Evidence of a huge movement to communicate shows up at every big box. Just walk down the aisles at Wal-Mart and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll find dozens of shingles advertising coffee, for example, and below it will be the word in Spanish, “cafe.”<\/p>\n
Clearly, the translation is done to accommodate our Spanish-speaking newcomers, not so much to teach us that bread is “pan.” Well, we knew that already. Yet, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s helpful if there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s residual acquisition of one language or the other as we browse the aisles.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great to know that a paloma is a dove, but the diminutive form, palomita, is popcorn, according to the store markers. And syrup isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t miel, as I used to believe, but jarabe, which sounds more like a dance than a topping for pancakes.<\/p>\n
I suspect much of four-decades-ago northern New Mexico was more bilingual than now. One hardly hears Spanish on the playgrounds, and even at public meetings where the topic is bilingual education, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in English.<\/p>\n
In our home, we learned (and ate) what was available, and the menu was somewhat limited.<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why my high school friend Evelyn was underwhelmed when I wrote her from Gallup, where I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d moved, and described a wonderful concoction of beans, cheese and chile wrapped in a tortilla. “It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s called a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcburrito,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122” I wrote her.<\/p>\n
Duh. “It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a family favorite for years,” she said, dashing any hope I had of introducing her to a galaxy of gastronomic treats.<\/p>\n
The same thing happened with guacamole. Mom never prepared it for us, and therefore my first (favorable) experience with it was as a side dish at El Alto. In those days, most people ate at home. There was no cafe society like today.<\/p>\n
But back to signs and messages. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve long believed that the Spanish we grew up with was mainly oral, seldom written. A short-lived underground newspaper that briefly went overground at Highlands in the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc70s contained the question, “Que vas hacer?” but the writer spelled it<\/p>\n
“Ke voss aser.” Well, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a nice phonetic rendition of the question, “What you gonna do?” but the spelling\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s way off. And it looks more Scandinavian than Spandinavian.<\/p>\n
John Ciardi, the poetry editor for the Saturday Review, once wrote of the difficulty of translating things faithfully and used the term “transliteration,” which says it all. Rather than the eye-for-an-eye, verb-for-a-verb method, how about trying to translate the entire meaning and not playing translatory checkers?<\/p>\n
Last year, for example, I wrote about instructions translated to English about riding a razor scooter which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d bought for my grandson and namesake.<\/p>\n
It recommended riding on smooth, dry surfaces and wearing the proper gear. It read \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not making this up \u00e2\u20ac\u201d “Abecedarian at the complanate arid flat ground coast please handlers at gliding, it would be best draw on helmet and kneecap, shin guard and protect artifice, for fear accident injurie from falls.”<\/p>\n
Yeah, right. Got it!<\/p>\n
When people meet others who speak a different language, they often want to know, “How do you say this word in your language?”<\/p>\n
I asked the same of a Navajo, expecting an equally exotic answer for an object we wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see on the reservation. The man responded that his language \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and most others \u00e2\u20ac\u201d use “airplane” and do the same for new terms. Though I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t inquired, I surmise computers, Ipods and Blackberries and laptops are pronounced the same as in English.<\/p>\n
What does a Spanish speaker, new to this country, make of some of the mangled translations that appear all over? A recent newspaper flyer inserted in the Optic advertised laptop computers (memo to the technologically challenged: some of these laptops are also called notebooks).<\/p>\n
So the Spanish rendition became “cuaderno,” which is, yes, a notebook, but not quite a laptop. Many of us still think of a notebook as one of those spiral contraptions with a bunch of pages and dividers for school subjects.<\/p>\n
But wait, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more. The flyer described a host of items for home and school, with the heading, “Computers get cool for back to school.” It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lovely rhyme, but “getting cool” doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean the same to a mono-lingual Spanish speaker. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true that the verb “to get” is “conseguir” in Spanish, and the adjective “cool” is “fresco” in Spanish, but “Computadoras consiguen fresco” just doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t cut it.”<\/p>\n
Remember, “cool” was be-bopper term for “groovy,” but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a subject for another column.<\/p>\n
So how does one translate “back to school”? Well, to return is “regresar.” and school is “escuela,” but school in this translation comes out as a verb, as in “to school or educate someone.” The flyer translates the complete sentence this way: “Las computadoras Consiguen Fresco para la Espalda para Educar.”<\/p>\n
So what have we here? It reads something like “The computers obtain cool for back to being schooled.” Great, except that “espalda” refers to a human\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s back.<\/p>\n
One can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t simply pluck words out of a translating dictionary and expect to retain the meaning. And some things you can say in one language just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wash in translation.<\/p>\n
The flyer in question adds that “Everyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lucky dog” by doing business with this company. Nobody ever howled or bared his canines as being called a lucky dog. But the text beneath this assertion proudly says, “Todos personas son perros con buena suerte.” We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all dogs with good luck?<\/p>\n
So, using the right modifiers and carefully chosen context, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s okay to call people dogs, but the suerte won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be very buena if we call them perros.<\/p>\n
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