when swear words hit at different registers

here is an article published in the NYT back in November, but Ricardo just brought it to my attention and it's relevant to the last post. what do you do with words that have an equivalent but carry much more charge in the target language?

By MARC LACEY
Where the Swearing Is All About the Context

MEXICO CITY — Two teenage girls slurped iced coffee drinks at a sidewalk cafe the other afternoon and chatted away about boys, clothes, their weekend plans, whatever seemed to pop into their heads. They were clearly friends, but repeatedly referred to each other with a Spanish word meaning “ox” or “steer” or “stupid.”

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Claudia Daut/Reuters

Workers fired by President Felipe Calderón protested last month. One sign said Mr. Calderón would sell his mother if he could.

The word — güey, also spelled buey — makes most lists of Mexican profanities, but it has been co-opted by the cool, young set as a term of endearment. One hears it constantly, as often as “dude” comes up in an English conversation.

Like many Mexicans, though, the teenage girls also dipped into a well-stocked arsenal of more potent curse words, most of which referred in one way or another to sex. Even those were uttered so casually, however, that they did not seem to carry much sting.

Mexicans, despite their reputation in Latin America for ultrapoliteness and formality, curse like sailors, a recent survey found. They use profanity when speaking with their friends, with their co-workers, with their spouses and even with their bosses and parents. On Independence Day, the thing to shout above all else is “Viva Mexico, Cabrones!” a patriotic exhortation directed at either bastards or buddies, depending on the tone employed.

Consulta Mitofsky, a Mexican polling firm, asked 1,000 Mexicans 18 and older about their use of “groserías,” as curse words are known in Spanish, and found that respondents estimated they used an average of 20 bad words a day. Those swearing the most, not surprisingly, were young people. “The generation younger than 30 sees the use of bad words as more natural and they use them not only in front of friends but, many of them say, in front of their parents or bosses,” the survey found.

... Exactly what is considered a bad word in Mexico can require some interpretation. There are various types of insults, some comparing people to animals, others referring to the diminished mental capacity of the recipient. Others refer to sex, naturally, using that most Mexican of words, “chingar,” which the Royal Spanish Academy of Language says is a derivative of the word “to fight” but that in Mexico can be very offensive or very innocuous or virtually anything in between.

“It is definitely personal,” the survey said of Mexicans’ propensity for cursing. “The same word applied in different contexts and in two different moments is seen in very different manners.”

It is almost always obvious, of course, when a curse is meant as a curse.

A woman walking by a group of construction workers the other day left no doubt as to her message when the men whistled at her and she shouted out a response. The electrical workers who were recently fired by President Felipe Calderón also clearly wanted the worst impression possible to be read into the protest signs they lofted. One banner, a tame one, referred to Mr. Calderón as a “pinche ladrón,” which can be translated as a “damn crook.” Pinche, though, can also be a word with no negative connotation at all, meaning a cook’s assistant. ....

marica

marica : fag, faggot

The thing is that this term is used much more ubiquitously in Spanish, at least in Colombia. You could argue for rendering it as bud, dude, or guy the way it gets used almost every other word amongst friends some times. I would argue for not doing this and keeping it as fag. It may sound more shocking used like this in English, but it's useful for the listener to see that that this kind of homophobia is so normalized. I remember when fag used to be a much more common broad based insult when I was in high school in the 80s in Seattle.

subtitling a 12 year old.

good subtitling here, particularly of the testimony of the 12 year old boy at the beginning. Josh did a good job here of not being too literal and making it sound like the way a 12 year old would talk in English.

the price of silence

This video is so fun! Check out the interpreter booths and the funny earpieces they use at the UN. They've been using that same sort of earpiece since the 40's. The seats have a built in spot for them in the armrests. It hangs off the top of your ear and though it looks funny it is probably more comfortable if you're going to have it on all day.

translating nonviolence

from the Albert Einstein institute translation procedures for translating texts on nonviolence:

Some of the English terms in this field do not translate readily into other languages. Other terms in this technique may be assumed at times to have exact foreign equivalents but those may not actually be accurate. For example, some persons have incorrectly translated the term “nonviolent action” into the target language as the equivalent of “passive resistance” although nonviolent action can be extremely active. Also, “nonviolent action” has often been translated as the equivalent of “nonviolence,” which also is inappropriate because “nonviolence” may be understood to involve ethical, moral, or religious beliefs (when the reality is that nonviolent action has been widely practiced by nonbelievers for pragmatic reasons). The widespread confusion between nonviolent action (or nonviolent struggle) and “nonviolence” is potentially very serious. Those beliefs in “nonviolence” may have their merits, but they are a
different phenomenon than pragmatic nonviolent struggle. When the term for
nonviolent action is mistranslated in this way, this technique may be summarily
rejected by persons and groups that regard themselves as realists. All persons
working on translations need to understand these differences very well.
There are additional issues with terminology as well. Direct equivalents
for “nonviolent action” and related terms may not already be in standard usage or
even exist in the target language. New terms may need to be coined and
introduced in some translations. For example, in Burma the term “political
defiance” was coined because anything called “nonviolent” had connotations of
passivity and naïveté.

murio desangrado

murio desangrado: he died from blood loss
(even better suggestion from comments: bled to death)

One I hope you never have to say, but a good rendition of this phrase that came up in testimony by a mother of one of the recent extrajudicial army executions in Colombia (a so-called "false positive") in this great short piece about the new US military bases in Colombia by Al-Jazeera. In related Colombia news I'm disgusted to report that 17 of the alleged perpetrators of these so-called false positives have just been set free, supposedly because the courts were slogged. If the Obama administration insists on continuing to send massive amounts of money to Colombia, how about using it to fund the courts instead of the military?

brinconear

brinconear: to skip

May you skip with joy in the new year!

this is a word I was reminded of by this fabulous letter, shared here with permission:

Dear friends,

After living for three years in the state of Arauca, I joined the Christian Peacemaker Team here in the city of Barrancabermeja on September 16. I’ll be returning to Arauca occasionally to visit friends and I’d like to share with you now a few of my favorite memories of that very beautiful and afflicted region.

Martin Sandoval and 13 other people were arrested for “rebellion” in the town of Arauquita on November 4, 2008. Martin is the president of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Arauca. The Committee organized a public hearing of the Congressional Human Rights Commission in Arauquita on July 31, 2008. More than 500 people attended that hearing during which Martin and other community leaders denounced the abuses committed by the army and police. Leaders of the Committee felt that Martin’s imprisonment was in retaliation for organizing the hearing.

I visited Martin twice in the Arauca City prison. “As a human rights defender in Colombia, the least that you can expect is to be imprisoned” he said. “This is a beautiful experience. We share everything with each other here.” He and the 13 others remained united, worked with a lawyer that provided a joint defense for all of them, and were finally released on May 14. I called Martin the following evening when he was at the welcome home celebration in Arauquita. He expressed his appreciation for my support and said, “You’re part of this family.”

When I returned to Arauquita in March (after being in the U.S. for two months), I received a wonderful welcome from many people there. Some of those friends were the man who repairs shoes in front of the church (we joke that he’s performing surgery); Maria who bakes pizza in a cart by the park, along with the group that congregates with her in the evening (Colorado who sells lottery tickets, and Jaime who has a repair shop but is also a painter and philosopher); and the man at the produce store who always calls my name and gives me the thumbs-up when I walk by. At the start of mass that evening, Father Fernando announced “We’re very glad to have with us again the best human rights defender around here.”

Alejandra was two years old when I moved to the town of Saravena in 2006. She lived a block away, and she would wave and call out “Gringo!” whenever I walked by. One evening when she was three, she ran down to the corner to meet me and was so excited that she started skipping back to her house. That seemed like an excellent idea to me and I began skipping alongside her in the street. This turned into our evening ritual and we would skip together along the entire block.

Unfortunately, after Alejandra turned four she became too self-conscious to continue skipping (I hope she grows out of that by the time she reaches my age). After several skip-less months, a young girl who lives across the street from Alejandra called out to me one evening and started skipping. She had seen our previous ritual and wanted to join in the fun. I crossed the street and we skipped together to the corner. She and a younger friend became my new skipping buddies and the evening ritual was revived.

On that same block, there’s a taxi driver that works the Saravena-Arauquita route and I’ve traveled with him various times. I saw him in front of his home one afternoon and he asked, with a smile, “Are you still skipping?”

In love and solidarity,

Scott

Photo of Martin during a visit to the Arauca City prison that was organized by the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights on October 10, 2008 – one month prior to his arrest:

Speak up!

Speak up! speak out! let me hear you! : !Hagase escuchar! :

(CHANGED to alza la voz! thanks to Atenea - see comments)

This one comes thanks to my colleagues: Ken Barger, who posed the question in regards to speak up, and Diana Meredith, who came up with this great rendition.

This is a phrase you often see on flyers and brochures in English that ask folks to take action, call a politician, etc.. Speak up and speak out seem to be used interchangeably. Verbally, in a rally setting, I could imagine someone calling out 'let me hear you!' and 'hagase escuchar' would also work for that I think.

The art here is from the movement artist Rini Templeton. Her family has made all of her images open for public use at riniart.org

instead of sending more troops, how about paying for trained interpreters?

I am disgusted that huge sums of money are being misspent to send poor young people from the United States with few other options at home to do far more harm than good in Afghanistan - but here is a new twist on how screwed up the whole enterprise is: they are using completely useless untrained interpreters, and clearly not training troops on how to use interpreters! This video (by the Guardian) of a US soldier trying to speak to an elder in Afghanistan through an interpreter is seriously damning. I couldn't find a way to embed the video, but it is well worth watching the subtitled short bit that starts around 3:30 minutes in.

Kudos to the Guardian for getting this subtitled and exposing the abysmal (worse than nothing) interpreting - but they completely misread the situation with their headline: "When the US 173rd Airborne's Charlie Company try to speak to a Pashtun elder, the gulf is so great even the interpreters have given up interpreting." No, in fact the problem is not a cultural gulf, the problem is utter lack of training and competency. This interpreter really never even begins to try to interpret. He clearly has no training in interpreting, and the soldier clearly has no idea what interpreting looks like or involves. What a royal mess. Yankees, come home now.

interpreting at the vigil

My apologies for the silence - it is the end of the semester and I'm swamped. Above is a video of me interpreting a couple of weeks ago at the SOA vigil - it starts about half way through Padre Alberto's presentation. There are videos of other Colombian speakers at the vigil here, here and here.

I was reminded again at the vigil how many of the folks that end up interpreting for the solidarity movement have little to no training in interpreting skills, so in the future I will try to post some basic interpreting tips and tricks on this blog, along with the terminology.

vigil to close the School of the Americas

I am headed to the vigil this week! Proud to be part of the largest event against US Empire inside the belly of the beast.

Again we will be providing simultaneous interpretation of the entire outdoor and much of the indoor program into Spanish. We also hope this year to stream some of our interpretation online, and I'll let you know here if and where we get that set up. Wish us luck for getting that working!

If you can't make it this year you can support our work, and this powerful and important movement, by making a donation. We have a slim $1,000 budget for the interpreting, but even covering that is hard, so every bit helps - even $5 would be great, and really, it feels great to know you're a part of this. To do this go to the SOA Watch site and click the donate button on the upper right.

You can also support our team next weekend by doing last minute press release translations into Spanish from home (let me know if you are up for this).

And one last, fabulous, way you could help is with suggestions and clean up of our very old glossary of terms.

la canasta basica

el precio de la canasta basica: the cost of basic nutritional needs (for a family)

NOT the basic basket, or even food basket or shopping basket. Though it is certainly poetic, we just don't say that in English to mean this technical financial thing as it is widely used in Spanish - and given how few people in the North even shop with a basket I doubt people will be able to make that leap and figure it out (though these days I'm proud to say nearly everyone seems to take their own bag in Vancouver). The tricky thing about this term is though it's widely used in Spanish just to refer to the weekly or monthly cost of food, in some countries and instances it technically means the cost of all essential goods (in Mexican government documents for example this includes the cost of condoms), AND services (like electricity). I suppose this could be rendered as just the cost of meeting basic needs.

people before profit

people before profit: la vida antes del lucro

This is my own invention. I got it from going *really* sideways - or what's it called when you go to a C language? (going sidways is when you look for a similar word in you source language before going to the target) In French this slogan is la vie avant le profit, as I discovered from the video below, by PASC (which has some crazy dark war humor at the end of it). La vida antes del lucro sounds better to me than la gente, and certainly than ganancias. But this is the only place I've found it used in Spanish. What have other folks been using?

so-called

so-called : mal llamado

Just to clarify last week's post, I am not suggesting that you dramatically change the tenor of a speakers words by adding so-called to therm false positives without clearing that with them. I was assuming an informal movement interpreting scenario where you could either discuss this term beforehand with the speaker or even when it comes up ask, 'se puede decir mal llamado?'. I am a trained court interpreter and much more of a stickler about not adding contextual clues than most doing more community style interpreting - but this particular term of falsos positivos really gets my goat! By using the term as-is we normalize it, letting it do its work as a term - its work against what the believe in: the very dignity of life itself.

falsos positivos 2

I've posted about this term before, but want to call to your attention that there is a similar tragedy, and growing scandal, in India - where there is a different euphemism for them: 'encounter deaths'. In fact, some police in India are proud to be known as 'encounter specialists'! Similarly, these are usually poor and marginalized folks who are summarily executed and then dressed up to make it look like they died in cross fighting. Ranvir is only one of many in India, though his story made more news because he was not as poor as most. His story is here. Should we collude with this activity by propagating the euphemism? Or should we just render this term as summary executions or extrajudicial killing? If you must say false positives because it's the term people know and use, I would suggest adding so-called, as in "so-called false positives".

medical interpreters in action

My friend Jill made this great short video about medical interpreters. Can't figure out how to embed it, but it's 15 minutes long and fun to watch! If you've never seen us in action, or even if you do this every day, check it out.

Jill also worked on the film Sweet Crude, which is smart, fabulous, and very moving. Watch it if it comes to your town.

cheapened

cheapened: abaratado
as in, the Nobel peace prize.

enslaved people

enslaved people: gente esclavizada

Props to my compa Michael Rosen, who not only gives fantastic salsa classes, but even in a short intro includes a bit on how merengue is rooted in slavery, and uses this term - which I honestly had never heard, or at least paid attention to, before. Need I point out why this is so much better than "slave"?

Michael hilariously includes this on his promo materials:
WARNING: Classes may cause temporary increases in heart rate, extreme enjoyment and bouts of laughter. Possible long-term effects may include: addiction (to Cuban Salsa), increased sense of rhythm, grounding, increased body comfort and confidence, higher fitness levels, increased happiness and presence, increased sexual activity and growth of friendships.
EveryBODY (shape, age, colour, sexuality...) Welcome!!!

If you're in Vancouver, check out his class schedule here.

gente vs. pueblo

gente = people vs pueblo = THE people

thought of it from seeing this comment at loquesomos.org:

"This is what we have to confront. These are the people our political figures consult with: military officers, judges and lawyers, business people, Catholic Church hierarchy. And they supported the coup. They say they have all the right “gente” supporting them. We have the “pueblo” supporting the return of Zelaya."

I've personally given up on calling the State department. They are basically supporting the Honduran coup. In speeches Hilary Clinton equates the attackers with the attacked. She blames Zelaya. The US has not frozen assets, cut off trade, or even stopped all aid! I am disgusted. But I continue to have great faith in el pueblo.

My good friend Andres is reporting from inside the Brazilian embassy. Please hold him, and all of the Hondurans in struggle, in your hearts. Let us be in the struggle together.

accumulation by dispossession

accumulation by dispossession: acumulación por desposesión

What's up with the US wanting to put in seven new military bases in Colombia when Uribe says the FARC are nearly defeated, and claim, ahem, that drug trafficking is down? In this article Zibechi lays it out as part of a larger dynamic of accumulation by dispossession.

Check out the English wiki definition of this term coined by David Harvey, the most well-known living geographer.

translatology

How's that for jargon? New to me. It seems to mean “all types of interlingual transmission, such as translation, interpreting, and subtitling.”

Check out the journal Studies in Translatology

See also the Journal of Translation studies

cinturon de miseria

Cinturon de miseria - slum belt

This refers to the ring of slums around many (most?) cities in Latin America. Slum being rendered by Sebastian in the article I cited last week as ciudades misera was what helped me get this one. I don't like the term in either English or Spanish, as it seems to have a derogatory connotation. I prefer comunidades marginales or asentiamientos informales or something else more respectful.

the commons, commonism

the commons: el en-común
commonism: el en-comunismo

One for the lefty theory geeks. Props to my compa Sebastian (te fuiste!), who (with a collective of course) translated this article in turbulence that lays it all out. bzzzz.

To quote the author Nick Dyer-Witheford (in translation):

“Lo ‘en-común’ es una expresión que resume muchas de las aspiraciones del movimiento de movimientos. Es un término muy usado quizás porque ofrece una manera de hablar sobre la propiedad colectiva sin invocar una mala historia –es decir, evitando evocar el comunismo, convencionalmente entendido como la combinación de una economía de mando centralizado y un estado represivo–, para inmediatamente encontrarle una explicación convincente. Aunque habrá quienes no estén de acuerdo, creo que esta discusión es válida; es importante diferenciar nuestros objetivos y nuestros métodos de los de catástrofes pasadas, retomando las discusión de una sociedad más allá del capitalismo.

La primera referencia a lo ‘en-común’ corresponde a las tierras de uso colectivo cercadas por el capitalismo en un proceso de acumulación primitiva que va desde la edad media hasta el presente. Aún hoy, las tierras de cultivo comunes siguen siendo el punto principal de conflicto en muchos lugares. Pero hoy lo en-común también nombra la posibilidad de propiedad colectiva, y no privada, en otros terrenos: lo ecológico en-común (el agua, la atmósfera, la pesca y los bosques); lo social en-común (la previsión pública con respecto al bienestar, la salud, la educación, etc.); lo en-común en red (el acceso a los medios de comunicación).”

keep reading

vereda (again)

vereda (Col): dispersed rural settlement

In my previous post I argued for rendering it as township - which led to some interesting conversation in the comments. This version is higher register, and stinks for fast simultaneous, but seems more accurate. Maybe for simul you could say this the first time, followed by “something like a U.S. township”, and from then on use township.

rancho

rancho: shack - generally not ranch!!

While on the topic, here is another dangerous false cognate. Ranch in English implies something totally different, with lots of land, and Bush chopping wood, or Reagan on his horse. Certainly not an informal self-made simple dwelling, which in my experience is what is generally meant, in a variety of Latin American countries. I don't love the word shack, since it can have negative connotations and implies a more ramshackle dwelling that rancho necessarily does. Yet the reclaiming of the term being done by shack/ slum dwellers international makes me more comfortable with it. I also haven't come up with anything better. Cabin is certainly no good as now it tends to imply something more like a second home. 'Informal housing' is a much higher register. Humble home sounds cutesy.

Wiki defines a particular way of building ranchos in the southern cone

But in my experience it could be any type of building. Could be just cardboard and tin. Could be stone walls. Could be adobe. Could even be cement and wood, but very simple, humble. An english ranch would be a finca.

Kudos to Latin Pulse for subtitling the below episode of Contravia, some of the only (and very brave) independent journalism in Colombia. I include it here with the excuse that the word rancho comes up several times, as folks are showing us their homes that have been bombed. Could you move back into your home and rebuild it (yourself) if it had been bombed? Or would it be too freaky? Could you ever feel safe there again?



(ojo: the subtitles render cabildo as town council, but it's indigenous council (in the US the term would be tribal council), which here changes the story a bit)