Spanish For Social Change

Not a social justice term - except that in my utopia everyone gets to drink lots of this! I ran into this rendition in, of all places, th...

In Colombia the ELN guerillas have declared a 'paro armado' for February 10th through 13th. As I explained in my previous post on th...

I was reminded of this term by this Aquí estamos article  by Vivian Martínez Díaz about a debate in the Colombian media around feminists...

Not really a social justice related term exactly. I stumbled on this term in Alfredo Molano's last weekly column (for now) in El Espect...

I've often struggled to render racist terms of endearment from Spanish into English like chinito and negrito. It is hard to convey in En...

partners: copartes In a social justice context socios does not work, since it implies business associate, not social change organization...

Homophobia and islamophobia are not actually phobias. I do not believe that they are mental health conditions (like agoraphobia or claustrop...

peacemaking: el restablecimiento de la paz peacekeeping:  la conservación de la paz peacebuilding:  la consolidación de la paz These we...

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...

For some reason the term gentrification is widely imported into Spanish, even though there's this other great option that is more eas...

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 FAR...

The NYT today ran a story with this great headline: ‘Penis Seat’ Causes Double Takes on Mexico City Subway The sto...

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 s...

This expression is often used to argue against  an "add and stir" approach. This would be, for example, hiring a few women without...

Amazingly there is a mainstream movie out where a woman academic saves the day with her language skills! I can't recommend it enough. Bu...

[update: the official translation of the peace accords uses the term "gender-sensitive approach"and so I have changed it here from...

I am heartbroken about the peace vote in Colombia. I am particularly disturbed by how it was shaped by an active campaign of misinformation ...

This is the pen that was used to sign the Colombian peace accords on Monday. It reads:   Las balas escribieron lluestro pasada. 'Las...

If you are bilingual, and want to get in to interpreting for social movements (and are on the East coast or in the South of the US), there i...

Years ago (2007) I blogged ableism as capacitadismo, at the time my own invention. Well it hasn't caught on, but capacitismo now has som...

I've posted this one before (years ago), but was recently reminded of it by this lovely video of an action in Bogotá for the right to br...

Following up on my last post on the translation of the Colombian term vereda (which means quite different things in other countries, in...

In the past I have blogged vereda as township, which I still like - but this rendition works well if you are not being picky about levels o...

After my last post on zonas veredales Adam Isacson responded: Here is the pyramid he linked (from wikipedia), and here is my link t...

I am thrilled by the recent break through in the Colombian peace negotiations, and spent several hours last Thursday getting weepy while wa...