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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?)