Tuesday, April 29, 2008

solidarizar

solidarizar: be/work/struggle in solidarity with

I was asked to by Ana to come up with a translation for this, I agree with her, fantastic verb in Spanish. I mean how great is it to be able to say "solidarizémonos"? Let us be in solidarity (with x cause, or with one another, etc) just doesn't have quite the same ring.

If you have other stumper social justice terms send them this way.

Monday, April 21, 2008

open source

open source: codigo abierto

the full word is really source code. funny how the code gets dropped in En, and the source in Sp. feeling depressed about social change? it can help to spend a moment in awe of the beauty and potential of the open source movement.

an article that I recently translated into English for the fabulous Association for Progressive Communications reminded me of this one. APC puts geekiness to work for social justice struggles - not just as in recruit geek volunteers, but really far more thoughtfully think about how different information and communication technologies could help us make different kinds of worlds.

Friday, April 11, 2008

mano dura

mano dura: firm hand

usually as in "firm hand policies" - a polite way of saying ruthless crackdown. there was a disturbing article about women in Central American gangs in the nyt today that mentioned this term and reminded me how bad it sounds when interps use the literal "hard hand". shame the amazing photos aren't online, but still worth reading.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

empire

empire: imperio

not a tricky term, though I could go on about capitalizing it a la Hardt and Negri or not (I vote not), but really, this is just an excuse to post this great video. Zinn has a whole new graphic version of his classic. (you could read this essay here, but why not have it read to you with fun pictures?)