German–Spanish correspondence that skips over the English middleman

An English speaker learning German will note many correspondences and cognates between the English and German languages. English is, indeed, a member of the Germanic family of languages.

Likewise, an English speaker learning Spanish will notice many cognates – mostly different ones – between English and Spanish, due mainly to the Latin roots of Spanish and the influence of Latin on English.
 
There are many fewer correspondences between Spanish and German, and very few that skip over English altogether, but here are three that I’ve noticed:

1. German and Spanish use the same word for “heaven” and “sky” (Himmel and cielo, respectively), unlike English.
2. German and Spanish use the same word for “morning” and “tomorrow” (Morgen and mañana, respectively), unlike English.
3. This one is a little more complex to explain. A long-running popular detective show on German TV is called “Tatort,” literally “the place (Ort) of the deeds (Tat),” but the compound word translates to “scene of the crime.”  “El lugar de los hechos,” in Spanish again would literally mean “the place of the deeds/events” but the phrase, like the German compound word, has the connotation of “the scene of the crime.”

False Friend: Inconvenient[e]

Sometimes a false friend turns up when there is no actual translation from a source text to a target text (at least I surmise that’s what happened here). I may be stretching in calling it a false friend, but in my judgement, the word choice was too influenced by Spanish, and gives the wrong impression. This article in the the Toronto Star is about Mexico’s promotion of less-known sites to tourists. The Mexican Secretary [I’d call her ‘Minister’] of Tourism visited Toronto “promoting 10 new ‘Routes of Mexico,’ a travel program that connects multiple cities under themes that tourists can pick according to their interest.”

In view of concerns about escalating drug violence in Mexico, the Minister is

“launching a hotline this summer that tourists can call if they experience ‘any inconvenience.’ The person on the phone will act as a sort of ombudsman to resolve problems.”

I’ll bet that the Minister of Tourism said inconveniente, or, if she was speaking in English, was thinking of that Spanish word.

It’s a false friend for “inconvenient.” I’d even put it the class of Tricky False Friends, because the meanings are close and may overlap. Nevertheless, they’re not the same.

Let’s compare:
inconvenient: not convenient especially in giving trouble or annoyance

inconveniente: 1. no conveniente* [not conveniente; so here we branch to explore the meaning of…]

*conveniente:
1. adj. Útil, oportuno, provechoso. [useful, proper]
2. adj. Conforme, concorde. [consistent]
3. adj. Decente, proporcionado. [decent, appropriate]

OK, back to inconveniente:
2. m. Impedimento u obstáculo que hay para hacer algo. [impediment or obstacle]
3. m. Daño y perjuicio que resulta de ejecutarlo. [damage or resulting harm]

The comment on the tourist hotline being juxtaposed with concerns about violence, I hypothesize the hotline is meant to deal with crimes and related problems, not “inconveniences” in the sense of the English word, which could cover much milder situations. In Spanish, “inconveniences” might be called incomodidades or molestias, but I doubt the tourist hotline is intended to help tourists who find the bed too hard, or the bathwater too cold. But I’m only speculating.

One-to-many (ES-EN) or many-to-one (EN-ES)

Both “spectre” and “spectrum” are “espectro” in Spanish. Confusion abounded until I figured it out.

Very good corpus search tool

Thanks to Reed James for a tip about Linear B, an set of online searchable translation memories. I don't know where the translation memories are from—evidently not ancient Mycenean stone tablets, because it is giving me spectacular results whenever I’m stuck on a word or phrase. I think I will be using this a lot from now on.

Here are the direct links for searching Linear B Spanish to English, and English to Spanish.

Tool Terminology: The Definitive Guide to Screws

When a Phillips is not a Phillips!
(Via LifeHacker.)

If you liked the Instructables post linked above, you may also enjoy One Good Turn by Witold Rybczynski.

(About tornillos in Spanish.)

False friend: psícico/psychic (adjective)

Psícico: adj. Perteneciente o relativo a las funciones y contenidos psicológicos. (RAE)
Pertaining or relative to psychological function and content.

Psychic:
adj.
1. Of, relating to, affecting, or influenced by the human mind or psyche; mental: psychic trauma; psychic energy.
2.
a. Capable of extraordinary mental processes, such as extrasensory perception and mental telepathy.
b. Of or relating to such mental processes.

And from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary,
Psychic:
1: of or relating to the psyche : psychogenic
2: lying outside the sphere of physical science or knowledge : immaterial, moral, or spiritual in origin or force
3: sensitive to nonphysical or supernatural forces and influences : marked by extraordinary or mysterious sensitivity, perception, or understanding

What both meanings have in common is the idea of something related to the mind. However, the meaning of the Spanish word doesn't evoke the extrasensory, spiritual connotations of the English word.

I generally find, given the context, that psícico should be translated as "psychological." As for translating "psychic" into Spanish, several dictionaries give "psícico", which I don't find adequate in view of the above definitions. The Oxford does give "para(p)sicológico" which a check of the RAE confirms as an accurate translation.

Elements and Spices

Thanks to Michael of Translate This, here is a pointer to Elementymology & Elements Multidict by Peter van der Krogt, a site which gives the entymology of the elements and their names in 72 languages.

I remember reading an anecdote about a translation of a major literary work in which the translator wasn't familiar with chemistry, didn't know the names of the elements in the target language, didn't bother to look them up, and got many of them wrong. I'd like to be more specific, but unfortunately I didn't save the article and could never find it again in spite of much searching. Does anyone remember the specifics? That translator would surely have enriched his translation, as well as gotten it right if he'd had a resource like "Elementymology" to consult.

Diverting from the initial subject in another direction, Gernot Kater's Spice Pages does basically the same thing as Elementymology but for spices and herbs; history, chemical constituents, etymology, photographs, and names in 72 languages.

Word lookup / ¿Cómo se dice...?

Visitors to this blog over the last couple of weeks have been looking for the meaning or translation of the following: basto, morado, rude, cliente consentido, workmanlike finish, brown, life, cínico, pull an allnighter, brown hair colors, December, November, October, mundo, de nada, corn, purple and de viaje.

Here are the meanings:

• basto (unless they actually meant "vasto")
  
• morado; see also this post
  
• rude in Spanish, or how to be rude in Spanish
  
• cliente consentido = preferred customer
  
• workmanlike finish = acabado artesanal, acabado de calidad
  
• brown; see also this post
  
• life
  
• cínico; see this post
  
• desvelar; see this post
  
• brown hair colours; see this post
  
• December, November, October; see this page
  
• mundo
  
• de nada; literally "it's nothing" but means "you´re welcome". See this page for "hello", "thank you" and "you're welcome" in several different languages.
  
• corn
  
• purple; see also this post
  
• de viaje = on a trip; traveling
  

Translating "su" and "important"

Ace blogger Mimi Smartypants was bemused to compare the instructions for a feminine product in French and Spanish with the English ones. She writes

The maxi-pad box was labeled in many languages [...], and I really enjoyed how a "heavy" flow turns into an "important" flow in French and an "abundant" flow in Spanish. Also how the Spanish claims to protect against "loss" rather than the English "leakage," and how the adhesive strip, in Spanish, holds the pad firmly in "your" place (rather than just "in place.") Hold me firmly in my place, I have an important flow.

Her reflections lead to some interesting observations on false and deceptive friends, and translation traps. Here the French "important" does actually mean "big," and not what English speakers would define as "important".

The Spanish was no doubt something like

Esto permite que la toalla se mantenga mejor en su lugar, dando a la consumidora mayor seguridad.

and here "su lugar" isn't "your place" but "its place," which does make more sense. An easy confusion to fall into, when you consider that su can mean "his," "her," "its," "your" or "their." Danger zone for the sleepy translator!

A short digression: How to say "off topic" in Spanish

At Switch Off and Go, "La navaja en el ojo" writes about the options in Spanish for translating "off topic."

She points out that unfortunately the English term will probably prevail over digresión or any other option in Spanish. The foreign phrase being restricted to the world of blogs and forums, its use signals that the writer is making reference to that sphere. She adds that "off topic" covers all the different facets of off topicness... material that has nothing to do with the blog or site in question; material that does have something to do with it, but not with the current entry; and digressions from the main topic. The meaning of "digresión," in contrast, really only corresponds to the last.

Update: The drama surrounding the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows reminded me that I had long wondered about spoiler, too. Same story: I am informed that in Spanish they also use "spoiler."

Translation nightmare

The kind of text that stops the translator of abstracts cold in her tracks:

This article is about the difference between X and Y. We examine the relationship between them and propose a concept of X that is free from dependence on Y.

Except that X and Y translate to the same word in the target language. Help!

The rude world

Here's a funny one. What does the expression "basto mundo" mean? By the dictionary, it should be something like the "rude, crude world," but the usage examples, of which there are some 800+, don't seem to fit that meaning.

Suddenly light dawns! Someone meant to write "vasto mundo," and so it means the "wide world," the "vast world." The slip could be due either to the "v" and the "b" being next to each other on the keyboard, or to the fact that "v" and "b" are aren't distinguished in pronunciation, and therefore highly confusable in Spanish (probably a combination of both factors). To a Spanish speaker, no doubt the intended meaning of the misspelled phrase is immediately obvious; in fact it probably takes a spelling pedant to even notice the slip. In contrast, to an English speaker like me, for whom "v" and "b" are as different as "p" and "f" or as "t" and "d," it's a stumper even when I'm reading in Spanish.

Vertiente

Some options for translating vertiente (when it doesn't mean "slope"):

• field
  
• activity
  
• category
  
• aspect
  
• side
  
• consideration
  
• dimension
  

...and one context-specific one that worked well in a certain specific sentence:

• byway
  

Fortalecer, fortalecimiento

Here's how I've translated fortalecer [or resp. fortalecimiento] in past translations:

• strengthen
  
• support
  
• build up
  
• reinforce
  
• promote
  
• boost
  

and two context-specific solutions:

• enhance
  
• increase
  

Legal "shall" vs. "will"

A ProZ forum post quotes this summary of Bryan A. Garner’s explanation of "shall" vs. "will" from his A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage.

1) American Rule:
shall = has a duty to
must = is required to (used for all requirements that are not duties imposed on the subject of a clause)
must not = is required not to; is disallowed from; is not permitted to
may = has discretion to; is permitted to
may not = is not permitted to; is disallowed from
is entitled to = has a right to
will = (expresses a future contingency)
should = (denotes a directory provision)

2) ABC (Australian, British, Canadian) Rule:
shall (not used)
must = is required to
must not = is required not to; is disallowed from; is not permitted to
may = has discretion to; is permitted to
may not = is not permitted to; is disallowed from
is entitled to = has a right to
will = a) expresses a future contingency
will = b) (in an adhesion contract, expresses one’s own client’s obligations)
will = c) where the relationship is a delicate one, expresses both parties’ obligations
should = (denotes a directory provision)

Translation challenge: rezago

Note to self for future reference: solutions I have used for expressions involving rezago:

- set-back
- lag
- backward
- underdeveloped
- deficit
- gap

On colours

When you learn a new language, colour names are among the basic vocabulary you’re taught in the early lessons. Yet different cultures and languages don’t divide up the colour spectrum in the same way, nor into the same number of basic chunks. Cannylinguist points to an interesting recent article in Scientific American on the topic. [UPDATE: This article by Tuomas Tanner gives a very good overview of the theory of the evolution of colour classifications in languages.]

For the English speaker learning Spanish, what are purple and brown?

Purple
The Espasa Calpe's definition comes closest to my observations in the wild; “morado.” Neither violeta, púrpura nor lila are mentioned.
My edition of the Oxford does give violeta, and qualifies morado as bluish purple and púrpura as reddish.
The Gran Larousse gives morado and púrpura, but violeta is only listed for purple as a noun, not an adjective.
In Mexico, the word I hear most often in conversation is morado. Púrpura never, and violeta very seldom. In contrast with the Oxford definition, morado extends into reddish purple, to the point where colours that in English I’d call maroon or dark red are also denoted by morado. What’s more, when a person blushes, they do not turn rojo, but morado.
Pale or light purple is invariably lila, never morado claro. Lila means “lilac,” but in English, I wouldn’t call “lilac” as basic a colour name as lila is in Spanish. “Mauve” or “light purple” would be my choice in situations where I’d have to say lila in Spanish if I don’t want to invite a puzzled stare followed by, “Ah, you mean lila?”

Brown
The word I learned for “brown” in Spanish class was pardo, but in Mexico I’ve only ever heard it in a single collocation: “oso pardo.” In general, “brown” is color café: not “café” but “color café.” Actually, “color” is used with colours much more than in English. Not “a red dress,” “a blue jacket,” “a black door,” but a “red-coloured dress,” a “blue-coloured jacket” and a “black-coloured” (or sometimes “black-painted”) door. With “café” it makes the most sense; the “coloured” isn’t so redundant because it eliminates any confusion with the beverage coffee.
Brown hair, though, isn’t color café but castaño (chestnut). Brown sugar and brown skin are moreno. Brown eyes that are very dark are ojos negros. Yes, we might say “black eyes” in English, too, but I think we’d be more likely to call them “very dark brown” to avoid any ambiguity. A (bruised) black eye is an ojo morado. In many other Spanish-speaking countries, “marrón” is the normal word for brown, (and indeed it’s the first option given by the dictionaries) but in Mexico marrón is reddish-brown, according to my informants.

Dark and light colours
While light colours are claro, just as in English, dark colours are not called “dark,” but “strong”; azul fuerte, verde fuerte, etc.

Unamazing language curmudgeon

I find myself unexplicably annoyed by the current use of amazing to mean "wonderful" or sometimes even just "big." Amazing: causing surprise, wonder, astonishment. When we describe someone's comportment in a situation, or simply their personality as "amazing," are we implying that wonderfulness is astonishing or surprising?

Diagnosticar

Ideas for translating "diagnosticar" when used in a non-medical (semi-metaphorical?) sense:
review, research, assess, investigate, explore, examine, question, look into, inquire, dissect.