spain – Page 78 – don't confuse the narrator

flobbalob, or words to that effect

According to the guide book I’m translating, the great Mosque-Cathedral in Córdoba boasts arcos polilobulados. Isn’t that a wonderful word? (Brits of a certain age will understand that it immediately made me think of Bill and Ben.)

Unfortunately, it’s the type of word that is liable to terrify a non-native reader: all those vowels, all those syllables… it must be complicated.

And, of course, it isn’t in the diccionario de la Real Academia, which makes it even more worrying.

This happens so often when you’re reading a foreign text: a word isn’t immediately obvious, so panic sets in.
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it’s all Greek to them

An interesting story on the BBC website under the headline Spanish hairdressers rebel against radio tax. It’s all to do with the fact that here in Spain the SGAE (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores) is determined to protect the intellectual property rights of its members.

The SGAE are the people responsible for the Canon por copia privada, a tax imposed on recording devices (both storage media, such as cds, and reproduction devices) in Spain.
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returning,

she walks through fields of silver.
Winter cracks under her feet
and the earth breathes
gossamer. In her wake,
the path is damp
and green.

Yes, it’s a bit soon to be thinking of spring. But the rain has at least paused for a day or two; yesterday there was a rainbow, and today, after a slight frost, we have tenuous sunshine, so it’s hard not to feel a little more optimistic.

translation fail

I’m translating a piece on Las Fallas – Valencia’s wonderful firework fiestas – and, as usual, I started off running the text through the Google translator to see if it would save me time.

Sadly, Google opts for an altogether different meaning for falla. This means that the phrase:

En la oficina de turismo podrás encontrar información sobre las diferentes rutas para contemplar las fallas más espectaculares.

becomes:

In the tourist office you can find information about different routes to see the most spectacular failures.

Perhaps human translators will be needed for a while yet.

daylight

Like I said the other day, it’s been very, very wet. But yesterday the rain stopped for long enough for me to go for a walk. The river was back within its banks, and I got a glimpse of the mountains for the first time since I got back from the UK: