It is fair to say that Spanish translation is the U.S. is divided equally between the domestic and international market. These markets each have their own idiosyncrasies that represent only one aspect of the language problem in the United States.

U.S. based translations face a very different situation from that experienced by markets in other Spanish speaking countries. On the one hand is the domestic market, where the target audience is highly heterogeneous, submerged in bilingual media and at times with low educational level. This is a population that innocently uses Spanglish. On the other hand is the international one, in which translations can be aimed at any of the 22 countries of the Hispanic world, or to all countries equally.

The U.S. market makes the translation process more difficult for the translator and the translation company. Typically, translations into Spanish need to have very specific guidelines or the translation can be plagued with differences. Translators from different backgrounds tend to use different terms and forms of expression. Reason why it is so important to keep in mind that Spanish speakers often react strongly to the use of words that are not common in their countries. Of course all this has a solution: if translators work with a glossary and a style manual, customers will ultimately receive a satisfactory translation.

However, the Spanish language is basically the same for all countries. The most noticeable differences between the various forms of expression in Spanish are at the level of speech. The lower the educational level of the speaker, the more pronounced is the difference of expression. But no matter what dialect is used, if it is written in good basic Spanish, any Spanish speaker will understand it.

Having said that, it is important to recognize the idiosyncrasies of the market. For example, when translating for a U.S. audience, numerals should be the same as in English. That is, one dollar and fifty cents is written one point fifty and not one comma fifty. The reason for this is obvious: U.S. Spanish speakers live in a world that expresses decimal points with a period and not a comma as in their countries of origin. Changing it would be extremely confusing and may even cause lawsuits. Moreover, some Latin American countries are increasingly adopting the decimal separator. For example: Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru and Puerto Rico.

Spanglish

The most troubling aspect of the U.S. market is Spanglish. In short, it is the use of English words and, in many cases, combined with an English syntax. Requests to translate in Spanglish already exist in the market. This is obviously for marketing purposes to reach to a potential buyer and sell a product. However, Spanglish is not a dialect and its use should not be encouraged. Promoting Spanglish can have unpredictable consequences for the evolution, or rather the involution of Spanish or Hispanic heritage in the United States.

If you have a business or company in the United States and are considering investing in Spanish translations, it is important to have access to Hispanic trends, census data, and demographic information. Below are some good resources:

United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Statistics – Information and statistics on the population and economic strength of Hispanics living in the United States.

The Hispanic Population – U.S. Census – United States census data relating to the growing Hispanic population in the U.S.

Hispanic Marketing -United States Hispanic Market – Demographic projections.

Pew Hispanic Center -Research center focused on: demography, economics, education, culture, identity, attitudes, immigration, labor, politics, remittances.

Hispanic Business -Online magazine that offers a variety of business services such as career placement, recruitment services, business research, surveys and advertising.

What to read:

Online resources

The book club Mosaico for ideas about what to buy

Críticas and publisher catalogs such as Ediciones Serres, Random House Español, and Ediciones TUTOR

According to the 2000 census, over 21 million people in the United States have limited English proficiency (LEP). Nearly 28 percent of all Spanish speakers in the United State fall into this category. This language barrier can be a serious disadvantage in providing quality health care. It can affect an LEP patient’s access to services, their ability to give informed consent for medical treatment, and their compliance with drug regimens and follow-up. Patients who speak little or no English may be at greater risk of medical error or misdiagnosis if they are not provided with an interpreter, are less likely to use preventive care services, and more likely to use emergency rooms than English speakers. They also need more diagnostic tests, are less satisfied with the medical care they receive, and are often dissatisfied with the quality of the translated material they are given.

Addressing these concerns, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health has issued a number of guidelines which are primarily directed at health care organizations with the goal of providing meaningful access to LEP patients; however, individual providers are also encouraged to use the standards to make their practices more culturally and linguistically accessible. These guidelines are detailed in the Department’s National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health Care (CLAS). Most relevant for this article is Standard 7, which states that “an effective language assistance program ensures that written materials that are routinely provided in English to applicants, patients/consumers, and the public are available in commonly encountered languages other than English. It is important to translate materials that are essential to patients/consumers accessing and making educated decisions about health care”.

These guidelines discuss in great detail the importance of using qualified translators and the need for establishing procedures that will assure the quality of the translated materials given to the public:

The section ends with the injunction to “avoid ‘wildcat’ translations (e.g., the doctor’s sister who took Spanish in collage), however tempting the financial advantages”.

Spanish Translation US has teams of life science expert Spanish translators that can work on all life science related documentation from complex pharmaceutical manual to patient customer care documentation and forms.

For more information, visit: Spanish Life Science Translation

For more information about CLAS standards, visit:

Related News:

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) voted in favor of President Obama’s health care reform proposal. They belive it will greatly improve the quality of life for millions of Latinos. The measure is expected to expand coverage to 8.8 million Latinos, or 60%of the currently uninsured Hispanic community.

“This bill is important for all Americans, but it is particularly critical to our Latino communities which have the highest uninsured rate of any racial or ethnic group in the country. The bill provides access to affordable health care to the millions of uninsured Latinos in this country through Medicaid expansion, access to health insurance exchanges, and subsidies to help low and moderate income families,” said Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), the Chair of the CHC Task Force on Health.

A press release from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus:

Congressional Hispanic Caucus Calls for Passage of Health Care Reform

Cheap and fast are the first two words that go through most people’s minds when they start looking for a translation agency. But when they read over the first translation that they had done based solely on those two criteria, they’ll probably rethink the whole idea and realize that “quality” was actually what they were looking for. This is a little guide on how to avoid these situations when selecting who is going to do your English or Spanish translation.

Quality translations can be cheap and they can have good turnaround times, no doubt about it. The trick is finding these translation companies. There are essentially two key factors that will give you a top-notch translation: the skills of the translators and the translation process used at the company.

Try and find out how the company chooses its translation team and see if they have native English and Spanish speakers on staff. See if they have specialists in the medical, legal, engineering or whatever field you need. A lot of translation projects are doomed before they get started because an uncle’s friend is “fluent” and is asked to take the job instead of a professional translation agency.

A good translation is not a one-step process. Ideally, you will have native speakers translating, editing and proofreading your document or project. Read over the company’s process and see how they do things. If the company hasn’t listed this information on it’s company website, move on to the next.

There’s no getting around the price. It is extremely important. And the best translation companies do offer low price translations because they know what they’re doing and have the best translators following a quality translation process. So do a little homework on the English and Spanish translation company and you will see the results pay off ten-fold.

About a century ago George Bernard Shaw remarked that England and the United States were two countries divided by a common language.  The differences in the Spanish spoken in Spain (not to mention in the different regions of Spain itself) and that spoken in Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, etc. can make it seem like everyone is not speaking the same language either.
When translating from English to Spanish, one of the problems we commonly face is knowing what country or region we are writing for, then adapting our text to the “flavor” of the intended audience. We may also have to take a text in English and put it into a Spanish with Caribbean slang, Catalan terms, or lunfardo from Buenos Aires. Maybe we’re not sure of the meaning or if the word we know is used in the same way there. Most times a translator will have to consult a local native speaker (if he or she is lucky enough to know one), search in a forum that has speakers from different countries, or look to a special resource, such as the one that I’d like to share with you now: the “Jergas de Habla Hispana” website. I’ve found it to be a useful tool for finding some of those “weird” words that don’t appear in other dictionaries, and though the site’s creators acknowledge that it’s not all-encompassing, they invite visitors to further enhance it.  http://www.jergasdehablahispana.org/

When looking at the use of the Spanish language in the U.S., the numbers speak for themselves. According to the 2006 Census, the United States now has more than 35 million Spanish speakers, meaning there are more people speaking Spanish in the U.S. than in Venezuela, Chile, or Cuba. In fact, the U.S. currently has the sixth largest Spanish-speaking population in the world. The annual growth rate for the Latino community in the U.S. is approaching 4%, more than triple the overall growth rate, and experts say that by the year 2050, more than 25% of the U.S. population will speak Spanish.

These numbers have caused quite a stir, sparking debates on a “national language,” immigration policy, language in schools, and more. Even Presidential candidate Barack Obama has spoken his mind on the subject, stating “Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English. They’ll learn English. You need to make sure your child can speak Spanish.”

Now, what do you do when millions of people in the same country aren’t speaking the same language? Translate of course. Television, magazines, and other media now provide translated versions to reach a greater audience. Businesses like McDonalds and Coca-Cola spend millions on translating and localizing their marketing efforts to reach U.S. Spanish speaking customers. The intention here is not to provoke debate, but rather to point out that translations and translators, both formal and informal, have become the new liaison in the U.S.

The act of translating can be a very gratifying experience…or a pain in the neck.

Talking about the satisfying side is easy (and rather boring), and because the enjoyment is personal and distinctive for each one of us, it doesn’t do us much good in regards to learning or improving our skills.  The problems we face while translating however, if we were to share them, discuss them with colleagues and try to solve them, could help us grow in our profession.

What are some common problems that we face as translators? We have gone to great lengths to master the twists and turns of our own language, its rules and idiosyncrasies. Not to mention a new language, one that we grasp almost as our own, that we know so much about, but always with so much more to learn.  And we have a specialty, or a topic we prefer, or one that comes easily to us. But we also have the thousands of topics that we know nearly nothing about, that are hard for us to figure out, and that the mere thought of having to translate frightens us.  Even in best case scenarios, no translation is “ideal.” We have all had experiences with the client who doesn’t understand what we do, the time and the effort that we put into it. Not everyone understands that we are not machines that you enter words into and then a little while later the translation pops out automatically.

And the texts we work with? How does one deal with “clippings” with no context that give no clues as to the appropriate meaning/verb tense/pronoun? How many times would we give “our kingdom for a glossary” that wasn’t provided?  There is also the client that asks for explanations once the work is finished, or even returns the work “corrected.” And of course we have the small day to day decisions: “This sentence is correct, but… who is the translation for?” Things like not using the formal “usted” for elementary students, and tailoring our translations to a specific audience, be it Latinos in the US or Argentineans in Buenos Aires, or on the other side of the coin, British English versus American English. And if there are two choices for the same term (baúl/maletero or trunk/boot) we must select the proper “flavor” for our intended audience.

Although records of translations date back more than two thousand years, the Information Age has sparked quite a boom in the need for translation. The world has become more interconnected through international commerce, improved communications, and of course, the World Wide Web. This is especially true for Spanish and English, as things like NAFTA, the record numbers of Spanish-speaking immigrants in the U.S., and the loosening of trade restrictions has made increased communication between English and Spanish speaking countries essential. One can reach almost the entire world if they use the right channels, and the implications of this are enormous for both the Spanish and English speaking communities.

From a business perspective, the ramifications of this are unparalleled. The number of potential customers can jump exponentially overnight, and corporations have known this for years. Now we are seeing it trickle down to mid-size and even local companies, who use translations and a little cultural awareness to reach a new audience. With more than 300 million Spanish speakers in the world, companies are opening their doors to new potential customers by marketing directly to the Hispanic consumers. And with English as the world’s current lingua franca, Spanish speaking countries are doing likewise by translating into English.

In this blog, we are going to be talking about Spanish into English and English into Spanish translations. I hope to keep the topics varied enough so that everyone can learn a little about this specific style of translation, how it’s done, and why it’s important. Our goal is to provide information for everyone: an author looking to translate his or her work for the first time, a professional translator who wants to learn a little more about their trade, essentially anyone interested in Spanish-English translation.

Welcome to the official Spanish Translation US blog. In this blog, you will find tips, advice, and all kinds of information regarding the art, the science, and the wide world of translation, as written by translators, project managers, DTP specialists, localization and globalization experts, and all those involved in this exciting industry. We invite you to learn more about the many different facets of this field and keep informed of the latest news and updates from Spanish Translation US.