Language Ledger - Newsletter of The Foreign Language Company , LLC	Vol. 4. No. 1 Fall 2003 Edition
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This fall The Foreign Language Company
opened a second office in St. Louis, Missouri, operating under the name of The Foreign Language Company, LLC. Our St. Louis office is headed by Christiane Wheatley (See related article). Our new office will allow us to expand and strengthen our client base into America’s 18th largest metropolitan market with 2.6 million residents. The Foreign Language Company will provide the same high quality language translation, interpretation and instructional services as The Foreign Language Company
, as well as foreign language books and materials.

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 For many people, Spanish was the “easy” language they chose to study in high school or college. It is true that compared with French or German, it is an easier language for native English speakers to learn; however, this perceived simplicity does not necessarily mean that Spanish is an easy language to translate.

There are 300 million Spanish speakers worldwide, and according to the 2000 U.S. Census, there are 28.1 million in the U.S., which makes Spanish by far the most requested language for translation in the United States. The problem is that with over 20 Spanish-speaking countries there is tremendous variation in terminology and expressions. This is especially true in the U.S. where there are large populations of speakers from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Central and South America concentrated in various parts of the country. For this reason, occasionally just one translation for even a domestic audience may not be completely adequate. Each speaker naturally has his or her own way of saying things and can be very resistant to having certain terms translated in any other way. Often a completely correct translation will be criticized as a bad translation, or inaccurate, simply on the basis that the particular reader either does not know or does not like the specific terms chosen.

Therefore, when deciding to translate a document or website into Spanish, it is important to determine from the onset who the target audience for the translation will be. Translations which are intended for use in a specific country should be translated by translators from that country so that the audience will not have the feeling that their documents have been translated by “foreigners.”  

However, often a translation must be rendered so that it can be used anywhere in the Spanish-speaking world. In that case, translators need to be extra sensitive to avoid any regionalisms or idioms which might have double meanings or be misconstrued by the reader.  Most of the time, standard Spanish words can be found which are completely comprehensible to the majority of speakers. When this is not possible, it may be necessary to place alternative translations in parentheses.  Nonetheless, it should be made clear that a competent, professional translator can produce a translation in nearly any subject which will be clear, concise and unambiguous to educated readers of Spanish throughout the world.

Despite this, there is another translation trend in the United States, though not one that we advocate. It is the use of Spanglish when translating for the domestic Latin market. Spanglish is the mixing of Spanish and English words and grammar to varying degrees by large numbers of speakers throughout the United States. The rationale is that certain words sound better in one language, or that certain terms do not translate very well in another. In other cases, Spanglish creates totally new words. For example, one occasionally hears the English word truck translated as troca, when camión is in fact a perfectly good Spanish word.

However, the use of Spanglish should be very carefully considered. Spanglish tends to be much more prevalent among second-generation speakers or by those speakers who have been in the U.S. for a considerable period of time. Therefore, Spanglish may be incomprehensible to newly-arrived speakers or for those who have never been exposed to it.  We advise all of our clients that unless there is an overriding need to use Spanglish in a particular document, it is always a good idea to avoid it completely since many speakers will immediately perceive such translations as poor Spanish and will not take the material or the company who produced it seriously.

To summarize, it is important to remember that even though there are great variations in the Spanish spoken across the world, and even across our country, a well-produced Spanish translation will always be comprehensible to educated native speakers.  Before proceeding with any new Spanish translation, be sure you determine who your audience will be and then communicate this information to your translation service provider.  This will prevent you from hearing, “That’s not how we say it in my country.”

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The Japanese language is spoken by 125 million speakers. It ranks as one of the top ten most spoken languages in the world, yet it is spoken only in one country. In addition, there are several regional dialects, some of which are incomprehensible to speakers from other regions of the country.

The Japanese language has no known link to any spoken language in the world.  Its writing system is one of the most complex. It combines borrowed Chinese characters known as kanji, along with two phonetic writing systems: katakana and hiragana.  

The Japanese language has been bombarded with approximately 20,000 English words in recent decades.  Here are a few examples: besuboru (baseball), intaanetto (Internet) and nyuusu (news).

COMMON PHRASES

European Tour Class Offered

Are you planning a trip to Europe? Or maybe you know you want to learn another language, but you aren’t quite sure which one is right for you? Indy Foreign Language Academy’s new European Tour “Traveler’s” class may be just what you’re searching for!

 The new class, which was recently added to our ever-growing list of public group classes, offers students an 8-week course that introduces them to many aspects of Spanish, German, French and Italian.  Students learn just the basics of each language – enough to help them get by while traveling, or to help them decide which of the four languages is right for them to pursue.  Dutch, Russian or Portuguese can be substituted according to demand.

 The next session of European Tour will be offered Wednesday evenings from 6:00-7:30 pm, January 21 – March 10, and registration is now open. 

 New classes are offered every eight weeks. Class size is limited to eight. 

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