gyp

Should we avoid using (or translating into) words with little known racist etymologies? I avoid the word 'gyp'' in English, even though most people no longer associate it with or consider it derogatory towards gypsies. But what about the other words in this interesting post on 8 racist words you are likely to hear every day. The other seven are:
hooligan
vandal
hip hip hooray
barbarian
bugger
cannibal
and picnic.

Know the racist origins of ANY of those? Then does it matter if you use them?

resources for legal 'terps

A big thanks to Claudia Johnson at the very cool LawHelp Interactive who pointed me to a bunch of great resources.

The Sacramento Courts have one of the best legal glossaries in multiple languages.

She also pointed to the online interviews being created across the country for people who can not afford lawyers that are beind made available in English/Spanish. As she says "There is a huge movement to get the courts in the US to provide language services for all cases." Hallelujah! It's about time! This was one of the things that drove me out of court interpreting it drove me so crazy. She says:

Some of the forms have audio in Spanish: An example can be found here.

Some of the forms have “pop ups” where if the person clicks Espanol the interview proceeds side by side in English and Spanish: NYC Tenant Affidavit to Vacate a Default Judgment Program

And most of their interviews allow people to request printing the instructions in English and Spanish so that they know what do after they assemble the forms, like this

Many legal aid groups are working on making this type of service available, including Colorado, Georgia, Maine, Kansas, etc and it is a very good move forward in the area of access to justice."

I'll say! Thanks Claudia!

clarify with your colleagues how you want to team interpret together

I was reminded by my fab compa Jeremy of the importance of sending something like this, so I just modified Jeremy's version and sent this to the compas I'm interpreting with this week. I know most of it is obvious, but especially when working outside of a booth and with folks who are newer at this, it's best to have clarity. I've worked even with professionals who have just wandered away from me when they weren't on! so this is what I sent, feel free to modify and use:

Lets switch off every 15-20 minutes. During the speakers this will mean every speaker, during discussion, keep an eye on the clock. The person not interpreting can be responsible for this and point to their wrist when it's time, but the person interpreting then waits for a good time to hand off, don't feel like you have to hand off the mike right that minute.

The person not interpreting is not off. You can go to the bathroom of course, but generally your job is to listen, and if your colleague seems to be struggling to find a term my preference is that you write it down and point to it. Let me know if you want that, or want me to whisper it to you, or just wait until after to tell you. Also please notice if we're using different terms and during break lets agree on one to be consistent. Please also write down any sticky or problematic terms to discuss during break, or other feedback.

If I'm interpreting and get up to walk around so I can see the face of the speaker more clearly follow me. Please stand close enough so that you can hear and so that you could help if I get stuck.

If you miss a phrase or two and start to falter, there is no shame in quickly passing the microphone. Better to give yourself a break and regain concentration than to push through por cabezón.

At the end of a session, or at the end of the day, let’s evaluate how everything went and how we can improve next time

Gracias compas!
looking foward to working together

translating theory in the world

A book-length translation of the work of Mexican feminist activist and social critic Marta Lamas has just come out, translated by John Pluecker, a reader of this blog. To quote John's blog directly

"The book is the first in a series called Theory in the World edited by Gayatri Spivak and Hosam Aboul-Ela, dedicated to translating, publishing and disseminating theory from the Global South. As the info page about the series states:

Despite the flurry of interest in translation studies, markedly less emphasis has been placed on the process of translating theoretical texts, especially those originating outside of Europe and the U.S. This series breaks new ground by translating book-length theoretical works and taking up the issue of the doubly marginalized text. Theory in the World asks a scandalous question: is “theory” different when produced in the postcolonial world? Has globalization changed the picture? Has localization, touching on transnational gender roles, embodiment, non-Western poetics, reading practice, and canon-formation survived? Finally, it asks how the classical questions of translation studies become altered in this previously ignored geopolitical context and looks at the ways literature and the pedagogy of the humanities take account of these alterations."

So cool! Congratulations John!

why do people insist on using 'translator' when they mean 'interpreter'?

Interpretation is oral, translation is written. I must have said this one sentence out loud over a thousand times by now. My friends and family are sick of hearing it, but still get it wrong. Sign language interpreters never get called translators - why do we? I had great hopes that after the mainstream movie 'The Interpreter' came out (see it if you haven't!) people would be more likely to get this right. Ha.

I think people are reluctant to use the term ‘interpreter’ due to a common conflation of two different denotations of the term interpret (1: oral rendition from one language to another and 2: analysis of the meaning of a text). Again and again people have told me that they believe interpreters change the meaning and translators go word to word. Argh!!

It is true that untrained interpreters are more likely to change the meaning of what is spoken in the source language, simply because they do not have the skills and ethics training to avoid this while trying to keep up with fast speech. Untrained interpreters are also much more likely to mis-name themselves 'translators' - so actually, if someone calls themselves a 'translator' when they're actually talking about interpreting, I take it as a bad sign that they are likely to distort meaning when they interpret.

If just repeating interpretation is oral and translation is written over and over again does not get through to folks, what is a more effective and catchy educational one liner? Any suggestions?

hue-ism

hue-ism

as in racism, but, as I understand it, particularly discrimination within communities of color of people with darker skin. I heard this term used by Beverly Mullings on a bridging -isms panel at the US geographers (AAG) conference in 2009 and I love it, but I'm stumped as to a Spanish version. hue is tinte o tono o matiz o color, maybe colorismo? Any thoughts?

primordial

primordial: fundamental

As in, 'su apoyo ha sido primordial para nosotros'. This is another one of those that sounds really funny if you slip and do the cognate. Kudos to Melissa for getting this and so many other tricky subtitles right in this great little video

in good standing

good standing: cumplimiento y constancia

as in, member in good standing - miembro cumplido y constante
or, for example, "Miembros de pleno derecho y miembros asociados tendrán un plazo indeterminado, siempre y cuando hayan demostrado cumplimiento y constancia respecto a sus obligaciones."

thanks to Veronika for this one!

language can build solidarity

"Language and the human spirit are inextricably intertwined. We interpret the world through language. We express ourselves through language. Language is powerful. Language can bring us together or set us apart. It can be used to include — to bridge barriers between cultures, religions, worldviews — at the same time as it can be used to exclude by inflaming xenophobia and racism. Language can establish community and solidarity at the same time as it can be used to erect boundaries and divide communities. More often than not, when we turn on the TV we see language used to occlude — to hide reality — to deceive, to spin, to distract, to disempower, to reinforce us versus them conceptions of humanity. Language is no longer innocent. We can no longer conceptualize language as some kind of neutral code that can be taught in classrooms in splendid isolation from its intersection with issues of power, identity, and spirituality." – Jim Cummins, Language and the Human Spirit (2003)

palabras que nos cambiaron

es es titulo de una exposición lindisima que ví en Bogotá. Acabo de encontrar el glosario de la exposicion enlinea aca, la recomiendo altamente.

Por ejemplo definen colonialismo como:
A fines del siglo XVIII el término colonialismo comenzó a adquirir una connotación negativa. Las primeras veces que se utilizó desde la perspectiva de la América española fue en las quejas de las elites criollas que cuestionaron los intereses de centralización política y explotación mercantil de los Borbones, en el contexto de una creciente tendencia al libre comercio en el Atlántico. Luego, durante la invasión napoleónica de la península, los mismos criollos denunciaron la desproporción en la representación de América en las cortes, con mayoría de peninsulares. En una época en que se valoraba la participación política, el espacio mínimo que se otorgó a las Américas reflejaba una injusta y desigual relación de poder.

Los territorios americanos, “Las Indias”, se habían integrado a la Monarquía como reinos y no como colonias. Y la relativa calma que perduró durante tres siglos dentro de la misma revela que, políticamente, el mundo hispano era estable. Esto nos obliga a pensar la historia de la Monarquía por fuera de supuestos (contemporáneos) de dominación, que le adjudican a la variedad de súbditos americanos una constante o natural pretensión “anticolonial”. Así pues, si utilizamos el concepto de “colonial” o “historia colonial” para demarcar el periodo durante el cual América y España estuvieron vinculadas dentro de una misma estructura monárquica o imperio, es necesario evadir perspectivas teleológicas que impiden comprender cómo se producían las identidades imperiales hispanas.

Los movimientos independentistas hispanoamericanos reinventaron el pasado negativamente y aprovecharon el potencial revolucionario del anticolonialismo en una época de rápido cambio político y volatilidad simbólica. Paradójicamente, al inventar las estructuras políticas y legales nacionales, las elites vencedoras revelaron ser portadoras del impulso centralista y colonialista (a menor escala) que le habían cuestionado a la Madre España.

Marcela Echeverri
Historiadora
2010

sere un nerd academica total, pero me parece fascinante - y la version virtual tiene arte grafico al estilo "colonial" que me encanta

minga

minga: minga (collective work action)

la minga llega a Bogota

The above are photos I took of the Colombian minga at the end of their long march, as it was coming in to the heart of Bogotá in November of 2008.

I have posted before about the term minga, so forgive me for going off about it again, but I continue to be frustrated that a lot of interps and translators are just leaving minga as minga into English, which I think will not make sense to most readers and loses some of its power. Yes, it is a powerful and complex enough word that we should work on importing it (like we have campesino) and educating English only listeners as to what a minga is, but to do that you have to add a quick simplified definition when you use it. I propose adding collective work action the first few times you use it.

In the Jan/Feb issue of NACLA there is a great article by Deborah Poole about the Colombian minga, in which she explains that:

"Minga is a Quechua word meaning “collective work” with wide currency among popular and poor sectors, both indigenous and mestizo, of the Andean republics. The Cauca-based minga of 2008 was grounded in the territorial and cultural demands of Colombia’s indigenous peoples, yet it is a movement that now extends across the Andes, engaging indigenous and non-indigenous sectors in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru (see “Against the Law of the Jungle"). Minga, however, is a concept that has traveled not only because of the “natural” cultural solidarities that run through indigenous ideals of community life, but also because Andean authorities long ago found in the minga a useful means to organize corvée labor, first in colonial mines and then later for the roads and public works that would provide evidence for the state’s presence in their nations’ otherwise forgotten indigenous territories. Thus the ACIN’s call to join in minga, as a name for a collective action that is at once local and international, gains force from both its cultural and historical references to a shared experience of subjugation. By calling their movement a minga, the indigenous participants call attention to both the work that must go into politics and the idea that that work must be collective. They also, of course, reclaim it from long histories of state-led attempts to organize and control collective politics and community organization."

Interpreters do it

… in two languages
… with their tongues
… with their mouth open

environmental security

environmental security: seguridad ecológica

See Simon Dalby's book by this name. I'm not sure Simon would include the breaking nuclear disaster but it has me thinking about this again.

no fly zone

no fly zone: zona de exclusión aérea

though this editorial in the Guardian argues that it's a euphemism for war

machine translation

Spanish...¿Cómo como como? Como como como!!

English equivalent...what do you mean how I eat? I eat the way I eat!

Try this with ANY machine and tell me what you get.

(Thanks to Ed Zaldibar for this one)

That said, I had always said before don't bother starting with machine translation and trying to clean it up, it will just get you going down the wrong track - BUT if you do this inside a good translation memory system (I like freetm.com) AND you've got a document with a lot of standard UN terminology, I've found that it CAN save you time looking up names of UN departments, etc. now that all UN translations are in google translate. But then, my poor editor has had to do a lot more clean up for me than normal when I use that crutch so .... I guess I'm still torn.

tip: keep a glossary

I haven't been good at keeping up my promise to offer tips for becoming a better interpreter on this blog, but here is one that will painfully obvious for the pros who read this, so forgive me. For those of you who are activists who get thrust into interpreting, let me suggest that if you don't already, you keep your own constantly growing glossary.

In my ideal world all solidarity orgs would have an organizational glossary of their key terms and put it online. But then, our soawatch one is out of date and we don't do a good job of sticking to it, so who am I to say. The USSF interpreters developed a great one which is online here.

My personal system for my own glossary is that when I'm interpreting and run across a word I either stumble on or think aha! that's a good rendition, I circle it in my notes (ojo, I always interpret with a notepad in hand, even when doing simultaneous - this one of the first rules you learn in any professional interpreting training and one far too few activist interpreters follow). When I'm done I go back through and write those down either in a glossary notebook or just straight into my excell glossary. I also keep track of social change related words that I hear other interpreters trip up on or render in less that stellar ways. I always have a little notebook in my purse and when I'm in conversations, listening to the radio, reading, etc - if a good term comes up I write it down and then move these to my excell file on Fridays. I am not as good at regularly importing that file into my translation memory glossary, which I usually build up as I'm working on written translations (I use the free online translation memory program at freetm.com which compares remarkably well to the super expensive programs).

Al glosario compas!

yellow dog union

yellow dog union/ company union/ false-front union:
sindicato charro (Mx), sindicato proteccionista (Mx), sindicato corporativizado (Mx), sindicato patronalista (Col), la patronal (just Mx?), and the safest, for being widely understood in a mixed audience: sindicato falso

You don't hear yellow dog union too often in the US, but more in Canada, as I was reminded today. It comes from the term yellow dog contract.

lobbyist

lobbyista

I know, it sounds funny, but check out this article that uses it.

Also see my previous post about lobbying in general. I agree with Dan's comment that hacer incidencia is a broader concept than just lobbying, but I still think it works.

crazy translation ap

Point your iphone at a word on the wall and *poof* have it machine translated. What is hilarious about this ad for it is that it is riddled with machine translation errors. BUT what machine translation IS good for is getting the gist of what something is about. Ss a gadget geek, I am pretty impressed with this use of it. Haven't actually seen it in action yet (no smart phone) - has anyone else?

degrowth

degrowth: decrecimiento

With props to my student Skyler, who first taught me about this great concept, and even worked on this wikipedia entry on it for class.

Este documental lo explica bien, es super interesante y divertido - y la recomiendo especialmente para cuando estas tentada a comprar algo nuevo!

sapo

sapo: snitch

If you haven't heard the dramatic story of the activist snitch recently exposed in the UK check it out here.

minga

minga: collective work project/exchange/party/action (my favorite is the last) I DO think it is worth translating at least once - just leaving it as minga will not be easily understood and is the easy way out that seems to me to be taken far too often.

Thanks to Autumn Zellers who (after we talked about it over dinner with Mary Roldan at the LASA conference) sent me this quote from Joanne Rappaport's book Intercultural Utopias, pp 92-3:

"Manuel Quintin Lame, a Nasa leader of the early 20th century, spread his indigenista message through "teaching mingas" (mingas adoctrinados), meetings at which his political demands for indigenous territorial rights and self goernment were aired (Castrillon Arboleda 1973, 91-2). These gatherings adapted the traditional notion of the minga, an Andean institution coordinating the reciprocal exchange of labor that unites members of a community within a network of mutual obligations (Alberti and Mayer 1974), to the highly charged political context of Lame's movement."

Autumn suggested that this made it sound like a kibbutz. Personally I don't know alot about how kibbutzes work and am not sure many others do either. Lately I heard it rendered as 'pow wow'. I *have* been to a lot of pow wows and I certainly don't think they're anything like a minga!

I like the definition Nicole Karsin put up on her fundraising site: "Across Colombian native cultures, a "minga" is a community action aimed at improving the collective well-being. It is the undertaking of an important task that can only be achieved if everyone participates. Defend human rights and native peoples in Colombia by joining this particular "minga" and guarantee the completion of the important ‘collective action’ that is this film." The film is We Women Warriors, a great project to share the stories of brave and inspiring indigenous Colombian women - support her kickstart campaign and help her get it out!

subtitle software, take two

I posted before about dot sub as one subtitling software option, and in a comment (thank you all commenters!) Manuel suggested Subtitle Workshop, an open source option designed in Uruguay.

Now there's one that is designed just for YouTube, called Caption Tube. It is described here. I haven't used any of these, since all I do these days is dissertate, but I thought I would put it out there for folks looking for something super quick and easy for a short protest youtube video you uploaded directly from your handy flip camera, or what have you!

primero Dios

primero Dios: if it is God's will



I have often struggled to interpret this saying, which is sometimes sprinkled liberally throughout sentences. I liked this version in today's Democracy Now! headlines. If you're not listening to these daily online - why not? Best independent media out there, in both English and Spanish. Great way to practice.

So the relevant headline today was about Dilma Rousseff being sworn in as Brazil’s first female president on Saturday. Outgoing president Lula said:

"It is deeply symbolic that the presidential sash is being handed over from the first working-class president to the first female president. This will be a landmark in the beautiful path our people have been building to turn Brazil, if it’s God’s will, into one of the world’s most equal countries."

May this new year bring more equality to us all! Many thanks to those of you who read this blog and care about making our movements more multilingual, and especially to those who comment. May we achieve better working conditions as interpreters and translators in the new year!

tertulia

una tertulia: a 'salon' or an artsy 'get-together'

When I went looking for images online, they were mostly of men talking. Hmmm.

Interestingly, the word has made it into the English language wikipedia, which says that it is "a social gathering with literary or artistic overtones, especially in Iberia or Latin America. The word is originally Spanish, and has only moderate currency in English, in describing Latin cultural contexts."

The Spanish language wikipedia dice "Una tertulia es una reunión, informal y periódica, de gente interesada en un tema o en una rama concreta del arte, ciencia o filosofia, para debatir e informarse o compartir ideas y opiniones. Por lo general la reunión tiene lugar en un café o cafetería, y suelen participar en ellas personas del ámbito intelectual. Es una costumbre de origen español y se mantuvo arraigada hasta mediados del siglo xx en las colonias independizadas del imperio español. A los asistentes se les llama contertulios o tertulianos." y claro, la definición de ahí sigue y sigue.

Anyways, hope you have some fun artsy conversations over the holidays!