombuds as a term that will actually mean more to the reader. 

Colombia’s protesters want human rights reforms. The country’s human rights agency may not be much help

Elected officials appoint its leadership and fund the budget, leaving this agency with limited power

Protesters and police face off in Bogota, Colombia, on Tuesday. (Carlos Ortega/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

By Erika Moreno

May 19, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

In Colombia, weeks of protests and clashes between civilians and the police over a now-defunct tax proposal have claimed dozens of lives. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights office received reports of local ombudsmen being harassed and threatened — raising further concerns about violence against protesters.

Thirty years ago, Colombia was one of the first countries in the Americas to create a national Human Rights Ombudsman office (known in Spanish as “Defensoría de Derechos Humanos”) — a semi-independent office to advocate for the people. The agency and the human rights defenders who work for it are known by the same name: the ombudsman. But will that institution also be tarnished by the massive protests taking place in Colombia?

As the protests evolved beyond opposition to the government’s regressive tax plan, this question becomes even more salient. In the past, the ombudsman did not engage in the kind of transformational reform that protesters are calling for — and it may not be able to do so now.

Colombia’s police are cracking down on protests. That may be backfiring.

What is the role of the Human Rights Ombudsman?

As I detail in my book, the Human Rights Ombudsman is a political institution pioneered during the 1970s in Portugal and Spain to conduct government oversight and protect human rights. This type of agency has mandates to protect a full range of rights, including the right to decent work, housing, health care, food, education and protection from violence and discrimination.

In the Americas, at least 16 countries incorporate this kind of agency at the national level. Some have been pivotal to curbing government overreach, including excessive use of force, as well as controversial policy proposals. For instance, the Bolivian ombudsman forced the government to change course following violent protests over a proposed gas pipeline in 2003.

In Colombia, the ombudsman fields complaints against the government and conducts lengthy investigations. Although unable to impose sanctions on wrongdoers, it can refer cases to prosecutorial bodies, such as the attorney general’s office. The agency also leads mediation efforts and performs “fire alarm” functions that alert others to rights violations.

During the recent unrest, the Colombian ombudsman has documented abuses such as deaths and disappearances of protesters. The agency also helped mediate discrete conflicts, including brief reopenings of several major thoroughfares blockaded by protesters. These actions helped ensure the flow of food, fuel and medicines to population centers in Caquetá, Huila, Tolima, Guaviare and Cauca.

To date, the ombudsman has portrayed itself as an impartial mediator and has not endorsed the broad structural changes sought by the protest organizers.

One of the most valuable tools available to any human rights ombudsman is its “moral authority” to name and shame wrongdoers. Agencies across the Americas have made use of their ties to nongovernmental organizations and the news media or leveraged public opinion to force governments to change laws and practices. This type of leverage can be critical in a crisis in which government forces have engaged in excessive force, as appears to be the case here.

Brazilian police killed 27 people in a single raid this month. That doesn’t make Rio de Janeiro safer.

The ombudsman has limited power

However, the ability to use “moral authority” depends on the amount of autonomy granted to the agency. While Colombia’s Human Rights Ombudsman has some formal independence, it is not fully independent of the elected officials that appoint its leadership and fund the budget. Its design, as well as past fights with the executive branch, have forced the agency to find ways to be minimally intrusive.

In the late 1990s, the agency sought to be a better advocate for human rights by hiring experts with assistance from international human rights organizations. As the Colombian party system splintered, the Human Rights Ombudsman was under less scrutiny from elected officials. For a while, it became more vocal in advocating for peace.

As the political tides turned, the agency came under repeated attacks from President Álvaro Uribe, in office from 2002 to 2010. Since then, two additional presidents from Uribe’s political party have appointed ombudsmen unlikely to challenge their administrations. As a result, human rights ombudsmen in Colombia found ways to advocate for citizens without publicly shaming officials. This saved them from losing their appointments and the bulk of their agency’s budget. This is in stark contrast to what we saw in countries such as Bolivia, where muscular human rights ombudsmen frequently challenged the government.

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Protesters have a long list of demands

A second factor that limits the role of the Colombian ombudsman today stems from the wide range of protester demands. What began as opposition to a regressive tax policy quickly tapped into frustrations with President Iván Duque’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and persistent inequality. And while the government tabled the tax measure, it also tabled discussions of proposed changes to health and education policy.

Duque is now facing demands for mass vaccinations, health-care reform, tuition-free universities, assistance to small businesses, income assistance and the protection of vulnerable minorities. While some of these issues are familiar territory for the Human Rights Ombudsman, the protests have taken a decidedly anti-incumbent tone ahead of the presidential and congressional elections scheduled for 2022.

Duque and his party are paying close attention to the new tone of the protests and would quickly rebuke the agency if it were to take a hostile stance toward the government. So, while citizen confidence in this office has risen over time, thanks to its handling of pension payments and other government service issues, this may not last long.

Colombia’s Human Rights Ombudsman may wade into discrete concerns raised by the protesters but is unlikely to launch broader discussions about police reform. With respect to police overreach, the agency will probably follow what it has done in the past and give a mild response to accusations against members of the military and security apparatus.

The Human Rights Ombudsman’s reluctance to challenge the government on this latest crackdown will leave the space open for organized civil society groups in Colombia, including domestic human rights advocates. After decades of marching and organizing for human rights, there is no shortage of leadership there. However, the net result may be a somewhat tarnished public advocate for human rights.

Professors: Check out TMC’s expanding list of classroom topic guides.

Erika Moreno (@LaProfeMoreno) is a professor of political science and international relations at Creighton University and the author of “Human Rights Ombudsmen in Latin America: From Justitieombudsman to Defensor del Pueblo” (Cambria Press, 2020).

Globish

Globish is a neologism for global English and it is a generally difficult to fully achieve holy grail, much like what tends to be called neutral Spanish rather than global Spanish. Neutral Spanish is one that avoids terms used only in some countries or understood differently across countries, such as la guagua for the bus or the many country specific terms for white person. The term Globish is often used broadly to refer to English that is more accessible to L2, L3, L4 speakers (those who speak English as a second, third, fourth language). Though technically Globish only refers to, as wikipedia puts it, "a subset of the English language formalized in 2004 by Jean-Paul Nerrière. It uses a subset of standard English grammar and a list of 1500 English words." It points to how much of English use around the world is between non-native English speakers. The chart documenting this here (only 4% of English use is between native speakers!) is from this article about Globish.

Nos queremos - vivas

This fabulous slogan, widely used by the feminist movement across Latin America, has a fabulous double meaning of both we want to be - alive and we love ourselves - alive. I haven't figured out a way to convey both of those in English. If I had to choose between the two while interpreting, I would choose the later - but in a translation I might try to squeeze them both in or do a translator's note. This coverage of International Women's Day this year (lots of fabulous photos, worth a look) got me thinking of it. They translated it, with this photo, as just we want to be alive.

plataforma: coalition not platform

plataforma: coalition not platform

In Colombia right now there are a lot of 'plataformas de paz' and I keep seeing this rendered in English as peace platforms. Please stop! That's a super confusing false cognate. In US English at least a platform is what a candidate or a party runs for office on. It is most certainly not a coalition of grassroots groups coming together to work for something, like peace. I highly doubt platform would work in British English either, but if you want it to be understandable in both, avoid it and use coalition instead. 

Asistentes al segundo congreso de la plataforma Lgbti por la Paz en Colombia

prison industrial complex: complejo industrial de prisiones

prison industrial complex: complejo industrial de prisiones 

This one does not have great googlage, but I think it works well. Not super tricky, just one I hadn't really thought of before. I ran into it in this article:

Género, cuerpo, racismo y complejo industrial de prisiones: experiencias de personas negras en una cárcel de Bogotá 

por Jei Alanis Bello Ramírez

hashtivism: hashtivismo

The English wiktionary entry for this says it is a derogatory term, but I have seen it used without any
derogatory intent. Yes, you could call it hashtag activism - but doesn't hashtivism sound cooler?!

Hashtivismo only has 327 hits on google but I like it. Yes, you could say activismo hashtag, but again, doesn't hashtivismo sound cooler?

Is it still hashtivism when it both comes from and then again leaps offline, like #metoo did? Hell yes, hashtivism can be part of a larger campaign.

proyectos productivos (Col): (usually small-scale) entrepreneurial ventures

I have been endlessly frustrated by seeing this term rendered as the false cognate productive projects. That rendition just won't mean much to English only speakers. I can stand 'income generating projects', which I sometimes see, but I stumbled on this better rendition in the article:

Counter, Max. “‘La Doble Condición ’: Landmine Victims, Forced Displacement, and Disability in Colombia’s Magdalena Medio.” Social & Cultural Geography 19, no. 4 (May 19, 2018): 448–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2017.1280616.

Max rendered it at first as small-scale, and then later adds the usually. In a simultaneous interpreting scenario I would add that qualification the first time and then just use entrepreneurial ventures to be able to keep up, since the term will surely be repeated if it is an event about peacebuilding in Colombia.

I would note that many of these entrepreneurial ventures by former FARC combatants are not small scale at all, but rather large scale coops - making everything from honey to bags to, my favorite, 'la roja' beer (see photo). 

el rebusque: the hustle for odd jobs/gigs.

I was reminded of the difficulty of translating this term by reading the article

Alves, Jaime Amparo. “‘Esa Paz Blanca, Esa Paz de Muerte’: Peacetime, Wartime, and Black Impossible Chronos in Postconflict Colombia.” The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 24, no. 3 (November 2019): 653–71. https://doi.org/10.1111/jlca.12424.

 

It's fantastic and if you don't have access to it email me if you want a copy. Jaime just uses the term odd jobs for rebusque and gives examples (street vending, cleaning, repairing). I like the term odd jobs but I think it leaves out the constant stress and search and finding them that the term rebusque points to, which is why I include the hustle part. People will often say 'esta en el rebusque', which I would render as 'he's on the hustle for odd jobs'. Sometimes I'll say hustling for gigs. Note that the term hustling alone could be misread as looking for sex work! You could also render this as 'scrambling to support yourself any way possible'. I would include Uber driving and meal delivery as el rebusque. Really the gig economy es la economía del rebusque.

hacer presencia/acto de presencia: make an appearance.

This is most certainly NOT to "make a presence" (as I saw here - one of a great collection of essays by anthropologists about the implementation of the Colombian peace accord four years in, all here). But what exactly is it? Acto de presencia is from legalese, where it means to formally appear in court, or appear in the court record. But this term is widely used outside of legal settings. I myself have often used it to refer to when I need to show up at a friend's event or party even just briefly, to show I care and to stay in good graces, but I plan to leave fairly quickly - or even if I stay it's not so much that I really want to be there but I go out of a sense of obligation and because my absence will be noted. In English we talk about that as making an appearance. In the article by Erin McFee that got me thinking about this term she tells a story of representatives of state agencies haciendo presencia at a 'reconciliation fair.' She connects these performances to ideas of historic absence of and now an attempt at presence by the Colombian state - so perhaps poetically the awkward translation of 'make a presence' helps her make her point, but in everyday English it sounds wrong - particularly because making an appearance is a common expression.

sanism: cuerdismo

sanism: cuerdismo

According to the urban dictionary "The social, legal, or institutional discrimination against individuals who are mentally ill/neurodivergent, or who may be considered "not sane" by society's standards. This can often cross over into ableism." (translation of ableism here)

Thanks to my stepmom Helen for checking me on my past over-frequent use of the adjective crazy. Often bizarre is a good replacement and better captures what I'm trying to say.

Many thanks again to Andrea Parra for this translation.

CAI (Bogotá): police kiosk

CAI stands for comando de accion imediata, but that won't mean anything to readers if you translate literally. They are actually tiny police kiosks around the city, usually just one room buildings standing in parks and plazas. I saw this rendition in the Guardian coverage of the protests the last two nights. If you haven't been reading and sharing news about the protests, please do. An international response could help. See my twitter feed @spaceforpeace for more.

My favorite response to the CAI burning was this:

swords into ploughshares: espadas en rejas de arado

Having grown up as (and still practicing as) a silent Quaker I don't know much religious terminology in either language. I don't expect that I ever will but there are a few biblical turns of phrase that often come up in social justice work that seem worth knowing. This one comes from:

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:4).

Forjarán sus espadas en rejas de arado, y sus lanzas en podaderas. No alzará espada nación contra nación, ni se adiestrarán más para la guerra.

Of course there are LOTS of different versions of the bible.  Check out the many versions of just this verse here. Some of those use just espadas en arados - swords into ploughs. I certainly think that is clearer and makes more sense - but I don't think it's what people are used to hearing, in either language. 

But then again, maybe people are getting more used to more updated versions - such as these used by Days of Prayer and Action for Colombia:

more zoom simul tips

In my last post about simultaneous interpreting on zoom I said that it cost $200 a month for the interpreting channel. That was wrong. Many thanks to Ron Garcia-Fogarty and the spectacular tilde language justice cooperative for explaining how it can be done for $55 a month (and less if shared). As he explained it:

"It works like this: Zoom Pro is $15/month or $150/year, and the webinar add-on is an additional $40/month or $400/year. It's listed (not very clearly) as the first bullet point in pre-requisites on their website. So anyone who already has Pro, just needs to purchase the webinar add-on to have access to zoom with interpretation. And what we do is we pass along that cost to clients who want to be able to use it, by charging $25 per use for short meetings or $50 per day for longer events."

Ron also very generously shared handouts that tilde uses to make video simul work better, which I have taken way too long to post. These include visual, verbal, and chatbox text instructions for participants, checklists for interps and for tech support, and more. You can find them here.

If anyone has any other suggestions or or resources I would love to share them here.

whiteness: blanquedad or blanquitud?

I have been using blanquedad, but recently I've been seeing blanquitud more often. So I did a google hits check, a trick that I often use when translating (or when I'm serving as the backup interpreter) and considering different options. It turns out that blanquedad only has 7,280 hits while blanquitud has 91,500. The hits on blanquedad are decent sources (sometimes they will all be clearly translations using false cognates) but still, I am going to shift to blanquitud since it is more widely used online. Thoughts? Comments?

These thoughts brought to you thanks to the article below, which is based on the Latin American wide PERLA survey that uses the color palette I mentioned a few weeks ago in the black and brown post. If you are interested in reading it and don't have access just ask me for a copy. 

Vásquez-Padilla, Darío Hernán, and Castriela Esther Hernández-Reyes. “Interrogando la gramática racial de la blanquitud: Hacia una analítica del blanqueamiento en el orden racial colombiano.” Latin American Research Review 55, no. 1 (March 19, 2020): 64–80. https://doi.org/10.25222/larr.170.

zoom simul tips

I recently did my first zoom simultaneous interpreting gig. Some of the ways we set it up might be useful for you. First let me say I realize that not a lot of groups can pay $200 a month for zoom pro to have the interpreter channel in zoom, so I know many are doing the workaround of having the source language on zoom and the target language on jitsi or skype. I'm not going to speak to the tech of that here, but want to point to the extra challenge that poses. If you are doing simultaneous 'terping in a zoom interpretation channel with a colleague these tricks might help.

Because this was a webinar with an active chat channel where our comments would get lost even if we directed them to each other, the interpretation team (me, my colleague, our terp tech support person) opened a google chat and had it running on the side of our screen. We all muted that tab on our browser so that texts would not ding.

I tried to mute all things around me that ever ding and go off on my computer and around me. I managed to miss my iPad though - so really think that one through!

Our tech support person helped me make sure I didn't have my ceiling fan or distracting wall notes in my frame. 

I logged in to the event as a panelist on my desktop, which was where I interpreted. I just used my built-in desktop mike which worked fine. I logged in again as an audience member on my laptop so that I could listen to my colleague during his stints. I had large headphones that I used for the desktop and little earbuds for the laptop. While my colleague was interpreting I had one earbud in one ear and the headphones in the other ear so that I could hear both his interpreting and the source language. If there was a difficult term I fed it to him in the google chat. I also used this to note how he was rendering certain terms so that I could keep them consistent when we switched.

We switched every 15 minutes. Whoever was backup would have their camera off (and obviously be muted). The backup terp was responsible for keeping track of time and when it hit 15 would turn their camera back on. The working terp would then wait until the end of a thought or phrase and wave and point to let the backup terp know to keep going. They would then turn their camera off.

We were interpreting for a presentation by Valarie Kaur to the Friends General Conference. I was so inspired by her and deeply honored to get to interpret her message of revolutionary love. I'm excited to read her new book See No Stranger, which is just out.

black and brown bodies

I was stumped by this for a recent zoom simul gig where my speaker was in the US but my listeners were in Latin America. In a pinch I used cuerpos negros y morenos, but I know that doesn't quite work. In some areas of Colombia moreno is understood as having some African heritage, in others it's not. This has actually been a contentious issue for the census, with Afro-Colombian groups asking that the term be used to increase self-identification as Afro-Colombian and the census refusing to consider it a term for Afro-Colombianness (Paschell 2013). At any rate, I'm looking for a better option that, again, works not just in the US but in Latin America. Obviously, there is no such thing as neutral Spanish that will work across all countries, but I'm looking for something that will work in lots of contexts.

Friends have suggested:
- cuerpos negros y con tono de piel oscura 

- cuerpos negros y oscuros
- cuerpos negros y no blancos
- cuerpos negros y de color

What do you think readers? Any other good options out there?

Note: the image is from the PERLA project, where they went around Latin America and asked people to identify what color they were on this palette. Interviewers also marked their own read of what color the person was. For full results see Telles (2014).

Paschel, Tianna. “‘The Beautiful Faces of My Black People’: Race, Ethnicity and the Politics of Colombia’s 2005 Census.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 36, no. 23 (2013): 1544–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2013.791398.

Telles, Edward. Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin America. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014.

somos gente de chagra: we cultivate the jungle

Amazonian chagras are such a rich cultural concept that they are hard to convey simply so I was impressed by this rendition, which I saw in the subtitles to this powerful 10 minute documentary about indigenous Siona
deminers in the Amazon, featured in the New Yorker. I highly recommend it.

car protest: bocinatón

Car protests, car rallies, car caravan actions, or my favorite English term, honk-ins, aren't new, but they're certainly suddenly more common as a safer way to protest together. Sometimes people drive slowly around a target (like an immigration detention center, or City hall), sometimes they park all around it and honk.

I will admit that I just cooked up the term bocinatón for them, inspired by the recent velatón actions in Colombia. I was happy though to find several uses of it when I googled it - all from Chile from several years ago but hey, the term might spread more widely now. I would be curious to hear what else folks are using.

desmercantilizar: decommodify

Es hora de desmercantilizar la vida!
It's time to decommodify life!

Thanks to Lorena Zarate for this one.

Of course the term decommodification means different things to different people. It's one of the ten principles of burning man, and explained by Caveat here, where they say:

"When we commodify we seek to make others, and ourselves, more like things, and less like human beings.   “Decommodification,” then, is to reverse this process.  To make the world and the people in it more unique, more priceless, more human."

Amediero (Col): sharecropper

I stumbled on this one in the official UN translation of the Colombian peace accord, where they give it the following footnote:

"“Amediero” means a farmworker who partly (a medias) cultivates the land in the sense that he
shares the produce with the landowner" (page 90 of the translation)

chuzadas (Col) : wiretaps

There is yet another surveillance scandal in Colombia. It involves various forms of electronic surveillance, not just the phone tapping that the term wiretap tends to imply, but the term surveillance is so much more formal than chuzada that I lean to using wiretap. But I'm curious to hear if others have a broader but still informal term to suggest. Here's a great short video on why this scandal matters.

biketivism: biciactivismo

I learned this one from Paola Castañeda, who has a new article out about biketivism and the right to the city in Bogotá in Antipode.

The map here is an image of all of the streets that are bike only in Bogotá on Sunday mornings, thanks to biketivists. I particularly love that there are fresh orange juice vendors on the sidewalks regularly along the way.