Category Archives: Entertainment

Words, words, words, kissing

Posted on May 30, 2012 | 2 Comments

I’ve been poring over medical vocabulary all night, looking stuff up and making orderly lists, and just kind of letting myself mentally wander. I’m just doing OB/GYN right now, so I’ve been thinking very intensely about sex, contraception, pregnancy, birth and babies for over two hours now. Searching for someone else’s vocabulary lists online would feel like cheating and wouldn’t be nearly as interesting to me. It all sticks much better when I just choose a topic and then try to make as many tangents off of it as I can. In two hours, I’ve done about 70 terms in English, many of them corresponding to a myriad of Spanish equivalents. I think I’ve more or less known everything I’ve looked up, but I was kind of fuzzy on many of them. While trying to position all of them right on the tip of my tongue, I precariously stack them like tiny fragile teacups. I could do this all night (and with relish), and there would still be so many more terms to learn. There’s no doubt, I’ll have to learn many of them sobre la marcha. I’m gearing up.

To my great surprise, the interpreters I’ll be working with have assured me that the vocabulary part of the job is lo de menos. What? Really? How can that be? I’m not quite sure. Still, I’m committed to saturating my brain with as many words as I can sop up. I truly love it.

None of tonight’s words are especially interesting. There are, unsurprisingly, a million ways to say “condom”; I like the word amamantar; I always find it interesting to think of the different ways that Spanish delineates between abortions and miscarriages; I learned what toxemia/preeclampsia is; and lots more. The morning-after pill, infertility, midwives, your water breaking, breast pumps. It all seems so very grave. Heaven forbid I stumble for a word while discussing the limen of life and the womb, that dark, sacred cavity. Heaven forbid I take any of this lightly. I promise I’m not as frolicsome in real life as my online persona would lead you to believe.

Since I’m painting my night for you, let me paint my morning and afternoon. Spanish-wise, that is. Here’s what I heard, thought of, wondered about, and wrote down in the course of this day:

Yo te recomendé con él. -  I recommended you to him.

Poner la soga al cuello (a alguien, a uno mismo) – To dig sb’s grave, to screw them over

No podía mirarme a la cara. – He couldn’t look me in the eye.

¡Mírame (a) los ojos! – Look me in the eye! (Is that how we say it in English? I suddenly can’t remember.)

Esquivar la mirada – To avoid someone’s eyes, to not make eye contact

Sufrí un percance. – I had a setback/a snag/an accident/a hitch

Mi carro sufrió un percance. – I had a little issue with my car.

¡Estoy en ascuas! - I’m on pins and needles! (Ascua = brasa = “ember”)

Tariffs – impuestos, aranceles (NOT tarifa)

Tarifa por palabra, tarifa por hora – Rate per word, rate per hour

Skimpy – muy corto, chiquito (I learned this in a very funny way)

Mood swings – cambios de humor, cambios de ánimo, altibajos emocionales, cambios de carácter

Es muy yo – It’s so me

Besarte con alguien – To make out with someone (there are as many ways to say this as there are people to do it with)

And my favorite word of the day: besucón, besucona – adjective- fond of kissing; noun- smoocher

I loved the WordReference examples:

Este niño es muy besucón. – This child’s always kissing everybody.

Su novio es un besucón. – Her boyfriend is always kissing her.

Mi familia es muy besucona. – My family are all hugs and kisses.

Although Hispanic families get so much attention for how affectionate and touchy they are, I remember how I once astounded my ex when I told him that my siblings and I kiss our parents and grandparents on the lips (Not every day! Just when we greet after long absences. It’s not just us, right?) I really could have knocked him over with a feather, he was so shocked. Wish I’d known this word at a time so I could have shrugged at him and said, Hey, what can I say? Lo que pasa es que somos una familia muy besucona. But, seriously. Who’s going to complain about having that kind of girlfriend, anyway?

I also loved their choice of words with “smoocher” for the noun form. The adjective, then, would have to be smoochy, right? This word rattles around my brain and brings up Death to Smoochy, a movie I swear I’ve never seen but that I read a review of many, many moons ago. So, was the Spanish version Muerte al besucón–? It would have been if I’d had any say in the matter. Well, according to Wikipedia, it was just Smoochy. And Maten a Smoochy in Mexico. Oh well. Man, those movie title translators are no fun. No fun at all.

Well, it’s a new word to add to the favorites list and a new word to include in self-descriptions. I am very, very kissy. Not that anyone’s surprised.

What about you? What word did you learn today? Any new favorites? Non-natives, what’s your experience with those words and phrases? Had you heard them before? How have you heard them used? Where? If you’re a native Spanish speaker, anything to correct, clarify, comment on or concur with? 

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Posted in Describing People, Emotions/Feelings, Entertainment, False Cognates, Informal, Interpreting, Love, Medical, Personal, Phrases, Translation, Verbs

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That’s incredible! Er, wait, no, it’s terrible!

Posted on February 20, 2012 | 6 Comments

Here’s one of my favorite Spanish-English mistranslation stories. It comes to us from Ruben, one of my colleagues at the high school I taught at in Bogotá. He and his wife, Nancy (my former boss), had just returned to Colombia after living in North Carolina for six years with their two daughters. They both spoke magnificent English, but they did make tiny mistakes here and there. Once when they were in North Carolina, he was at a department store. As the cashier was scanning his items, his two daughters ran up to him, saying, “Dad! Dad! There are some people who are stealing stuff from the store by ripping off the price tags!” He then responded, “Oh my gosh! That’s incredible!” Naturally, the cashier’s jaw dropped. He might as well have said, “Wow! That’s awesome! Let’s go join them!”, seeing as that’s how the cashier understood it. When he saw her aghast face, he quickly realized his gaffe. Beet red, he fumbled to explain that it was a mistranslation, that increíble means something else in Spanish, that he was not a native English speaker. Uh huh. He certainly looked quite “American,” and, as I said, his English was stellar. It was a real foot-in-mouth moment that made him want to die. Fortunately for me, I got a real kick out of it and learned something useful de paso. Increíble doesn’t always translate to “incredible”! Incredible, right? Depends on how you mean it.

Most of the time, they do mean the same thing. That is, in Spanish, just as in English, it usually means astonishing, marvelous, amazing, en fin. Impresionante, extraordinario, genial. “The Incredibles” movie was Los increíbles. “The Incredible Hulk” was El increíble Hulk. No surprise there.

Muchos opinan que Google es una empresa increíble.

Many people think that Google is an incredible company.

Te invitamos a conocer y ser parte de esta increíble ciudad que te espera con juegos, retos y muchos premios. 

We invite you to know and be part of this incredible city that awaits you with games, challenges, and many prizes. (This comes from the spam folder in my email– see, even spam can teach you useful Spanish if you let it!)

“Incredible” has another side to it, though, a definition we forget to our Spanish-English translating peril:  So implausible as to elicit disbelief; unbelievable. You know, in- credible. Not credible. It’s in the dictionary all right, but if I had a nickel for every time I’ve ever heard it used that way . . . I’d be flat nickelless. It is often used this way in Spanish, though, and that’s what Ruben meant when he said that the stealing was increíble. Unbelievable. Not to be believed. Defying belief. Shocking, even. If the cashier had been bilingual, she surely would have cut him some slack. I mean, come on. What crook is really going to be that daft?

You know how you’ll see news headlines under categories like Strange But True or News of the Weird? In Spanish, they say Increíble pero cierto. Hard to believe but true. Not Wonderful but true– as if we were all a bunch of glass-half-empty cynics who refused to believe there could be any positive news out there.

@DiegoMorita Me parece increíble escuchar a alguien decir: colaboremen, demen, sientensen y mucho más si ese alguien es comunicador.#PenaAjena (I find it unbelievable/shocking when I hear someone say “colaboremen,” “demen,” “sientensen,” and especially if that someone is a PR person.)

@paty1978 Creo que ir a Santa Fe jamás estará en mis planes, ni por chamba, me parece increíble que tanta gente trabaje allá y sea tan difícil llegar! (I don’t think that going to Santa Fe will ever be in my plans, not even for work. I think it’s just unbelievable that so many people work out there and it’s so difficult to get there!)

¡Es increíble cuánto te amo!

It’s just mind-boggling how much I love you! (Loose translation. You could also say, “It’s incredible,” but it misses something, don’t you think?)

You just have to use context. If it’s something that sounds negative or that the person is struggling to wrap their mind around, “unbelievable” would probably be the best way to understand/translate increíble. I always appreciate it when Spanish helps draw out and accentuate certain nuances in English words that we tend to overlook. Yes, if I write, “I am so grateful to have known such an incredible person as you.” (which I have written), I am saying that you are exemplary. A knowledge of Spanish, however, evokes an essential meaning that underlies that word even without me consciously realizing it– your goodness is almost not to be believed. It’s inconceivable. It’s staggering. It’s marvelous, it’s astonishing, it’s amazing. Es increíble, ¿no?

_________________________________________________ Non-natives, what’s your experience with the usage of this word? Had you thought about the different nuances in Spanish before? How have you heard it used? Where? If you’re a native Spanish speaker, anything to correct, clarify, comment on or concur with? 

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Posted in Entertainment, False Cognates, Learning Resources, Nuances, Realia, Translation

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Flowery Spanish

Posted on February 10, 2012 | 17 Comments

The first movie I ever watched in Colombia was Adaptation. That was in 2007, when I visited Bogotá with my family for three weeks. I watched it in this little mom-and-pop rental store of pirated movies, spending the morning with the owner’s sister. Told to pick a movie to kill a few hours, that was the only one that even came close to appealing to me, and I had wanted to see it for a good while anyway. The title in Spanish was El ladrón de orquídeas, The Orchid Thief, which was the title of the book that the movie is based on, a book I’d go on to read a few years later. The movie, a film about flowers, is one of my dear favorites. How do you make a movie about flowers? That was the main character’s agony (the movie is about its own making). I won’t tell you how he did it, but I will use this as a segueway to talking about how to talk about flowers in Spanish. You certainly weren’t expecting anything less.

So many of my memories from my time in Colombia have to do with flowers. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, seeing as Colombia is the world’s second-largest exporter of cut flowers. In Bogotá, I taught at a university right next to the city’s botanical garden. In Medellín, I went to the city’s famous Feria de las flores in August, a festival that’s the most important social event for the city. As I walked absolutely everywhere in Colombia, I would always try to favor the streets with the most vibrant and abundant flowers on the balconies and spilling over onto the sidewalks. I still remember my favorite street in our neighborhood in Medellín, the one so cheerfully lined with radiant red irises. I bought flowers constantly, both at the markets and from old men pushing wooden carts through the streets. Flowers were given and received, and they were the last thing I ever bought in Colombia, my final goodbye to leave on the table: yellow calla lilies.



Flowers are flores. Easy. They’re feminine, something I used to always forget. Las flores. Practically speaking, you’ll find them at a floristería or at a florería. They say floristería in Colombia and many other places, but florería is used in some countries. Once you buy a ramo, you come home and look for a florero to put them in. Two words that I think sound funny are floricultor/a (flower grower) and floricultura (flower growing/floriculture). I promise not to laugh, though, if you tell me that you’re a floricultor. If anything, I’ll be charmed. You won’t have to be imaginative to woo me, I promise.

Now, three flower expressions in Spanish that I love.

(Tener los sentimientos) a flor de piel – to wear your heart on your sleeve, to be thin-skinned and sensitive

This means that your emotions are just barely contained right below your skin’s surface. You cry on a dime, everything moves you, and people consider you very fragile. You’re delicate and easily hurt, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. You just feel deeply. Maybe you’re always like this, or maybe you simply become more vulnerable during a certain moment. Outside of emotions, other things can also brew right under the surface, especially in society.

Ser flor de un día - to be short-lived

Like magnolia flowers that bloom and then fade and die very quickly, this phrase refers to things that are here today and gone tomorrow. This post does a nice job of tying the phrase to flash-in-the-pan celebrities who have their fifteen minutes of fame but are then never able to repeat it. As far as music goes, it makes me think of one-hit wonders. Athletes who have one killer performance and then never live up to it again can also be one-day flowers. Maybe your town tries to get a recycling initiative off the ground and there’s a lot of hullabaloo for a while and then it’s never spoken of again, or you go to the gym for a week after New Year’s and then fall off the wagon. Ephemeral flowers, all of them. Better to have flowered once and withered than never to have flowered at all, right?

Echarle flores a alguien - to heap compliments on someone

Not flirting, mind you (that would be echar los perros). Just some good old-fashioned plaudits, which none of us ever get tired of hearing. I know I don’t.

Can you think of any other useful flower phrases in Spanish?

_________________________________________________ Non-natives, what’s your experience with these phrases? Had you heard them before? How have you heard them used? Where? If you’re a native Spanish speaker, anything to correct, clarify, comment on or concur with? 

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Posted in Describing People, Emotions/Feelings, Entertainment, Phrases, Themes

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Cartoon characters in Spanish, Part Two

Posted on December 29, 2011 | 15 Comments

Here’s the second half of what I started yesterday, a list of the names of cartoon characters in Spanish. As you can see, many of the names are either identical or very similar. If you’re feeling up for a challenge, pop over to Youtube and watch a short episode of your favorite childhood show in Spanish. Eventually, we’ll have to work our way to native Spanish shows and comics– Condorito, Mafalda, Kalimán, even El chavo del ocho.

And now for a bit of cartoon language trivia for you. One beautiful day out in the Colombian countryside with a group of friends, I once got totally lost in a conversation when they started joking about a dog being named Firulais. I was like, ¿que qué? Unbeknownst to me, it was the dog Spike’s name on the show Rugrats (Aventuras en pañales), one of my favorites way back when, and works like Rover, Spot, Fido, et al., a stock name for dogs in stories or TV shows. Firulais– stick that in your back pocket, and whip it out at just the right moment. You’ll blow minds, I promise.

Donald Duck = Pato Donald, Daisy = Daisy

Goofy = Tribilín/Goofy (When I asked my ex-boyfriend about this, he confessed that he was never sure if Tribilín and Goofy were the same person or two different characters)

The rest of the Disney characters are the same– Mickey (Ratón Mickey), Minnie, and Pluto.

Scooby-Doo = Scooby-Doo

Alvin and the Chipmunks = Alvin y las ardillas (Look, I know a squirrel’s different from a chipmunk and that you’re crying foul because your dictionary says ardilla listada for chipmunk. But, chipmunks aren’t found in Latin America, for one. Secondly, “Alvin and the striped squirrels” just doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Let’s not get all in a huff and be too legalistic about… these squeaky creatures.)

The Pink Panther = La pantera rosa (Click here to listen to an incredible salsa version of the show’s famous theme song from La 33, a salsa orchestra from Bogotá)

Popeye = Popeye, but the pronunciation is Hispanicized. Three syllables.


Casper the Friendly Ghost = Gasparín el fantasma amistoso

Charlie Brown = Carlitos, Peanuts = Rabanitos, Snoopy = Snoopy

Garfield = Garfield

Anything I missed?  Check out this awesome web page to learn more– my list can’t hold a candle to it. But, mine had pictures, so we’re tied, right? Right.

Oh, and hey– did anyone catch the mistake in the last post? Not my mistake, mind you. Look at what Fred Flintstone says; one letter is off and it completely changes what he said. A very common mistake among natives, I’m sad to say! (Confusing “s” and “z”)

_________________________________________________ Non-natives, what’s your experience with these cartoons in Spanish? Had you heard or seen them before? How have you heard them used? Where? If you’re a native Spanish speaker, anything to correct, clarify, comment on or concur with? 

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Posted in Animals, Culture, Entertainment, Fun, Names, Translation

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Cartoon characters in Spanish, Part One

Posted on December 28, 2011 | 7 Comments

This post is just for fun, unless you’re like me and you find all of them fun, no matter how arcane or hair-splitting. It will come as no surprise to hear that American cartoons are known and beloved around the world, our close neighbor Latin America being no exception. Their names are often changed, though, to give them a more Latin twist, and you probably wouldn’t catch a fast-flying reference if you hadn’t done a little cartoon homework beforehand. So, here’s your homework– skim through the list and enjoy! And, no, cartoon characters are not a top five conversation topic for me by any means, but random references do work their way into chats when you least expect it. I’ve heard the vast majority of these at one point or another– as for the rest, feel free to correct me if you’re more cartoon savvy than I am. This list is by no means exhaustive, but instead is just a sampling from my childhood. More to come!

Dennis the Menace = Daniel el travieso

Click here and here to see entire Daniel el travieso comic strips in Spanish.

The Smurfs = Los pitufos (I even saw the movie in Spanish– it was filled with plays on words like Te pitufiamo and ¿Quién se pitufió?) Looks like these guys take language as seriously as I do.

The Flintstones = Los picapiedra (The characters were Pedro y Vilma Picapiedra, Pablo y Betty Mármol) Do you see the spelling error above? ¡Ojo!

The Jetsons = Los supersónicos

Bugs Bunny = Bugs Bunny, but also El Conejo de la Suerte in some places. His classic line, “What’s up, doc?” was ¿Qué hay de nuevo, viejo? Elmer Fudd = Elmer Gruñón (Elmer Grumpy)

Yosemite Sam = Sam Bigotes (Sam Mustache)

Roadrunner = Correcaminos. ¡Bip! ¡Bip!

Wile E. Coyote = Coyote

Porky Pig = Porky, Daffy Duck = Pato Lucas

Tweety = Piolín (If you ever flip through the Spanish radio stations in the morning, you might catch Piolín por la mañana. Yes, Tweety in the morning. The famous host is based out of California, but broadcast nationwide.) Tweety’s famous line in Spanish: Me pareció ver un lindo gatito.

Speedy Gonzales = Speedy González, sometimes Rapidín González. ¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!

Tom and Jerry = Tom y Jerry

Many thanks to Bernardo Mora Cadavid for letting me use so many images from his extensive collection. ¡Gracias!

_________________________________________________ Non-natives, what’s your experience with these cartoons in Spanish? Had you heard or seen them before? How have you heard them used? Where? If you’re a native Spanish speaker, anything to correct, clarify, comment on or concur with? 


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Posted in Culture, Entertainment, Fun, Translation

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