Easter is coming up and I was just thinking the other day about one time years ago when I was asked to translate the Semana Santa programme of processions in Malaga into English. Anybody who has ever translated Spanish into English knows that English words tend to be shorter, and Spanish writers are often not concise, so you end up with a considerably shorter text and have to explain that you haven’t actually cut chunks out, it’s just the way it is. (more…)
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I’ve spent too much time recently at the dentist’s. Any time is too much time, of course, but when you spend half an hour beforehand in the waiting room, waiting for the dentist to turn up to work, it becomes even more eternal, if such a thing is possible. Both times she claimed to have been stuck in the same traffic jam that I had left home very early in order to avoid, so my teeth were tightly clenched before she ordered me to open wide. (more…)
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Nobody has called it “Operation Corruption” yet, probably because each instance has its own code name, which the police must use to keep their investigations secret until arrests are made, and then we know that they’ve been calling the town planning corruption case in Marbella the “Malaya” case, and the Alhaurín el Grande investigation is “Troya”. “Astapa” refers to corruption in Estepona, and so, one suspects, it will go on. Other cases of (alleged) town planning corruption have been uncovered already in Gaucín, Manilva, Cómpeta, Tolox, Ojén and Ronda and are going through the legal process, hence the use of the word “alleged”. Now it’s Alcaucín’s turn. (more…)
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I always knew English speakers had it easier when it comes to gender. Well you know what I mean! We don’t have to make our adjectives agree with our nouns, or learn that ‘agua’ is feminine and the only reason it’s “el agua” is because “la agua” is quite difficult to say, and as soon as you’re talking about waters with an ’s’ you’re OK and can say ‘las aguas’. Of course we do sometimes have to debate whether a female poet should be called a poetess, or whether that’s too antiquated, or too politically correct, and whether the same applies to actors and actresses. Do we have female bishops? Bishopesses? But I digress.
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I’ve got into the habit now of jotting things down when they come up – and I have to say sorry to any friends who have found their flow interrupted by my sudden search for a pen and scrap of paper. It happened the other day when someone was referred to as being a fruitcake, and instead of asking about the evidence of this person’s nuttiness, I rummaged in my bag and wrote down “cake, nuts, Cadbury’s fruit and nut? Equivalent?” I haven’t had time to investigate the origins or first use of the fruitcake expression (probably Shakespeare, it usually is), but I do know that nobody I have asked can come up with a similar one in Spanish. “Chiflado” just doesn’t have the same fruitiness…
Another one that had me breaking off the conversation to find my notepad was “a chip off the old block”. No problem with the Spanish, which is “de tal palo tal astilla” but I wonder if there is any significance in the fact that in English it’s chips and blocks, and in Spanish splinters and sticks? More stonemasons in olde England, and more carpenters in la vieja España maybe?
And what about having a chip on your shoulder? Any ideas?
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For some reason, Macarena’s comment on “Idiomatic expressions” on this blog set me thinking about the time (way back when, we needn’t go into that) when I was an English language assistant (“lectora” I was called – do they still have those?) in a school in Malaga. My boss, the head of the English department, tried to drum English into the boys’ heads by making them learn passages from a book at home and regurgitate them in class. Good for their memories, no doubt, but not much fun, and I don’t think they learned much English that way. My classes were more fun – I made them sing, and do quizzes, and I learned a lot of Spanish from them… But they still can’t have learned a lot because at the end of the year a large proportion failed the exam. Course work was taken into account too, and those marks were awarded by the other English teacher, a very nice woman whose English was about on a par with my Spanish, and me. She decided we would solve the problem of mass exam failure by giving high course work marks to bring the average up, and explained her decision saying “Well, it’s only English, isn’t it?”
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Since I wrote about living off past successes, laurels, rentals and suchlike, I have had a couple of suggestions about interesting expressions – people just seem to like certain turns of phrase, even though it’s difficult to say why. “Dále caña” is one I hear used a lot by members of my family, usually in connection with driving (where it is used to encourage the driver in front to put his foot down, instead of behaving like a Sunday driver, “dominguero”, and creeping along the motorway “pisando huevos”, walking on eggshells).
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One of the things we talk about a lot in the office is the translation of idiomatic expressions – and what can be done if there is no equivalent, and a translation is needed! So it’s always a good feeling when we suddenly remember something suitable, and that’s what happened today when we were trying to explain to a Spaniard what is meant by “resting on one’s laurels” – which presumably has its origins in athletes taking time out from their efforts, and maybe accidentally squashing their leafy crown… “Ah”, he said, “that’s like people who have income from sitting tenants and think they’ll be OK for future income” (BAD idea, particularly in view of the current property market!) – the equivalent in Spanish is “vivir de las rentas” – living off (past) profits.
You’d have to be as mad as a hatter to do that – but hatters in Spanish aren’t mad, goats are. So you’d be “como una cabra”, but I prefer the idea of someone being “loco de remate”. “Rematar” is to finish something off, so they don’t get much crazier than that. “Rematar” has overtones of “killing off” as well, “matar” being “to kill”, so it sounds to me as if someone who is “loco de remate” must be so bonkers they should be put out of their misery, but that could be an over-translation of the expression 
If anyone reading this has any neat Spanish or English idiomatic expressions I’d like to air, I’d like to know!
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I have mentioned before in SUR in English the frustration suffered at East Midlands airport on being made to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a small plastic bag to put a (no doubt potentially very dangerous) lipstick in (SUR in English, March 2nd 2007), and the invisibility syndrome I suffer from when on a flight and desperately in need of a medicinal coñac (SUR in English, December 19th 2008 and this blog). Now, after the season of goodwill and much travelling, there is another thing I need to write about.
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I had heard from friends about the problems sometimes encountered by single travellers, and about the Invisible Woman syndrome, but I didn’t really get it until recently, when Easyjet, Thomsonfly and Jet2 all conspired to bring it home to me – and just when I was at my lowest, too, suffering from a cold AND from long delays at Malaga airport. You need a lot of fortitude to deal with those, without suddenly being invisible as well. (more…)
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