Tag Archive for 'hispanic news'

The Use of Neutral Spanish for the U.S. Hispanic Market

Published on October 14, 2009 in Latinos, Spanish Language, Spanish Translation and Tips for Translators. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

There is little doubt about the growing influence of the Hispanic demographic in the United States.  According to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Latinos comprise 14.8% of the population for a total of 44.3 million people.  What’s more, Hispanics are projected to account for almost 25% of the total U.S. population by the year 2050.[1]  The incredible cultural and linguistic diversity of the U.S. Hispanic population presents a challenge for retailers and other businesses who want to reach out to the Latino segment and harness the economic potential within that group.  So, how does one effectively communicate with and market to an audience consisting of cultures from across the Spanish-speaking world?  The answer lies in the use of neutral Spanish.

When creating advertising campaigns, website content, or other materials geared toward the U.S. Hispanic audience, companies are wise to consider the use of neutral Spanish, which avoids regionalisms, colloquial language, and certain verb tenses and conjugations that hint at a particular dialect.  Translators and writers employing neutral Spanish seek to produce a text that is universally understood by Spanish speakers.  Given the dynamic nature of the Latino community, a translator should have contact with the Hispanic market in the U.S. in order to make the best decisions regarding word choice.

The use of neutral Spanish for Latino audiences is gaining traction in television and radio as well.  The rise in popularity of neutral Spanish on the airwaves signals a real change in how U.S. Hispanics view themselves as a unique community apart from their respective countries of origin.  Ilan Stavans, Professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College in Massachusetts, notes, “It is a widespread trend that is quite significant because it says much about how Latinos in the U.S. are consolidating their own identity.” [2]

Though neutral Spanish lacks an equivalent in the real world (think Received Pronunciation in the U.K. or Standard American English in the U.S.), erasing traces of a telltale accent from spoken Spanish or country-specific slang from the written word serves to avoid confusing or even offending the audience and goes a long way in appealing to the broad Hispanic demographic in the United States.

References:
[1] Hispanic Population of the United States, U.S. Census Bureau
[2] American Spanish?  Telemundo coaches “neutral” accents, Hispanic American Center for Economic Research (HACER)

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Notable Hispanic and Latino Americans – Part II

Published on October 1, 2009 in Latinos. 5 Comments Tags: , , , .

Part II of our list of some notable Hispanic and Latino Americans, citizens or residents of the United States with ancestry or origins in Hispanic America.

Education

Richard A. Tapia selected for the National Science Board (governing board for the National Science Foundation) by President Bill Clinton.

Richard A. Tapia (born March 25, 1939) is a renowned American mathematician and champion of under-represented minorities in the sciences. In recognition of his broad contributions, in 2005, Tapia was named “University Professor” at Rice University in Houston, Texas, the University’s highest academic title. The honor has been bestowed on only six professors in the Rice’s ninety-four year history. Tapia is currently the Maxfield and Oshman Professor of Engineering; Associate Director of Graduate Studies, Office of Research and Graduate Studies; and Director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education at Rice University.

Tapia’s mathematical research is focused on mathematical optimization and iterative methods for nonlinear problems. His current research is in the area of algorithms for constrained optimization and interior point methods for linear and nonlinear programming.

Music

Tito Puente (Puerto Rico)
Tito Puente, Sr., (April 20, 1923–May 31, 2000), born Ernesto Antonio Puente, Jr., was an Latin jazz and mambo musician. The son of native Puerto Ricans Ernest and Ercilia Puente, of Spanish Harlem in New York City, Puente is often credited as “El Rey” (the King) of the timbales and “The King of Latin Music”. He is best known for dance-oriented mambo and Latin jazz compositions that helped keep his career going for 50 years. He and his music appear in many films such as The Mambo Kings and Fernando Trueba’s Calle 54. He guest starred on several television shows including The Cosby Show and The Simpsons.

Carlos Santana (Mexico)
Carlos Augusto Alves Santana (born July 20, 1947) is a Mexican-born American Grammy Award-winning rock musician and guitarist. Santana became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered a blend of rock, salsa and jazz fusion. The band’s sound featured his melodic, blues-based guitar lines set against Latin percussion such as timbales and congas. Santana continued to work in these forms over the following decades. He experienced a sudden resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. Rolling Stone also named Santana number 15 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time in 2003

Visual arts

Franck de Las Mercedes, painter
Franck de Las Mercedes, (b. 1972 in Masaya, Nicaragua) is a Nicaraguan American artist, based in New York. He was raised in a family of Nicaraguan folklore dancers, musicians and teachers, and spent his childhood immersed in the performing arts. In the mid-eighties, the Sandinista/Contra war forced Franck’s family to immigrate to New York where Mercedes grew up and worked in music and theatre, studying under Gail Noppe-Brandon. In the late nineties he began working as an artist.

He has painted small empty boxes, a public art project called the Priority Boxes, labelled with the words “PAZ”, “JUSTICIA”, “TRANQUILIDAD”, and “AMOR”, which he sends around the world for free. This mail art project started in 2006. “The Priority Boxes” project is a public art series that seeks, to make people reconsider their ability to influence change, question the fragility and priority of entities like peace, and also to communicate, interact through art and make it accessible to people from all walks of life.

Soraida Martinez, Artist, Creator of Verdadism (Mexico)
Soraida Martinez is a contemporary abstract expressionist artist who creates hard-edge paintings. She was born in Harlem, New York City, USA on July 30, 1956.

Since 1992 Soraida Martinez has been known as the creator of Verdadism, a form of hard-edge abstraction where each painting is accompanied by a written social commentary. Martinez is the only artist to write a social statement for every painting that she creates. Viewers are drawn to both the artist’s abstract paintings and her bold commentaries on humanity and the universal human condition. According to Martinez’ artist’s statement, “My art reflects the essence of my true self and the truth within me…My struggle is for recognition, acceptance and inclusion; and, against racism, sexism and the dominant eurocentric male society, which never expected much from me but still did not allow my voice to be heard. My belief is that one must empower oneself with one’s own truth…”.

Sciences
Fernando Caldeiro, astronaut (Argentina)
Fernando “Frank” Caldeiro (b. June 12, 1958 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) is an American astronaut (Class XVI) with a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Arizona and the University of Central Florida.

Caldeiro, whose ancestors are from Galicia, is currently assigned to high altitude research flights in the NASA WB-57 aircraft.

In 2002, he was appointed to the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.

Mario Molina, Nobel Prize-winning chemist (Mexico)
José Mario Molina-Pasquel Henríquez (born March 19, 1943 in Mexico City) is a Mexican-born American chemist and one of the most prominent precursors to the discovering of the Antarctic ozone hole. He was a co-recipient (along Paul J. Crutzen and F. Sherwood Rowland) of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his role in elucidating the threat to the Earth’s ozone layer of chlorofluorocarbon gases (or CFCs), becoming the first Mexican-born citizen to ever receive a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Basketball

Manu Ginóbili, NBA player (Argentina)
Emanuel David “Manu” Ginóbili (born 28 July 1977 in Bahía Blanca, Argentina) is an Argentine professional basketball player. Coming from a family of professional basketball players, he is a member of the Argentine men’s national basketball team and the San Antonio Spurs in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Ginóbili spent the early part of his basketball career in Argentina and Italy, where he won several individual and team honors. His stint with Italian side Kinder Bologna was particularly productive, earning two Lega A Most Valuable Player awards, the Euroleague Final Four MVP and the 2001 Euroleague and Triple Crown championships. The shooting guard was selected as the 57th overall pick in the 1999 NBA Draft and is considered one of the biggest draft steals of all time. Ginóbili returned to Italy and only joined the Spurs in 2002. He did not take long to establish himself as a key player for the Spurs, and has since won three NBA championships as well as being named an All-Star in 2005. In the 2007–08 season, he was named the NBA Sixth Man of the Year.

Francisco García, NBA player (Dominican Republic)
Francisco García (born December 31, 1981, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) is a Dominican professional basketball player who currently plays for the Sacramento Kings of the NBA. A 6’7″, 195-pound guard–forward from the University of Louisville, García was selected by the Kings in the first round (23rd overall) of the 2005 NBA Draft. He now plays a variety of positions for the Kings, and on September 25, 2008, signed a five-year extension with the Kings. It was worth $23 million.

As a college basketball player at Louisville under coach Rick Pitino he enjoyed great success along with future NBA player Reece Gaines. He averaged 15.7 points per game as a junior and, along with teammate and best friend Taquan Dean, led his 4th-seeded team to the 2005 Final Four in Saint Louis, Missouri. Forgoing his senior season, García decided to go professional and enter the ranks of the NBA. In his rookie season for the Kings, García appeared in 67 games (11 starts) and averaged 5.6 points per game.

Source: Wikipedia

Study: Latinos now account for one in five American children

Published on May 29, 2009 in Latinos and Spanish Language. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Latinos now account for about one in five American children – up from one in 10 three decades ago – thanks largely to a huge influx of Mexican and Central American immigrants that began in 1980, a study released Thursday found.

The American-born children of parents who arrived since the 1980s now make up a majority of Latino youngsters in the United States, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C.

This second generation of American-born children of at least one Latino immigrant parent now constitute 52 percent of the nation’s 16 million Hispanic children, the study found.

Many of those children are also well integrated into the mainstream of American society – assimilating to various degrees depending on how long their parents have lived in the United States. For example, third-generation Latino children are more likely to avoid poverty, but live in single-parent homes, than first generation Latino children.

Families like that of Carlos and Ann Alcaraz of Van Nuys, whose home in a tree-lined neighborhood has nurtured their two daughters and son in the American Dream, are a microcosm of the new report.

“My older sister, Marisa, just got her master’s degree from the University of Southern California, and I’ve been accepted at the University of California, Irvine,” says 18-year-old Christina Alcaraz, who is about to graduate from Cleveland High School.

“You can’t get much more middle-class American than that.”

The new report found a profound change in today’s population of Latino children from those of 1980, before the historic immigration wave from Mexico, Central America and South America.

Like many of today’s Latino youth, one of the Alcaraz’s parents is American-born – their mother – and their father was born abroad.

“My father came here from Tijuana and made a good life for himself and his family,” says Christina Alcaraz.

Sociologists and demographers say families like the Alcarazes show the fundamental change occurring in America.

“They are the future,” said Jorge Garcia, a Chicano Studies professor at California State University, Northridge.

“Historically, it’s the second generation that assimilates and becomes American.”

The new Pew Center study, called “Latino Children: A Majority are U.S.-Born Offspring of Immigrants,” underscores the impact of the immigration boom that began around 1980.

In that year, only three in 10 Latino children were second-generation, or born in the U.S. to at least one immigrant parent. That same year, six in 10 Latino children were in the third generation or higher, meaning their parents or grandparents were born in the United States.

Today, according to the study, those figures are almost reversed. While just over half of Latino children are second-generation, some 37 percent are third-generation or higher.

Latinos now make up more than one out of five children in the United States and, as their numbers have grown, their demographic profile has changed, according to the report.

Pew researchers say the shift in the generational status of Latino children is important because analysis of the most recent U.S. census data indicates that many social, economic and demographic characteristics of Latino children vary sharply by their generational status.

Various indicators of the socioeconomic status of Latino children of U.S.-born parents are higher than for Latino children of immigrant parents.

For instance, third-generation Latino children have better-educated parents than their second- and first-generation peers and were more likely to live in households with annual incomes of at least $75,000.

“Some of these children’s families have been in the country for many generations,” the report said. “In fact, persons of Hispanic descent resided in the United States before the American Revolution.”

But among first-generation Latino children, 43 percent are not fluent in English, compared with one in five second-generation Hispanic children and 5 percent of third-generation children.

“English ability matters because it is highly related to educational test score performance and high school completion,” the study said.

First-generation Latino children were more likely to live in poverty.

But the report said health-based and other indicators suggest Latino children in immigrant families fare better in some dimensions.

For instance, almost seven in 10 first-generation Latino children live in married-couple families, just below the figure for second-generation children. But only slightly more than half of third-generation and higher children live in a married couple household.

The report also concluded that the number of Latino children who are “second generation” may soon peak, though the percentage of Hispanics born in the U.S. with at least one immigrant parent is still on the rise.

“Demographic projections,” the report said, “suggest that among the entire Hispanic population, the second-generation will not peak until at least 2050.”

By Tony Castro

Source: http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_12473828

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