Evidence of a huge movement to communicate shows up at every big box. Just walk down the aisles at Wal-Mart and you’ll find dozens of shingles advertising coffee, for example, and below it will be the word in Spanish, “cafe.”

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’s helpful if there’s residual acquisition of one language or the other as we browse the aisles.

It’s great to know that a paloma is a dove, but the diminutive form, palomita, is popcorn, according to the store markers. And syrup isn’t miel, as I used to believe, but jarabe, which sounds more like a dance than a topping for pancakes.

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’s in English.

In our home, we learned (and ate) what was available, and the menu was somewhat limited.

That’s why my high school friend Evelyn was underwhelmed when I wrote her from Gallup, where I’d moved, and described a wonderful concoction of beans, cheese and chile wrapped in a tortilla. “It’s new, and it’s called a ‘burrito,’” I wrote her.

Duh. “It’s been a family favorite for years,” she said, dashing any hope I had of introducing her to a galaxy of gastronomic treats.

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.

But back to signs and messages. I’ve 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 ‘70s contained the question, “Que vas hacer?” but the writer spelled it

“Ke voss aser.” Well, that’s a nice phonetic rendition of the question, “What you gonna do?” but the spelling’s way off. And it looks more Scandinavian than Spandinavian.

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?

Last year, for example, I wrote about instructions translated to English about riding a razor scooter which I’d bought for my grandson and namesake.

It recommended riding on smooth, dry surfaces and wearing the proper gear. It read — and I’m not making this up — “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.”

Yeah, right. Got it!

When people meet others who speak a different language, they often want to know, “How do you say this word in your language?”

I asked the same of a Navajo, expecting an equally exotic answer for an object we wouldn’t see on the reservation. The man responded that his language — and most others — use “airplane” and do the same for new terms. Though I haven’t inquired, I surmise computers, Ipods and Blackberries and laptops are pronounced the same as in English.

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).

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.

But wait, there’s more. The flyer described a host of items for home and school, with the heading, “Computers get cool for back to school.” It’s a lovely rhyme, but “getting cool” doesn’t mean the same to a mono-lingual Spanish speaker. It’s true that the verb “to get” is “conseguir” in Spanish, and the adjective “cool” is “fresco” in Spanish, but “Computadoras consiguen fresco” just doesn’t cut it.”

Remember, “cool” was be-bopper term for “groovy,” but that’s a subject for another column.

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.”

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’s back.

One can’t 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’t wash in translation.

The flyer in question adds that “Everyone’s 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’re all dogs with good luck?

So, using the right modifiers and carefully chosen context, it’s okay to call people dogs, but the suerte won’t be very buena if we call them perros.