active listening: la escucha activa

I was reminded of this term by this Aquí estamos article  by Vivian Martínez Díaz about a debate in the Colombian media around feminists' response to former FARC guerillas denouncing sexual violence.

Active listening is a term based on the work of Carl Rogers, definido acá. 

The photo here is from a protest by the Ruta Pacifica de Mujeres, that regularly uses body painting like this. 

atalaya: watchtower

Not really a social justice related term exactly. I stumbled on this term in Alfredo Molano's last weekly column (for now) in El Espectador, as he takes a leave to serve on the Colombian Truth Commission. He called the paper "la atalaya desde donde miro."

Listening to stories of horror for three years will be hard on the hearts and lives of all of the members of the Truth Commission, and I thank them all for taking it on and hold them in the light and send them all good energy for this important work.

chinito

I've often struggled to render racist terms of endearment from Spanish into English like chinito and negrito. It is hard to convey in English how racism is normalized and even used affectionately. Little Chinese man is clearly not going to do it.

There was recently an incident in US baseball that brought this to the fore, and several good editorials in the NYT about a player being suspended for using the term chinito. They are worth reading. 

(and note, this blog is on a bit of a hiatus as I get settled into my new position as an Assistant
Professor of Peace Studies at Kent State University)

partners: copartes

partners: copartes

In a social justice context socios does not work, since it implies business associate, not social change organization we work together with. I've noticed lately that several groups, like Diakonia and Oxfam, use copartes.

Homophobia and islamophobia are not actually phobias: alternative terms

Homophobia and islamophobia are not actually phobias. I do not believe that they are mental health conditions (like agoraphobia or claustrophobia) and it is wrong to put them in that category when they appear to be based on hate, not fear. As such, I avoid both terms and prefer instead the terms anti-gay (or anti-LGBTI) prejudice and anti-muslim prejudice. Of course if the term homophobia is said in English I will render it as homofobia in Spanish - but if it is in a social movement context where I can say an aside to the speaker afterwards, I will make this argument to them.

It is strange that the words for different sorts of prejudice and hate can sound so different. Racism, sexism, agism, ablism sound similar, but is there a similar -ism version for the two terms in question here? Sherman argues for the term gaycism, but it seems unlikely to catch on. It could be useful for alliance building if all were said using a standard construction that we could put side by side, and I propose here we simply use anti-black, anti-woman, anti-gender queer, anti-Muslim, etc. Whether you then add on the word prejudice, bias, hate, or bigotry could vary.

time now for: peacebuilding: la consolidación de la paz

peacemaking: el restablecimiento de la paz
peacekeeping: la conservación de la paz
peacebuilding: la consolidación de la paz


These were the translations offered in this article in Semana magazine about what follows, now that the FARC guerrillas have handed over their individual weapons.

The article begins:
Una de las mayores lecciones que ha dejado a nivel mundial el fin de conflictos armados internos es la importancia de diseñar un plan serio y consistente de posconflicto, con el fin de evitar no solamente la reincidencia de la confrontación al cabo de pocos años, sino que se produzcan olas criminales como resultado de un fracaso en el proceso de “desarme, desmovilización y reintegración” (DDR) de los excombatientes y de la ausencia de otras tareas urgentes y necesarias.

La reincidencia de los enfrentamientos armados es más común en conflictos interraciales, regionales y religiosos, como se ha podido observar en África, Asia y los Balcanes. Según un estudio clásico de Paul Collier y Anke Hoeffler, el riesgo de retorno de los enfrentamientos armados en los conflictos en estas regiones del mundo, luego del fin de la guerra fría, ha sido del 44 por ciento antes de cinco años tras la firma de un acuerdo de paz.

En América Latina, a pesar de que todos los países tuvieron presencia de grupos guerrilleros en algún momento tras la revolución cubana en 1959, tras la derrota militar de la guerrilla (Brasil, Argentina, Uruguay, etc.) o su integración mediante procesos de paz (El Salvador, Guatemala), no ha habido ningún caso de reincidencia.

Más bien, el fenómeno preocupante en América Latina, particularmente en Centroamérica, ha sido el desbordamiento de la criminalidad el cual ha constituido uno de los rasgos principales del clima de posconflicto tanto en El Salvador y como en Guatemala. El excomandante militar del Frente Farabundo Martí (FMLN) de El Salvador, Joaquín Villalobos, sostuvo en alguna ocasión que en su país “ganamos la paz, pero perdimos el posconflicto”. Y nos advierte a los colombianos que debemos no solamente ganar la paz, sino, ante todo, ganar el posconflicto. Es decir, evitar una ola criminal que, en el caso de las dos naciones mencionadas, produce hoy más víctimas que durante la guerra civil.

Desde esta perspectiva, como bien afirman los expertos, una cosa es el restablecimiento de la paz (peacemaking) y otra distinta la conservación de la paz (peacekeeping) y, ante todo, la consolidación de la paz (peacebuilding). Se trata de procesos ciertamente interrelacionados -el primero es una condición para los otros dos-, pero son etapas distintas y con exigencias diferentes. Se puede tener éxito en el uno, pero fracasar en los otro dos. Como dijo el propio Villalobos en una conferencia en Bogotá, "después de firmada la paz, comenzó la otra guerra que no vimos venir", impulsada por el fenómeno de las pandillas, en especial, la Mara Salvatrucha y la Mara Barrio 18.

En efecto, el acuerdo de paz firmado en 1992 no condujo a una disminución de los índices de violencia: mientras que durante los 12 años de la guerra civil murieron en promedio unas 6.250, en los años poseriores el número de homicidios pasó a 8.000 o más, conduciendo a El Salvador a convertirse en una de las naciones más violentas del mundo.
... siga leyendo 

mindfulness: conciencia plena

For some reason mindfulness is often imported into Spanish, as it is in the poster here - even though a term does exist in Spanish. It is also sometimes rendered as atención plena, or plena conciencia, but conciencia plena seems to be the most common version.

gentrification: aburguesamiento

For some reason the term gentrification is widely imported into Spanish, even though there's this

other great option that is more easily understood by first time listeners. Maybe it's a neologism, maybe I sort of made it up years ago - though others seem to have as well as it has at least a little googlage (including the translation of this abstract of a great geography article that connects it to gendered fear in Toronto). But hey, in French gentrification is embourgeoisement, so it's a clear parallel.

Not sure how I would render the version gentrifuckation, that's a bit harder.

(and thanks to the commenters who caught my initial misspelling as aburgesamiento)

para nuestros muertos ni un minuto de silencio, toda una vida de lucha

On May Day the NY Times ran an article about Colombia with what I thought was mistranslation. It was an article about Julian Conrado, a FARC guerrilla famous for singing rebel songs.

In it they render a line from one of his songs as
"For our dead, not a minute of silence, a whole life of combat."

The version that I am much more familiar with is
"Para nuestros muertos ni un minuto de silencio, toda una vida de lucha." I have repeatedly rendered it as
"Not one minute of silence for our dead, but an entire lifetime of struggle!"

This is not only a line from a song, but is widely chanted at marches and events throughout Colombia, and by Colombians around the world. The vast majority of people who use this line are not guerrillas, but part of social movement struggles. They are not referring to guerrillas killed in combat, nor to continuing combat - but to people killed for their struggles for justice and peace, and to their commitment to continue that organizing work in their name.

So I thought that the original was lucha, and that to render lucha as combat here not only changed the meaning of the original slogan, but dangerously tarred a much broader movement with a guerrilla brush - a long standing tactic to delegitimize justice organizing in Colombia.

But then it turns out that his song lyrics do actually use the word combate, rather than lucha. I'm left wondering which version came first. I'm assuming that it was the lucha version, and that the FARC modified it. Does anyone know?

#Noesdehombres: thisisn'tmanly

The NYT today ran a story with this great headline:

‘Penis Seat’ Causes Double Takes on Mexico City Subway

The story is about an activist art installation of a penis seat (see this video to see what it's like and people's reactions) that is part of the campaign against sexual harassment #Noesdehombres. They offered this isn't manly as a "rough translation" of the tagline. I don't love it as a translation, but I don't have anything better. Do any readers? 

The subway seat is creative, if a bit obnoxious - but the other images in the campaign, like this one, are about getting men thinking about if this was aimed at your girlfriend, or your mother. Perhaps effective in the short term, but not exactly empowering for women. 

violencia por prejuicio: hate crime

The literal rendition of this is of course violence based on prejudice, but in English it is far more common to use the term hate crime. I suppose that the term in Spanish includes violence that does not rise to the level of a crime, or perhaps even a misdemeanor - and so is a broader term. If you wanted to be a stickler and use the less common literal translation I would add a qualifier the first time you use it, something like 'more commonly called hate crimes in English.'

I have been reading about violence against LGBT people in Colombia and in Spanish violencia por prejuicio is widely used to describe it. The report Cuerpos Excluidos, Rostros de Impunidad gives an overview of it. Carlos's is just one rostro of the 110 LGBT people who were killed in Colombia in 2015.

add and stir: agregar y revolver

This expression is often used to argue against an "add and stir" approach. This would be, for example, hiring a few women without changing any family leave policies or creating any workplace flexibility. So the stir here means incorporate into the existing structure, without changing it. I'm working on an article where I'm trying to think through whether or not the Colombian peace accords just added LGBT and stirred, or how much adding LGBT to the accords really changed the overall approach.

I saw this translation used by Serrano Amaya in

Serrano Amaya, José Fernando. 2013. “Agenciamiento E (in) Visibilidad de La Diversidad Sexual Y de Género En La Construcción de Paz.” In Paz Paso a Paso: Una Mirada Desde Los Estudios de Paz a Los Conflictos Colombianos, edited by José Fernando Serrano Amaya and Adam Baird, 53–78. CINEP y Editorial Javeriana. available here