Patricia Rosas Apr 15, 2007:

Alan: Rather than using "common people," why not use "the masses"? I think there is a bit of a hesitancy to use "common" among academics. If your audience consists of academics, then I do think they'd understand popular classes ....

Alan R King (asker) Apr 15, 2007:

Interesting reference, Patricia. Unforunately it only confirms the problem; as for solutions, it offers nothing new, quite possibly because there is nothing new to offer. My very first translations (Span-Eng), 30 years ago, were also of left-wing discourse using the same concepts; I didn't know how to solve this then, and I don't now! I'm tempted towards "popular classes" actually: it may sound funny in English but I think readers will know how to interpret it and I won't be misrepresenting the author.

I disagree a bit with phebus here, though: "In general, when they use classe ouvrière, it is because they refer to people in relationship to work." Not in my experience. It's the working class in Marx's sense - the proletariat, whether in a work context or a political context (as here). But it actually gets worse (though not in my text), because I've seen Spanish writers differentiate further between "clase obrera" and "clases trabajadoras" (note the plural).

Back to my problem: Donal Moloney suggested what I was hoping to hear: that it is not totally preposterous to write "popular classes" in this case. Does nobody else support that proposal? The other suggestions ("common people", "the poor"...) are not far off the mark, but sound so vague. "Movements" no: the article is discussing movements, in fact, and if the author had meant movements here that's what he would have said. "Wage earners": in these days of unemployment, "¡ojalá!" would be the response of many members of the clases populares, I'm afraid... Really, I think the point is that for these writers, it's a technical term, so to speak, with a particular intended meaning, and you can't easily get away with playing around with that meaning, substituting words that don't ACTUALLY say the same thing, without theoretical confusion resulting. And this IS a theoretical discussion.

So: does anyone else vote for "popular classes"?

patricia scott Apr 14, 2007:

Alan, have you seen this? I guess the masses is stretching it a little too far?/sketchythoughts.blogspot.com/2005/11/translation-question-classes.html