Tag Archive for 'spanish'

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English Plus: The Antidote to English Only?

Published on July 16, 2008 in English Language. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Last week’s blog post focused on the English Only movement and its proponents who want to make English the nation’s official language. Their hard-line approach, which many feel attempts to negate the benefits of a multilingual society, is countered by the English Plus movement.

Those who support English Plus encourage second-language acquisition for immigrants and citizens alike. Rather than looking at those who are not native English speakers as somehow disabled linguistically, English Plus attempts to celebrate their native language ability while providing immigrants with the resources to become proficient in English.

Furthermore, English Plus encourages monolingual English speakers to acquire skills in a second language. While in certain parts of the country, American-born people are proud to have learned a second language, the country as a whole remains staunchly monolingual.

In fact, the world jokes about the prevailing attitude of Americans that forces others to learn English without reciprocation:

What do you call someone who speaks three languages?
Trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks two languages?
Bilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks one language?
American.

English Plus proposes to counteract popular opinion of monolingual American citizens as well as support newcomers’ acquisition of English as a Second Language.

But what do they seek to do on the legislative front?

• Oppose any English Only policies at the state and federal levels.
• Expand opportunities for English language learning.
• Enable newcomers to participate in civic life even if they are not yet proficient in English.
• Encourage the retention of immigrants’ native languages for the benefit of both the individual and society.
• Retain and strengthen language assistance systems, especially in the public sector.

But what are the main barriers to our moving towards a society that respects people’s rights to retain and use their native language while supporting their desire to learn English? Two things: attitudes and funding. The English Only movement boasts 170,000 members, and there are plenty more people who feel threatened by languages other than English who aren’t official members. And as the U.S. economy flounders, funding for state and federally supported English classes is being cut.

To read more about English Plus, follow the links to two resources:

English Plus Movement (founding document)
English Plus vs. English Only

Spanish-Language Statistics

Published on June 30, 2008 in Spanish Language and Translation Buyers. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

If you live in the United States, you’re probably no longer surprised to overhear Spanish being spoken. But just how widespread is the Spanish language in the world today? Over 250 million people speak Spanish as their first language and if we include those who speak Spanish as their second language, the total number of Spanish speakers is over 400 million.Within the United States, Spanish is the second most widely spoken language. According to the 2006 US Census, over 34 million people primarily speak Spanish at home.

Some more facts about Spanish usage in the United States:

  • Over half of the country’s Spanish speakers live in California, Texas, and Florida.
  • 19% percent of Hispanics in the U.S. speak only Spanish, 9% speak only English, 55% speak very limited English, and 17% are fully English-Spanish bilingual.
  • Almost all second-generation Hispanic Americans speak English and 50% speak Spanish at home.

It’s clear that over generations in the U.S., Hispanics shift from being Spanish-dominant to English-dominant, as explained in a previous blog post. But it also remains clear that as immigrants continue to arrive in the United States with little to no English-language proficiency, there remains a need in the marketplace for products and services to be marketed in Spanish.

Text Expansion in Spanish Translations

If you’ve ever listened to a Spanish-English interpreter, you may have wondered why the interpreter’s translation into English of a Spanish statement seemed so much shorter and the converse so much longer. What you’ve witnessed is contraction and expansion when translating between two languages.

The same thing occurs in written translations, and can affect how your final document appears if you don’t take text expansion into account when creating your layout. When translating from English into Spanish, the text may expand up to 20% and when working into Spanish from English, the text can contract up to 15%.

If you need a document with a fixed template or page count translated, such as a brochure or newsletter, not taking text expansion or contraction into account can make your best graphic design attempts fall apart in translation.

Here are a couple of tips to avoid large expanses of white space or overcrowding in the final translated document:

  • Use a larger font in English to account for text expansion into Spanish and a smaller font for Spanish to English translations.
  • Have a translation-friendly template ready with reduced point size and decreased space between paragraphs.
  • Avoid document styles such as nested lists, since what looks clean and crisp in English may look silly when translated into Spanish.

Spanish 101 or How Not to Embarrass Yourself Immediately

Published on June 17, 2008 in Spanish Language. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Anyone who has successfully learned a second language as an adult will tell you that it’s not easy, but the more risks you take, the more rewarding the results will be. Rather than looking at the Spanish language as a minefield of potential mistakes, look at it as a journey during which you will explore communicating in a new tongue. And your tongue and mind will certainly work overtime as you attempt to roll your r’s, formulate questions and thoughts, and understand what native speakers say.I always liken learning Spanish to child development: a baby first learns to crawl, then to stand upright, and then finally to walk. Don’t expect to be running a language marathon before you’ve even learned to roll over.

At the beginning, your attempts at communication may seem simplistic. This can be frustrating for adults who have been thinking and expressing complicated ideas in their native language for years, but it’s part of the learning process. Let’s start with a couple phrases that you might try to use that will definitely get a giggle.

You may feel self-conscious and timid when faced with a conversation with a real-live Spanish speaker and you want to let them know. Your first impulse is to share your embarrassment and nervousness so you carefully say “Estoy embarazado(a),” because you want to tell them you are embarrassed. There are several issues with this statement:

  • You tried to translate your English thought directly into Spanish.
  • You unintentionally used a false cognate, which is a word seemingly similar in English and Spanish, but actually has two very different meanings in each language.
  • You just told the listener that you were pregnant and not embarrassed.

What you should have said was either “Me da pena” “Me da vergüenza” (It gives me shame) or “Tengo pena” “Tengo vergüenza” (I feel shame).

When we have few words at our disposal to describe our feelings or we find ourselves making small talk with a new person, what topic do humans often resort to?

If you thought about the weather and our reaction to it, you hit upon the most common topic for idle chit-chat as well as the one with the most probability for mortification for a new Spanish-speaker.

Imagine that you’re sitting in a tropical garden with your new host family and you’re from a cold climate or that you’re sweating through a business meeting with new clients in a Latin American country close to the equator. You decide to open a dialogue about the heat, so you search your brain for a phrase to describe how you feel about the weather. Translating directly from English, you come up with “Estoy caliente.” Your companions either stare at you or hide their smiles behind their hands.

Why would they have this reaction when you simply mentioned the heat? Well, because in translating directly from English, you just told them that you were sexually aroused rather than warm. You should have said “Hace calor,” both of which express that the weather is warm and have no sexual connotations.

Also, beware of the possible sexual connotations implied in doing something as simple as ordering breakfast. You’re probably used to inquiring about whether a restaurant or your host has a particular item in stock by using the phrase “Do you have…?” Beware of using the phrase in Spanish when asking about eggs, as in “¿Tienes huevos?” or the more formal “¿Tiene usted huevos?” What you are asking the waiter or host in this direct translation is “Do you have testicles?,” since huevos is slang for testicles. You’re better off using the generic “¿Hay huevos?” if you’d like eggs.

Next week we’ll explore more common errors for Spanish language learners.

Learning Spanish Online

Published on May 19, 2008 in Spanish Language. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

The best method for learning Spanish is total immersion in the language. However, you might not have the time or the money to take an extended learning holiday to ramp up your Spanish skills. And while there are some excellent software programs and sets of CDs that you can purchase, the Internet has a fantastic array of free language learning resources. Below are links to and brief descriptions of a selection of Spanish learning tools.

Community

Palabea: The Speaking World and My Happy Planet are both community oriented sites. On each site, users create a profile and then are able to chat and practice with native speakers of their target language. Both are social networking sites, so the value in using them would come from communicating in Spanish with native speakers and others who are learning the language.

Spanish Slang

If you already speak some Spanish, there are two great sites to explore regional slang. Tu Babel is an online dictionary of slang and regionalisms created by the online community. The “angel” button is a nice feature, and will enable you to block entries that aren’t PG-rated. Jergas de Habla Hispana is another great, constantly growing resource for those seeking to understand the varied and colorful slang of the Spanish-speaking world. Both sites are completely in Spanish, and require a fairly good level of comprehension, but can be indispensable if you communicate with Spanish-speakers and want to really understand the words they use. Continue reading ‘Learning Spanish Online’

Spanish usage in US

Published on April 30, 2008 in News and Spanish Translation. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

On April 23, 2008 Transpanish posted a blog article about the movement to cultivate the usage of “proper” Spanish on the Internet. Remember that this movement originated in Spain. But what import does this movement have on Spanish speakers residing in the United States? The usage of proper written and spoken Spanish may still be of import in university Hispanic Studies or translation studies programs in which students are working from documents written by native Spanish speakers. But the reality of spoken and written Spanish and how they’re used in the U.S. is very different from what the Real Academia Española purports.

Take the following points into consideration:

• Mainly monolingual Spanish speakers immigrate to the U.S., but by the third generation, the descendants of those immigrants are primarily English speakers.

• The children and grandchildren of first-generation immigrants generally speak some Spanish, but are educated in English and therefore do not have a background in the conventions of written Spanish.

• Spanish speakers in the U.S. are extremely heterogeneous with regard to their educational level and country of origin.

• Spanish speakers, regardless of their fluency in English, must to some degree navigate an English speaking world.

The result of these combined points is that Spanish spoken in the U.S. is constantly transforming and deeply informed by English, which results in the unique language that we refer to as Spanglish.

Spanglish is the popular term for what linguists refer to as code-switching, which can be either mixing English and Spanish terms within the same sentence (i.e. “Voy a hacer un appointment” instead of “I’m going to make an appointment”) or transforming words from one language by applying the conventions of another (i.e. parquear instead of to park). Spanglish can only be used when both the speaker and listener are equally versed in both Spanish and English, the numbers of which are constantly growing.

Because of this, those who market to Spanish, English, and Spanglish speakers have to be flexible and aware of the truly fluid nature of language use in this country. A good translation agency will be able to help clients navigate the constantly transforming landscape of Spanish as it is spoken in the U.S.

Social Networking in Spanish Explodes

Published on February 5, 2008 in News and Spanish Translation. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, and MySpace are all social networking websites that are extremely popular with youth. Users can connect with others to chat, share photos, videos, and comments through individually designed pages. Up until recently, U.S.-based web applications have primarily been in English, although users can chat, post comments, and interact in Spanish.

A 2007 article in USA Today explores how social networking sites are branching out to appeal to Spanish-speaking users. ElHood.com, for example, caters to those interested in music in Spanish.

Continue reading ‘Social Networking in Spanish Explodes’

Language Shifting and the Role of Spanish Translations

Published on January 28, 2008 in Spanish Translation and Translation Buyers. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

A study released by the Pew Hispanic Center in November reports that English fluency increases across generations, even in first-generation monolingual Spanish-speaking families. Furthermore, by the third generation, Spanish has all but faded into the background.

While those who arrive in the U.S. as adults may always struggle with learning English, their children either grow up bilingual or use English as their dominant language at the expense of Spanish.

Continue reading ‘Language Shifting and the Role of Spanish Translations’

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