new thread
Consistently, over many years, the pages on my web site that get viewed the most are those of "On Being a Longhair", an FAQ that was written about fifteen years ago. Its content was mostly drawn from MLHH here, and the intent was that it would serve as an FAQ for users of MLHH, so the same questions would not be asked as much over and over again.
"On Being a Longhair" is the only item on my web site that is translated into another language besides English. It was translated by a French longhair, who was a student, several years ago. Because of the popularity of the page, I have felt it would be worthwhile to translate it to another language with a lot of speakers - Spanish.
To get a good translation, we need input from a longhair who is familiar with longhair identity issues (which can be me) and from someone who is a native speaker of Spanish (which is not me). Either can be the primary author, so long as we get input from both types of people.
Also, Spanish has more regional variations than English does. We want the words we use to have the most widespread and uniform application throughout the Spanish-speaking world, because our material will be read worldwide, not just from your own country. Please keep that in mind when making comments.
Replies to this thread, or messages directly to me by clicking on my name at the top of this post, will either one be fine for providing me with feedback.
I am in no hurry with this project. I will work on it as time allows. Nevertheless, now is the time to get comments to me, since they will be used when translating the remaining 90%.
Spanish is a widely spoken language used in many countries, and many speakers of Spanish are not fluent in reading English. It will be great to get our information out to those longhairs! We will all appreciate any help any of you can provide!
Quick translation of the above message into Spanish:
Constantemente, durante muchos años, las páginas de mi sitio web que consiguen vieron más son las de "On Being a Longhair", un FAQ que fue escrito hace unos quince años. Su contenido se ha elaborado en su mayorÃa de MLHH aquÃ, y la intención era que sirviera como un FAQ para los usuarios de MLHH, por lo que las mismas preguntas no se les pedirÃa tanto una y otra vez.
"On Being a Longhair" es el único tema en mi sitio web que se traduce a otro idioma además del inglés. Fue traducido por un pelilargo francés, que era un estudiante, hace pocos años. Debido a la popularidad de la página, me he sentido, valdrÃa la pena traducirlo a otro idioma con una gran cantidad de oradores - español.
Para obtener una buena traducción, necesitamos el aporte de un pelilargo que esté familiarizado con los problemas de identidad de pelilargos (que puede ser yo) y de alguien que es un hablante nativo de español (que no soy yo). Cualquier puede ser el autor principal, siempre y cuando tengamos el aporte de ambos tipos de personas.
Además, el español tiene más variaciones regionales que inglés hace. Queremos que las palabras que usamos para tener la aplicación más generalizada y uniforme en todo el mundo de habla española, porque nuestro material será leÃdo en todo el mundo, no sólo en su propio paÃs. Por favor, mantenga esto en mente al hacer comentarios.
Las respuestas a este mensaje, o mensajes directamente a mà haciendo clic en mi nombre en la parte superior de este mensaje, o bien uno estar bien para darme retroalimentación.
No tengo ninguna prisa con este proyecto. Voy a trabajar en ello como el tiempo lo permite. Sin embargo, ahora es el momento para obtener comentarios a mÃ, ya que se utilizarán cuando se traduce el 90% restante.
El español es una lengua hablada en muchos paÃses, y muchos hablantes de español no tienen fluidez en el leer de inglés. ¡Será genial para proporcionar nuestra información a los pelilargos! ¡Todos tendremos agradecerÃa cualquier ayuda alguno de ustedes puede dar!
Bill
Rather than translate it have you considered referring users to
Google translate or Bablefish?
I see you did not read beyond the first two paragraphs of the post. One of the major questions is whether we should do it at all. This is best decided by (1) native speakers of Spanish (2) after they've seen a sample of what a translation might look like. By doing only 10% of the translations, we now have such a sample.
All your base are belong to us
Thus, I am looking for comments from native speakers of Spanish, since they would be the ones who may or may not benefit from such a translation. And offers from such people to help may influence the decision. People like yourself don't have any skin in the game, since they will just read the English version.
Bill
The preliminary translation of Part 1 is at the link below. I accidentally linked the English version in the original post.
Preliminary Spanish Translation
Bill
Hi Bill,
As a native Spanish speaker, I would say your translation is almost perfect - way better than what Google translator can do. I would correct a few things though. I mean, by reading your translation I can tell it wasn't written by a Spanish native speaker and the order of some words in some sentences may not be the right one but it is still understandable.
Regarding the words "pelilargos" or "mechudos" this is my thought:
I have never EVER heard the word "mechudos" - at least here in Argentina. The word "pelilargos" is most common among most Spanish speaking countries. I mean, "mechudos" might not be used in Argentina in ANY WAY but it might be used in other countries as a despective word probably.
What I can offer you, is to give you a hand by correcting these little translation mistakes to go from an "almost excellent" translation to an "excellent" one.
Let me know if you'd like to do that and thank you so much for thinking about the Spanish fellows who are quite a lot ( 430 million people around the world distributed between LatinAmerica, the USA, Brazil, Philippines, France, Canada, Belize, etc).
Also, Spanish is too similar to other "lenguas romances" or "lenguas romanicas".
For example, Italian, French, Portuguese and Spanish are "lenguas romances". That means that all of them share the same "root" so they are really similar.
For example, as a Spanish speaker I can totally understand portuguese although I never studied it . In my last trip to Europe I found that Italians felt more comfortable speaking Spanish to me rather than speaking English (for example, in the hotel at check in, etc).
So I think your project may not help only Spanish speakers, but also those who are not Spanish speakers but speak a language similar to Spanish.
Great! It is important that those doing the translation are familiar with longhair culture, because choice of words conveys feelings as well as sterile information. Sterile information is all we would get from Google translations, and such translations would have errors, too. And those doing the translation should include someone who is a native speaker. Between you and me, we have a team!
Yes, I agree that reaching out to guys who speak Spanish should be a top priority. The first part of the four parts of the document got about 5000 hits in English last month and 150 hits in French. The four top languages in the world are Chinese, Hindi, English, and Spanish, but only English and Spanish are widespread. It is most important that we reach the speakers of those two languages. About five times as many people speak Spanish as speak French, for example. We only have a French translation because a student in France offered to do it. Because Italian and Portuguese speakers might find Spanish easier to read than English, as you say next, I'd say a Spanish translation could be read by 1000 people per month!
Yes, when I was in Italy, I frequently used Spanish instead of English, and I was better understood.
Dave, please click on my name, above, to send me a short e-mail. That way, I'll have your e-mail address, and I will put it as an "okay address" in my spam filter. We can then proceed using e-mail.
Looking forward to it. The project should be fun, and it will be helpful to a lot of longhairs!
Bill
This is terrific news, Bill, I am very much looking forward to the finished result of this project!!
As you know, I am NOT a native Spanish speaker; but having taken Spanish classes during all 4 years of my hometown's suburban Chicago area high school (and getting mostly grade "A" in those classes), I have kept up with being able to speak Spanish to a modest degree (pero yo hablo como un Gringo tipico - LOL)....
Also, having lived in California for a long time now -- including working in many restaurants and kitchens with Latino co-workers, as well as in the landscaping field -- I've always wished I spoke better, clearer, & more grammatically accurate Spanish. So I am very excited about this project, and applaud your efforts to complete this undertaking to such a high level!
Anyway, please keep me posted about this, as I am greatly interested in watching the translation's progress.
- Ken
I love gringo accent though haha (well not only me, in general we spanish speakers tend to love how you guys speak spanish. I think people in general love accents haha)
LOL, and I have the absolute WORST of the Gringo accents, because I'm originally from the Chicago, Illinois area (before I moved out West to California in 1977) -- the Midwestern "twang" completely destroys the beauty of the Spanish language (in my opinion), and is a dead give-away that I'm definitely not a native Spanish-speaker (LOL)!
I think it is hard to get many years of foreign language classes in US schools. My son did two years of French (really three, but one was a repeat at the same level), and my daughter did a year of Spanish. Four years of any foreign language in this school district would not even be possible.
I find this rather disappointing, as I myself did five years of French and three years of German in school in England. OTOH, Spanish was not even offered! Incredibly, it was actually cheaper for English families to take their vacations in Spain than to take them in England, even after paying for the flights, and yet the school system hadn't factored in that the kids might want to speak to the locals on vacation.
I think the raw stats of how many people speak each language are misleading. Yes, English and Spanish are the most widely spoken languages if you ignore Hindi and Mandarin that are not spoken much outside India and China, but the EU is pretty big as well as affluent and it's official languages are English, French and German.
Many more languages are spoken in the EU, but at least one of the three official languages is taught as a foreign language in school in most if not all of them, and it's not always English that they teach first. And each of the official languages is spoken in at least two, if not three, member states. Of course, this would be rather like Maryland and Virgina speaking different languages from eachother, by comparison.
I took two years of high school Spanish, followed by a six week cram course that the high school had arranged to give us the third year. It was taught in Valencia, Spain. Then I took the fourth year of high school Spanish back at my high school in Ft. Lauderdale. I graduated fifty years ago, so I have forgotten a bit, one could say.
I also took two years of Russian in high school, and I know very little of it now. Somehow, for me, I needed more than two years of a language at the high school level for it all to coalesce into a usable, and thus rememberable, system of communication and thought.
Living in California, I sometimes have cause to use Spanish in social situations, and I've occasionally had to use it at work, but I certainly haven't been immersed in it since I graduated from high school.
I probably have a better memory than most people for stuff that happened fifty years ago. I always do much better than my husband when we've tried to answer the questions on the TV show, "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?" Much of that stuff I last heard the answer to sixty years ago. Some of the questions I'm stumped at, of course. When they asked who the first female astronaut was, I was lost for an answer. When I was in grade school, they didn't have any astronauts yet. Well, they didn't even have satellites yet.
Bill
Wow guys, I can't believe my eyes. Why do you get just a few years of foreign language?
In my country (Argentina) people are taught English all along kindergarten, primary school, high school and even college. In fact, being able to speak English is a requirement for any person applying for a job (it is as important as knowing how to use a computer hahaha).
For the last 20 years Portuguese has also became a very important language too due to the close bilateral relationships we have with Brazil.
Other than that, I would say that although our official language in Argentina is Spanish there are other non-official languages such as English, German, Italian, Portuguese, Portuñol (which is a mix between portuguese and spanish and is spoken in the border line with Brazil), japanese, yiddish (among the jewish community - remember that Argentina is the second country with the largest jewish community in the world outside of Israel and after the USA). We do have some welsh and irish colonists in Patagonia who still speak their own languages too.
Most Americans don't know this, but the United States has no official language at all. English has become the de facto official language here, but legally, no language holds that position.
In Quebec they passed laws saying French had to be used in many situations. Laws like that were ruled unconstitutional here. Because of the right of free speech in the First Amendment, Americans can use any language they want.
Of course, some languages are given priority in certain situations. To serve on a jury, you have to be able to understand English. There are a lot of languages you can take the California driving test in, but it is a finite list. In San Francisco when we vote, ballots are given to us in English, Spanish, and Chinese.
Bill
WOW, cool! I didn't know that; but on some sort of level I must have understood it intuitively, because I've never bought into the bigots who yell at people who speak languages other than English on the bus, for example.
Hi electros,
Yes, we need better opportunities to study languages here in the US, it's not as good as it should be.
I also took 2 years of Portugues in high school, taught by a teacher who only allowed Spanish-speaking students who got good grades in Spanish -- not even allowing ANY English to be spoken in the classroom! In theory, it was a good idea; but in practice, it didn't really work out all that well...
All I remember from that Portugues class was one sentence:
"Noa falo muito Porugues!"
(translation: "I don't speak much Portugese!" - LOL)