Yes, You May Study This Lesson
Sunday November 2, 2008
One of the points I harp about on this site is that if you want to say something in Spanish, you need to know what it is you want to say. By that, I mean that translation isn't the science of word substitution but the art of conveying meaning. An example can be seen in one of our new lessons from earlier this year, on translating the English auxiliary verb "may." In a sense, there isn't even a Spanish word for "may." Most of the time, what you want to do is indicate a possibility or seek or grant permission. And the way you do those are different, even though both are expressed by the word "may."
If you have any questions about this lesson or wish to provide examples of your own, you may click on the Comments link below.
Comments
I just wanted to thank you for this point regarding translation being about conveying the feeling, not really finding each exact word. I’ve been studying Spanish for a while and am at an advanced level but still find myself beating up on myself when I get stuck trying to find the exact word for what I would say in English. I’ve been very frustrated with progress latel, especially since I’m so verbose in English and have such a love of wordplay. I was starting to see in my translation practice, Spanish to English, the exact point you made. But thanks for confirming it. I’m getting ready for to move to the country of my parent’s origin, Panama, in August for 10 months. So I feel the pressure to get every word right. But now I feel a bit more relieved. Muchisimas gracias.
This is only peripherally related because it deals with the dangers of literal translation, but I thought you might like this little Zen-style koan I’d come up with and posted on aprende_espanol on LiveJournal:
The student handed in an exercise to the master. The master said, “I see here you’ve written, ‘Es necesario trabajar duro.’ The phrase ‘trabajar duro’ does not appear in your lesson material. Why did you use it?”
“Because that’s how we say it in English: to work hard,” the student replied. “If you’re working, you’re ‘trabajando’, and a hard rock is a ‘piedra dura’, right?”
“Fool!” shouted the master. “Spanish is not English.”
The student lowered his head sheepishly. “You’re right, of course. But, may I ask, how do you say it in Spanish?”
The master replied, “Trabajar duro.”
The student was enlightened.