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Spanish variants - Latin America
Thread poster: gulperi
gulperi
gulperi
France
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Sep 22, 2009

Dear all Spanish specialists,

If I need to adapt a document from Mexican Spanish to Venezuelan Spanish, will the differences betwen these two variants be very high? Or are the differences very small only?

This question also applies to other Spanish variants (e.g Chile, Columbia etc.)

Thanks for your kind replies.


 
tagore
tagore  Identity Verified
Romania
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Linguistic subtleties Sep 22, 2009

Dear Gulperi,

welcome to forum and congratulations for this topic!

These linguistic subtleties are raising the "translation bar" too high, but ... that's the way we like it, don't we?

Kind regards,
tagore

[Edited at 2009-09-22 05:18 GMT]


 
Alex Lago
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Context/syntaxis Sep 22, 2009

I think it will depend on the syntaxis and context, if it is a legal/formal/medical, etc type of document the differences should not be very big, if it is more of a "down to earth" text with slang or "daily life expressions" then the changes can be quite a lot.

 
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
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Alex is right Sep 22, 2009

Indeed the differences between variants of Spanish are limited if the document is highly technical or scientific, but the differences are more relevant depending on how much the document relates to everyday objects, food, everyday life...

What is the document about?


 
Marcelo Silveyra
Marcelo Silveyra
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Actually.... Sep 22, 2009

Tomás, with all due respect, I have to disagree. The differences might be somewhat limited for technical and scientific documents, but they are pretty important - even simple terminology like "voltage," "ground," "computer," "cell phone," and "concrete" can change from one country to another ("voltaje vs. tensión," "tierra vs. masa," "computadora vs. ordenador," "celular vs. móvil," "concreto vs. hormigón" - I am of course, biased and am using the Mexican term first, but you can switch them... See more
Tomás, with all due respect, I have to disagree. The differences might be somewhat limited for technical and scientific documents, but they are pretty important - even simple terminology like "voltage," "ground," "computer," "cell phone," and "concrete" can change from one country to another ("voltaje vs. tensión," "tierra vs. masa," "computadora vs. ordenador," "celular vs. móvil," "concreto vs. hormigón" - I am of course, biased and am using the Mexican term first, but you can switch them around or even go as far as to create a nice "sopa de letras" out of them - there's no hidden agenda behind the order I chose). Now, before I go on, please note that I'm not referring to you with the following paragraph (you'll see why this is important in a second).
If I recall correctly, someone on this website once mentioned that they used standards in order to cull the right terms for electrical engineering documents in Mexico, perfectly well aware of the fact that those weren't the terms normally used by engineers in Mexico - they said something like "well, that's what's in the standards, so if they don't like it, too bad" (probably not the words they used, but that was the gist of it). Very nice, except this person missed the fact that a lot of Mexican engineers tend not to follow standards or work with them - and that is precisely the target group for whom the translations are meant. While it would be nice (and awfully impractical) for the entire Spanish-speaking world to be aware of every term used for every little thing in every single country, that's an ideal that only translators seem to want to impose on the mere mortals below them, unaware of the fact that we are supposed to translate for a target audience, and not for our own ivory-tower holier-than-thou linguistic refuge. For your amusement, I spent half a day trying to figure out what the hell "masa" ("ground" - we say "tierra" in Mexico) was in a textbook we were using for one of my Electronics and Communications Engineering courses - my fellow students' experience was pretty much the same, and no one was particularly pleased with it - certainly not surprising considering that we were trying to figure out a bunch of complex engineering material and expanding our vocabulary certainly wasn't in our best interest with the amount of time we had. Now go on and apply that to an engineer who has limited time and resources for a critical project and, well, I bet the results won't be pretty. In other words, and to make a long story short, we write documents for target audiences with the terms that the target audience in question is used to hearing, or at least we should. I've seen so many Eng>Spa translators disregard this basic principle while scramming for work that I don't think it's being done quite as often as it should.
As for legal documents, the differences are enormous! Go look up some basic legal terminology for imports in Mexico, Spain, Costa Rica, and Puerto Rico and you'll see what I mean (never mind the fact that the number of SPanish speaking countries is far greater than four!).
While the differences between Mexican Spanish and Venezuelan Spanish are bound to be less significant than those between Mexican Spanish and Rioplatense, Caribbean, and Castilian Spanish, they might be pretty important, depending on the actual document. Also, if you are being asked to localize the type of Spanish, I'll hazard a guess and say that it's actually important for the people who read the document to feel at home with it - in that case, you need someone from the actual country (or someone who has lived there long enough) to do the work.

PS. Just because I have been asked this numerous times via e-mail whenever this subject comes up - I've NEVER accepted a job that was meant to be translated into a type of Spanish other than Mexican Spanish or into a type of English other than American English, and the amount of money represented by well-paid jobs that I've had to turn down because of this is actually pretty significant - at least 80% of what I make a year (probably more).
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Henry Hinds
Henry Hinds  Identity Verified
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In memoriam
Agree with Marcelo Sep 22, 2009

I certainly could not have said it any better than Marcelo has.

All except one thing... In my own case, since I work a local market, practically everything I do is directed to either the U.S. or Mexico, although occasionally the origin can be another country. So I am fortunate to not have to turn work down.

If I am asked to do something to be used outside the U.S. or Mexico, then I will tell the client that the language will reflect usage in one of the above. If the cli
... See more
I certainly could not have said it any better than Marcelo has.

All except one thing... In my own case, since I work a local market, practically everything I do is directed to either the U.S. or Mexico, although occasionally the origin can be another country. So I am fortunate to not have to turn work down.

If I am asked to do something to be used outside the U.S. or Mexico, then I will tell the client that the language will reflect usage in one of the above. If the client is comfortable with that, fine. If not, then they need to find someone familiar with usage in the destination country.

Also, being familiar with Chilean Spanish in addition to Mexican, I am well aware that in technical material (construction, mining, automotive, etc.) the terminology can be quite different. However, the variety I use is invariably Mexican. I just do not write in Chilean, and much less in any variety of English that is not U.S. because it is all I know.
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Lesley Clarke
Lesley Clarke  Identity Verified
Mexico
Local time: 17:00
Spanish to English
So well put Marcelo Sep 23, 2009

I translate out of Mexican Spanish and I am surprised at how often people on Proz think that language variations have little impact on technical translations, whereas I find that the differences in terminology cannot be enormous from one country to another

 
Aguas de Mar (X)
Aguas de Mar (X)
More agrís... Sep 24, 2009

I also share Marcelo's, Henry's and Lesley's opinion. I think the variants are considerable in quite a few fields and also important. I have a background probably similar to Marcelo's and Henry's. I was born and raised in Mexico, and then went on to live in the US and Canada (and now abroad). I am always very clear to my clients in that I can only translate into Mexican Spanish or "US" Spanish, as long as the US audience is a mixed one (i. e.: not only Cubans from Miami). If the document is need... See more
I also share Marcelo's, Henry's and Lesley's opinion. I think the variants are considerable in quite a few fields and also important. I have a background probably similar to Marcelo's and Henry's. I was born and raised in Mexico, and then went on to live in the US and Canada (and now abroad). I am always very clear to my clients in that I can only translate into Mexican Spanish or "US" Spanish, as long as the US audience is a mixed one (i. e.: not only Cubans from Miami). If the document is needed for another country, I suggest localization. The client can find a proofreader on his/her own, or I can undertake the job (of finding a suitable proofreader, I mean) and charge accordingly.

This does not mean that a Mexican translator cannot translate a document for Spain or Argentina or viceversa (in most cases; ad copy is a totally different matter, for instance), but it will certainly be wise of him or her to have it revised by a truly native professional of the target country.

Also, I am surprised to read a lot of colleagues' profiles who state that Spanish is their target language, without mentioning any more specifics. Some of them are easy to decipher given the place of residence or place of studies of the incumbents, but others literally have me guessing. (Now, before you go and comment on my almost empty profile, let me state that for personal reasons I prefer to have it as is, since finding jobs here is not my goal). Nowadays, when all of us are hopefully aiming for a niche market, I think that indicating the Spanish variants one works with is essential, saves time and money for both parties and, I would dare to say, is an almost ethical issue.

Lastly, I find it interesting that people in Europe seem to believe that the differences are not so great, while people "al otro lado del charco" find them more important...

My two reais...

[Edited at 2009-09-24 02:00 GMT]

[Edited at 2009-09-24 17:09 GMT]
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Ivette Camargo López
Ivette Camargo López  Identity Verified
Spain
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English to Spanish
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Disagree with Marcelo Sep 24, 2009

Marcelo, with all due respect from my side, too, let me disagree with you and agree with Tomás and Alex.

Marcelo Silveyra wrote:
For your amusement, I spent half a day trying to figure out what the hell "masa" ("ground" - we say "tierra" in Mexico) was in a textbook we were using for one of my Electronics and Communications Engineering courses


To begin with, it sounds a bit puzzling to read that a group of smart engineers would spend half a day figuring out what the term "masa" means in Spanish from Spain.

If you quickly check the DRAE (Royal Spanish Academy) online dictionary, you will quickly find out that definition (for the term "masa") number 11 says "Electr. Armazón o soporte metálico de una máquina o aparato en el que están montados componentes eléctricos o electrónicos, generalmente unido a tierra." I would imagine that if you are an engineer, it should be pretty easy to realize then that "masa" and "tierra" are the same thing.

On the other hand, it sounds rather contradictory that you admit that it is impractical for everyone in the Spanish speaking world to understand all versions (according to each country) of a word/term,

While it would be nice (and awfully impractical) for the entire Spanish-speaking world to be aware of every term used for every little thing in every single country


Yet you feel that this is the criterion that should be applied because apparently some target audience experts are not able to figure out some simple nuances such as "masa".

You yourself mentioned some very clear differences (some very easily spottable and not so hard to find even in the said DRAE) between Latin American Spanish and Spanish from Spain.

I can tell you of at least one technical dictionary (written by a Mexican engineer, btw, but published by a Spanish university publishing house), in which you can easily find both versions of most (if not all) technical definitions or terms included, so perhaps sometimes the problem lies in the bibliographical research experts are willing to carry out.

In a smaller country like where I was born, Panama, if a bunch of engineers or students of engineering wish to use the translation of a manual or book about their field, the normal thing is to:

a) Use the mentioned versions (and figure out the equivalents with the use of bibliographical resources).

b) Use a similar locally-produced (written directly in Spanish) version of the textbook or manual (if available).

c) If these professionals/students are multilingual or at least can understand the original language in which the manual/book was used, use the original version instead of the translated one if they have problems understanding the translated version.

In my experience, except in the case of publishers with lots of financial resources (like Microsoft), the publishing and translation world reality is that there is usually no budget to produce Spanish versions other than one or, at the most, three Spanish versions: one for Spain, one for Mexico and one for Argentina, simply based on the larger population of these countries.

I am only referring to large-scale translation cases in which a manual or book/textbook is to be produced. If you are talking about local correspondence or a reduced number of documents used, say, in the Guatemalan branch of a multinational company specialized in engineering, then I can imagine that it would be feasible to translate these documents into each local branch's Spanish version of the multinational company.

Also, for the nth time (since this is a recurrent topic in the Proz.com forums, though I think it is the first time I see it discussed in English), remember that, as already mentioned by Alex and Tomás, there is a HUGE difference between colloquial language and formal language. Most technical documents are written in formal language, so a minimum formal language knowledge is expected from professionals such as engineers in order to understand these manuals.

Of course, in the case of a mechanic, who may not have the same academic level of an engineer, she/he may feel that, for example, some operation manual about a machine sounds like "Chinese" to her/him, simply because the manual is not written in the kind of colloquial technical jargon most mechanics are used to speak in the workshop.

Should then the manual be translated into the colloquial version she/he is used to? Should that be the "ideal" solution, to have a version not only for each and every country, but also for each and every type of professional level?

That sounds highly impractical to me. I think that the practical thing is to at least agree on 2 general (formal) versions of a language when you are interested in producing large-scale documentation. That is already done in other languages which also have a number of variants: English (UK/USA), Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), German (usually only one, "Hoch Deutsch", but you can also have Austrian or Swiss German).

Anyway, I speak based on my own experience, having both a Latin American and Spanish background.

Regards,

Ivette

P.S.: just edited a couple paragraphs.

[Edited at 2009-09-24 11:04 GMT]


 
Marcelo Silveyra
Marcelo Silveyra
United States
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German to English
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Short (well, maybe not) response to Ivette Sep 24, 2009


To begin with, it sounds a bit puzzling to read that a group of smart engineers would spend half a day figuring out what the term "masa" means in Spanish from Spain.


Why would that sound puzzling at all? You have a group of engineering students who live in Mexico, whose teachers have always (and I do mean always) said "tierra," whose textbooks are either in English or say "tierra," who do not have any particular reason to have to interact with engineering (and electrical engineering at that) students from Spain, and, most of all, whose focus is definitely not linguistic. Why would that be puzzling? And more importantly, if the translation is intended for Mexican readers (which in this case, it admittedly wasn't), why in the world would these Mexican engineering students have to look up anything in the dictionary to begin with?


If you quickly check the DRAE (Royal Spanish Academy) online dictionary, you will quickly find out that definition (for the term "masa") number 11 says "Electr. Armazón o soporte metálico de una máquina o aparato en el que están montados componentes eléctricos o electrónicos, generalmente unido a tierra." I would imagine that if you are an engineer, it should be pretty easy to realize then that "masa" and "tierra" are the same thing.


This happened over 10 years ago, so I don't even know if there was an online version of the DRAE at the time. And for that matter, regardless of whether "masa" and "tierra" are the same thing, the definition you just gave for "masa" is not the same as "tierra" in an analog integrated circuit context. While I've known that "masa" and "tierra" are the same thing ever since, I did not work as a translator 10 years ago, and yes, sometimes students have so little time to digest complex material that they don't think of looking up words in the DRAE. Once again, if they're the target audience, they shouldn't have to.

On the other hand, it sounds rather contradictory that you admit that it is impractical for everyone in the Spanish speaking world to understand all versions (according to each country) of a word/term. Yet you feel that this is the criterion that should be applied because apparently some target audience experts are not able to figure out some simple nuances such as "masa".


First of all, "masa" is far from a simple nuance; it's a different word from a different part of the world, and there's no reason why someone who lives in a country that doesn't use the term would know it. In fact, people from Mexico with a certain level of education are more likely to recognize words like "tío" and "chévere," which are definitely not used in Mexico (and are slang!) than "masa" as tierra. But more importantly, there is no contradiction in what I said - in fact, I wrote the following "f you are being asked to localize the type of Spanish, I'll hazard a guess and say that it's actually important for the people who read the document to feel at home with it - in that case, you need someone from the actual country (or someone who has lived there long enough) to do the work." A "target audience expert" (as you call them) from Mexico will not have to figure out a "simple nuance" like "masa" because they won't use the word in the first place. Given that I am all for having translators translate into their own Spanish variant, or at least the Spanish variants that they are thoroughly familiar with, I fail to see any contradiction, as these "nuances" will be naturally right. Furthermore, even if I had meant what you though I did (but I didn't), there would still be no contradiction whatsoever, since it is perfectly possible to apply a different criterion to "everyone in the Spanish speaking world" than that applied to "target audience experts." After all, the latter are professionals and are doing this for money - the former aren't.

I can tell you of at least one technical dictionary (written by a Mexican engineer, btw, but published by a Spanish university publishing house), in which you can easily find both versions of most (if not all) technical definitions or terms included, so perhaps sometimes the problem lies in the bibliographical research experts are willing to carry out.


Since I only translate into Mexican Spanish, I don't have to do any research in order to find different versions of terms, and passive knowledge suffices when translating from a different variant of Spanish. Going further with your argument though, maybe the problem lies in the fact that sometimes there are more than just two terms used in Spanish-speaking countries (a perfectly good example is ICs, for which Mexico has a terminology all of its own that is halfway missing in any technical dictionary) and that things get more complicated at that point. If you check every single word to make sure it's the right one for the target country, then kudos to you - most people don't, and that's what I have a problem with. I personally would find the "check-every-word" approach to be very inefficient.

In my experience, except in the case of publishers with lots of financial resources (like Microsoft) the publishing and translation world reality is that there is usually no budget to produce Spanish versions other than one or, at the most, three Spanish versions: one for Spain, one for Mexico and one for Argentina, simply based on the larger population of these countries.


Yes, but in this particular case, the original forum poster explicitly mentioned that she had to convert a Mexican Spanish text to a Venezuelan Spanish text, which not only means that the money might be there, but also (and much more importantly), that the client wants the text to be localized. If the client wants the text localized into Venezuelan Spanish, I really don't see how anyone could ethically justify localizing it into, say, Argentine Spanish based on the above premise.

Also, for the nth time (since this is a recurrent topic in the Proz.com forums, though I think it is the first time I see it discussed in English), remember that, as already mentioned by Alex and Tomás, there is a HUGE difference between colloquial language and formal language. Most technical documents are written in formal language, so a minimum formal language knowledge is expected from professionals such as engineers in order to understand these manuals.


Going back to the "masa" example. "Masa" and "tierra" are both formal. A professional electrical engineer in Mexico can have a perfect understanding of formal language, and that doesn't mean that he/she has to know the word "masa," since it's not a question of register. I'm perfectly aware of the differences between formal and colloquial language, but they simply have no bearing on my examples because my examples don't have anything to do with how formal the text is - if I had said "la cosa ésa," then sure. If someone uses"zócalo" for an IC socket in a translation meant for Mexico, it's the wrong term - period. No one uses "zócalo" there, most engineers (including those with master's degrees and such) won't know what the word is referring to, and, most importantly, it's not more formal than "base." Proper technical terms aren't more formal than their other proper equivalents - they're just different because of different usages in different countries.


Should then the manual be translated into the colloquial version she/he is used to? Should that be the "ideal" solution, to have a version not only for each and every country, but also for each and every type of professional level?


The solution should be to translate into whatever the client wants. No more, no less. If the client wants Bolivian Spanish, then the thing has to be translated into Bolivian Spanish.

I think that the practical thing is to at least agree on 2 general (formal) versions of a language when you are interested in producing large-scale documentation.


Unfortunately, this post is not talking about large-scale documentation, and neither was my reply to it. But regardless of practicality, I still stand by what I originally said: we write for target audiences in the language that the target audience is used to. If the client wants a document localized into Venezuelan Spanish and the document is meant for car mechanics, there's no reason why there should be even a hint of Cuban Spanish or of highfalutin' language in there - the target audience is Venezuelan mechanics, and the translation should be written in a language that is familiar and comfortable for Venezuelan mechanics. If the client wants the translation to be distributed throughout a large portion of Latin America but wants the translation to be in Argentine Spanish, then it has to be in Argentine Spanish - anything else would be, as far as I'm concerned, extremely unethical.

[Edited at 2009-09-24 11:51 GMT]


 
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
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Definition of "limited" Sep 24, 2009

Guys, just to put it short: in technical/scientific texts, what I call limited is precisely what Marcelo describes of remembering a couple of dozens of term preferences depending on the region... the rest of the text is perfectly usable on both sides of the Atlantic in my opinion.

The situation of course changes a lot when we go down to everyday things, arts, culture, history...


 
Ivette Camargo López
Ivette Camargo López  Identity Verified
Spain
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Disagree (and part 2) Sep 24, 2009

Marcelo, I don't have much time to continue a round of long replies (though I could counter-reply in detail to you, just as you have). Let me just end saying basically the following:

1) Obviously if a translation for a given country is requested and there is budget to produce it in that version, no problem at all. That would be the logical thing to do.

2) Obviously there is a big difference between large-scale translation and small-scale translation requirements. In lar
... See more
Marcelo, I don't have much time to continue a round of long replies (though I could counter-reply in detail to you, just as you have). Let me just end saying basically the following:

1) Obviously if a translation for a given country is requested and there is budget to produce it in that version, no problem at all. That would be the logical thing to do.

2) Obviously there is a big difference between large-scale translation and small-scale translation requirements. In large-scale translations budget is an important factor and often only a few versions can be afforded. Therefore, in such cases it is not "unethical" to produce only a number of limited versions based on the overall target audience (so, it is possible to produce a "Latin American" version vs. a Spanish from Spain version).

3) If universities or readers in general in Latin America used only locally-written or locally adapted books/textbooks or manuals, they would be missing a lot on all the wealth of publications produced, for example, in Spain.

Regards,

Ivette

P.S.: I forgot, the original topic starter specified clearly that she was also referring to other variants, not only Mexico - Venezuela:

gulperi wrote:

This question also applies to other Spanish variants (e.g Chile, Columbia etc.)


[Edited at 2009-09-24 12:29 GMT]
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Aguas de Mar (X)
Aguas de Mar (X)
A few more reasons... Sep 24, 2009

ICL wrote:
t you feel that this is the criterion that should be applied because apparently some target audience experts are not able to figure out some simple nuances such as "masa".
[/quote]

"Masa", in Mexico, is definitively NOT a simple nuance of "tierra". This is a living example that it takes a professional experienced in the target Spanish variant to know what would be the best term to use.


ICL wrote:
In my experience, except in the case of publishers with lots of financial resources (like Microsoft), the publishing and translation world reality is that there is usually no budget to produce Spanish versions other than one or, at the most, three Spanish versions: one for Spain, one for Mexico and one for Argentina, simply based on the larger population of these countries.


In many instances, this argument tends to be false. Localizing from one Spanish variant to another is usually not that expensive. The cost of localizing an original translation should be one third (or even less) of the amount paid for the original translation. Of course, this decision is the client's prerogative, and those clients who know the importance of their target audience will usually find a way to allocate the budget.

As for the Spanish versions to be produced based on the size of the population, according to Wikipedia, those would be:
1. Mexico 109,955,400 (24.30 %)
2. Colombia 45,013,674 (9.95 %)
3. United States 44,321,038 (9.80 %)
4. Argentina 40,677,348 (8.99 %)
Spain comes in at fifth place: 5. Spain 40,491,051 (8.95 %)


ICL wrote:
Also, for the nth time (since this is a recurrent topic in the Proz.com forums, though I think it is the first time I see it discussed in English), remember that
/quote]

For the nth time? I find this a bit rude. So, because a topic has been discussed multiple times it means we should not discuss it any further? I do not think so, especially when a colleague is asking a very precise question.


ICL wrote:
Should then the manual be translated into the colloquial version she/he is used to? Should that be the "ideal" solution, to have a version not only for each and every country, but also for each and every type of professional level?

That sounds highly impractical to me. I think that the practical thing is to at least agree on 2 general (formal) versions of a language when you are interested in producing large-scale documentation. That is already done in other languages which also have a number of variants: English (UK/USA), Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), German (usually only one, "Hoch Deutsch", but you can also have Austrian or Swiss German).


Yes, absolutely. This is one of the basic principles of effective communication. The message should be tailored to the target audience; otherwise, be ready for it to be misconstrued or misunderstood. Again, the client has the final say, but there are many examples of why the translator should adapt to its target audience and not viceversa (unless we are talking about literature, of course). The most common ones come from the medical field where, for instance, Spanish speakers of Mexican origin talking to doctors will not understand what the doctor is saying if he asks whether they are "constipados", because the commonly used Mexican Spanish term is "estreñido". I recently translated a manual for arborists to be used in the US, with instructions on how to use a lanyard (a harness to climb trees); many of the terms had to be adapted to include the words that the tree climbers themselves actually use in the field, for fear that important safety instructions would be misconstrued if different terms were used. A very real, and very important fear to me, given the dangerous nature of their jobs... a manual in the same field from Spain would be absolutely useless in this case... and I could go on an on...

There are also a couple of languages that I know of, which so far have resisted their unification into "formal" versions when producing documentation, regardless of the scale: Brazilian Portuguese and Portugal Portuguese (we have yet to see how the implementation of the Acordo Ortográfico will come out), and Quebec French and any other French.

I believe that, to be able to communicate a message as effectively as possible, the importance of localizing for the target audience is something that needs to be constantly stressed, regardless of budgets and scales.

[Edited at 2009-09-24 13:55 GMT]


 
Ivette Camargo López
Ivette Camargo López  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 00:00
English to Spanish
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@ Aguas de Marco Sep 24, 2009

Again, due to lack of time, I'll try to be quick/short and reply only to points not already discussed (and btw, please do not take any personal offense about this or previous topic references, no rudeness intended on my part):

1)
Aguas de Marco wrote:

Spanish speakers of Mexican origin talking to doctors will not understand what the doctor is saying if he asks whether they are "constipados", because the commonly used Mexican Spanish term is "estreñido".


"Constipar" and "estreñir" are not the same thing in Spanish, so maybe either part in this case is making a "Spanglish" usage of the original English word (that is, using "constipate=constipar").

2)
Aguas de Marco wrote:
The cost of localizing an original translation should be one third (or even less) of the amount paid for the original translation.


Agreed, but, again, what I meant is large-scale projects translated into multiple languages, not only Spanish, and where a fixed rate is assigned per language, not per variant. If you "split" the said rate into 5 variants of a language, you would get slave rates for the translator.

3) About the Wikipedia population figures (though there are those who don't trust the Wikipedia, but I am not one of them), you are absolutely right that the population growth has been less in Spain compared to other Latin American countries, but so is the case with the UK vs. the USA, and in large-scale localization projects the UK version is always included as one of the main English versions.

4)
Aguas de Marco wrote:

The message should be tailored to the target audience; otherwise, be ready for it to be misconstrued or misunderstood.


I totally agree, as it is obvious, but you will not convince me that, in the real world, companies are usually willing (or even able) to pay for versions into each and every language/regional variant and/or each and every professional level variant. Sorry, that is just not realistic.


 
Aguas de Mar (X)
Aguas de Mar (X)
About constipar and other things... Sep 24, 2009


ICL wrote:
"Constipar" and "estreñir" are not the same thing in Spanish, so maybe either part in this case is making a "Spanglish" usage of the original English word (that is, using "constipate=constipar").


From the Vox, diccionario del uso del español de América y España:
"Constipado, da: 1. AMER (persona) Que padece de estreñimiento intestinal; ej: Ser constipado desde la infancia. 2 n. m. ESP resfriado, enfermedad catarral de las vías respiratorias altas; ej: Agarrar un constipado. SIN: catarro."

So once again, what you think is a misuse (or Spanglish) in Latin America, it is not. I should rest my case on the importance of localization with this, but...


If you "split" the said rate into 5 variants of a language, you would get slave rates for the translator.


The aim is not to split a budget into five variants and punish the translator, but to inform the client about the importance of Spanish variants, so that an adequate budget can be allocated for localization into Spanish, should the client desire to have optimum results. Many times, budgets are not carved on stone...


and in large-scale localization projects the UK version is always included as one of the main English versions.


Precisely my point. If the product is aimed at a UK audience, why assume that since US English and UK English only have minor differences, the UK audience will do fine with an US English version which, according to your logic, would be chosen in case of budgetary constraints, just because there are more speakers of US English in the world.

I am not really trying to convince you of anything. I am just trying to stress the importance of Spanish variants, in response to the question of the starter of this thread.

[Edited at 2009-09-24 16:56 GMT]


 
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Spanish variants - Latin America







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