Spanish For Social Change

why I don't love "language justice" terminology

2012-01-25T19:44:00.000-08:00

I've been mulling over the 'language justice' terminology used by a lot of my compas who organize to make our movements more multilingual. I don't really like it. My sense is that it makes it sound like making the space fully bilingual is about justice for limited English speakers - or at any rate it seems easy for fluent English speakers to interpret it that way - rather than understanding that it benefits, say, limited Spanish speakers as much or more to have a broader more inclusive smarter movement with access to more experiences and insights. Rather than talk about 'language justice' I would prefer calling it the 'bilingual space committee' or what have you. Of course a bilingual space involves much more than interp and trans, but also bilingual facilitation and more (for how to see the great tips in the resource in this post).

Now if it's a matter of getting proper language interpretation in court, there I'm all for using the term 'language justice'.

But then again, I might be wrong about the connotations of the term - because this image is from the fabulous Wayside center, and though they use the term 'language justice', as they put it:

"Wayside has made a commitment to build and amplify voices and languages not often heard in organizing and movement spaces. We are working in Virginia and DC with organizations that see the need, and the organizing power, of connecting people across race and language especially in immigrant communities. When we begin to see language as a tool of empowerment that gives value to people's culture and way of being, our organizations grow in heart, experience, and perspective. When we begin to see that interpreting is not just for mono-lingual non-English speakers but in fact for everyone who is unable to understand all languages present in a conversation, we can begin to see people working from abundance and not deficiency. When we interpret well, we open space for the jokes, the perspectives and the soul of everyone in the room to come through, building deeper solidarity, democracy, and a broader movement for change."

(fabulous! pero ojo: I prefer to use the term limited English vs. non-English since most users of interpretation will actually speak some basic English, and using the term non can reinforce the idea that interpretation is only for those who speak no English at all)

leaders

2012-01-17T10:05:00.000-08:00

leaders: lideres y lideresas

I've been seeing this version in more Spanish language movement documents - recently in several from Bolivia. I have mixed feelings about it. I wish lideres was seen as including women, but I guess this highlights the role of women leaders.

los indigenistas

2012-01-11T19:51:00.001-08:00

indigenista: indigenist

over on my other blog (decolonizing solidarity) I posted the story of three international solidarity activists from the US who were killed in Colombia in 1999. In the Colombian press they are widely called "los indigenistas", which got me wondering how to say that in English and yes, you read that right - that cognate does exist in English. Ward Churchill calls himself one and writes in this Z classic that

"By this, I mean that I am one who not only takes the rights of indigenous peoples as the highest priority of my political life, but who draws upon the traditions—the bodies of knowledge and corresponding codes of value—evolved over many thousands of years by native peoples the world over. This is the basis upon which I not only advance critiques of, but conceptualize alternatives to the present social, political, economic, and philosophical status quo. In turn, this gives shape not only to the sorts of goals and objectives I pursue, but the kinds of strategy and tactics I advocate, the variety of struggles I tend to support, the nature of the alliances I am inclined to enter into, and so on."

other resources to share with orgs that use interps

2012-01-03T14:47:00.001-08:00

in my last post I shared a resource for organizations looking to be more multilingual in organizing, meetings, etc.

along the same lines, here are two more mainstream resources from the American Translator's Association

here is their promo text:

For non-linguists, buying interpreting services is often frustrating. Many buyers are not even sure they need a professional interpreter since they know someone who is bilingual and willing to help out.

Buyers simply don't see the same problems and risks of miscommunication that you see.

These potential clients need to know what you do and the value your services can bring to their business. That's where Interpreting: Getting It Right comes in. This straightforward brochure explains the where, why, and how of professional interpreting services. It's a quick read that offers practical, hands-on information for language services consumers, perfect for client education.

To preview this brochure online, click Interpreting: Getting It Right.

Translation: Getting it Right

There are hundreds of ways a translation project can go off track – ridiculous deadlines, misapplied machine translation, poor project management. You know because you've seen it all. But have your clients? Be sure they know the value you bring to their business and keep them coming back.

Client education is one of the best ways to build your customer base, and it's easy to do with the Translation: Getting It Right brochure.

ATA members can receive 20 free copies just for the asking. Contact the ATA Membership Services Manager for details.

But what if your client doesn't speak English? The brochure is now available in a number of other languages. Check out the links below!

You can also preview this client education booklet online. Click to download a PDF version of Translation: Getting It Right.

great resource for organizations

2011-12-26T20:34:00.000-08:00

if you work with or for an organization that wants to be more multilingual,
check out this fantastic resource by my friend Alice.

if the link above doesn't get you a pdf go here and scroll down to 'interpretation'

social justice translation by Holdren and Touza

2011-12-17T10:51:00.000-08:00

if you were impressed by the translator's notes by them that I posted, you might enjoy reading the full translator's preface and the actual translation

19 & 20: Notes for a New Social Protagonism (available entirely online here)
Colectivo Situaciones
Translated by Nate Holdren & Sebastián Touza
Introductions by Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri

An 18th Brumaire for the 21st Century: militant research on the December 19th and 20th, 2001 uprisings in Argentina

In the heat of an economic and political crisis, people in Argentina took to the streets on December 19th, 2001, shouting “¡Qué se vayan todos!” These words – “All of them out!” – hurled by thousands banging pots and pans, struck at every politician, economist, and journalist. These events opened a period of intense social unrest and political creativity that led to the collapse of government after government. Neighborhoods organized themselves into hundreds of popular assemblies across the country, the unemployed workers movement acquired a new visibility, workers took over factories and businesses. These events marked a sea change, a before and an after for Argentina that resonated around the world.

Colectivo Situaciones wrote this book in the heat of that December’s aftermath. As radicals immersed within the long process of reflection and experimentation with forms of counterpower that Argentines practiced in shadow of neoliberal rule, Colectivo Situaciones knew that the novelty of the events of December 19th and 20th demanded new forms of thinking and research. This book attempts to read those struggles from within. Ten years have passed, yet the book remains as relevant and as fresh as the day it came out. Multitudes of citizens from different countries have learned their own ways to chant ¡Qué se vayan todos!, from Iceland to Tunisia, from Spain to Greece, from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park. Colectivo Situactiones’ practice of engaging with movements’ own thought processes resonates with everyone seeking to think current events and movements, and through that to build a new world in the shell of the old.

“If the insurrection in Argentina that began in December 2001 was our Paris Commune, then Colectivo Situaciones fits well in the position of Karl Marx. As Friedrich Engels was fond of saying, one of Marx’s many talents was to analyze the historical importance of political events as they took place. This book by Colectivo Situaciones, written in the heat of action, certainly demonstrates that same talent in full, delving into the complexity of concrete events while simultaneously stepping back to recognize how our political reality has changed.” – Michael Hardt, from the Introduction

Bio: Colectivo Situaciones is a collective of militant researchers based in Buenos Aires. They have participated in numerous grassroots co-research activities with unemployed workers, peasant movements, neighborhood assemblies, and alternative education experiments.

poder o potencia?

2011-12-12T16:40:00.001-08:00

from part two of that fabulous translators intro by Nate Holdren and Sebastián Touza (part one here):

... This brings us to a second translation difficulty. Two Spanish words translate as the English word “power”: poder and potencia. Generally speaking, we could say that poder defines power as “power over” (the sense it has, for instance, when it refers to state or sovereign power) and potencia defines “power to,” the type of capacity expressed in the statement “I can.”[2] To continue with the generalization, it is possible to say that poder refers to static forms of power, while potencia refers to its dynamic forms. Potencia always exists in the “here and now” of its exercise; it coincides with the act in which it is effected. This is because potencia is inseparable from our capacity—indeed, our bodies’ capacity—to be affected. This capacity cannot be detached from the moment, place, and concrete social relations in which potencia manifests itself. This is the reason for arguing, in the article we are introducing, that anything said about potencia is an abstraction of the results. Whatever is said or communicated about it can never be the potencia itself. Research militancy is concerned with the expansion of potencia. For that reason, a descriptive presentation of its techniques would necessarily lead to an abstraction. Such a description might produce a “method” in which all the richness of the potencia of research militancy in the situation is trimmed off to leave only that part whose utilitarian value make it transferrable to other situations.

The thought of practices is thought with the body, because bodies encounter each other in acts that immediately define their mutual capacities to be affected. History can only be the history of contingency, a sequence of moments with their own non-detachable intensities. Miguel Benasayag argues that act and state—to which correspond potencia and poder—are two levels of thought and life.[3] None of them can be subsumed under the other. Either one takes the side of potencia or the side of the poder (or of the desire for poder, as expressed in militants who want to “take power,” build The Party, construct hegemonies, etc.).

Potencias found in different forms of resistance are the foundation of counterpower, but both terms are not the same. Counterpower indicates a point of irreversibility in the development of resistance, a moment when the principal task becomes to develop and secure what has been achieved by the struggle (Benasayag & Sztulwark 213). Counterpower is diffuse and multiple. It displaces the question of power from the centrality it has historically enjoyed, because its struggle is “against the powers such as they act in our situations” (MTD of Solano and Colectivo Situaciones, Hipótesis 891 104). To be on the side of potencia is to recognize that the state and the market originate at the level of the values we embrace and the bonds that connect us to others.

Potencia defines the material dimension of the encounter of bodies, while poder is a level characterized by idealization, representation, and normalization. Colectivo Situaciones avoid a name to define their political identity, which would freeze the fluid material multiplicity of militant research by subordinating it to the one-dimensional nature of idealizations. “We are not ‘autonomists’, ‘situationists’, or anything ending with ‘-ist’” they once told us. Identities have normalizing effects: they establish models, they place multiplicity under control, they reduce the multiple dimensions of life to the one dimension of an idealization. They make an exception with Guevarism, because Che Guevara clearly preferred to stay on the side of potencia and opposed those who calmed down concrete struggles in the name of ideal recipes on how to achieve a communist society.[4]

An investigation into the forms of potencia and the social relations that produce it can only be done from a standpoint that systematically embraces doubt and ignorance. If we recognize that the practical thought of struggles is an activity of bodies, we have to recognize as well—with Spinoza—that nobody knows what a body can do. To do research in the realm of potencia—to investigate that which is alive and multiple—militant researchers have to abandon their previous certainties, their desire to encounter pure subjects, and the drive to recuperate their practice as an ideal of coherence and consistency. In this regard, one might say that Colectivo Situaciones seek to concretely embody two Zapatista slogans: “asking we walk,” and “we make the road by walking,” such that, the act of questioning and collective reflection is part of the process of constructing power.

improve your skills

2011-12-06T11:30:00.001-08:00

check out tons of fantastic interpreter training resources here

such as how to take notes for consecutive - something not enough activist interpreters do!

my number one tip: ALWAYS have a notepad on you - you never know when you will have to jump into interpreting in social change settings.

number one sign of an amateur interpreter: they're doing consecutive without a notepad in hand.

(ok, maybe number two after someone saying "she said ...")

conejo

2011-11-28T12:56:00.001-08:00

conejo: loophole

Que vivan los estudiantes!

"On November 9, Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos seemed to retreat in the face of a massive nationwide student strike that has lasted since October 12. Santos offered to withdraw his “educational reform” bill from the Colombian congress and sit down to negotiate with the student movement.

Students responded with a massive demonstration today that closed all of the major thoroughfares of the city. (See photos from El Tiempo, the main newspaper of Colombia.)

Speaking at the main demonstration in the Plaza Bolivar, surrounded by the Presidential Palace and the Capitol, former senator Piedad Cordoba warned students, “The proposal of Santos has a loophole. Students must continue their national strike … this mobilisation is a victory for mothers and fathers of families, for campesinos and for victims of the state.” (“La propuesta de Santos tiene conejo. Los estudiantes deben continuar el paro nacional … esta movilización es una victoria de madres y padres de familia, de campesinos y víctimas del Estado”, El Espectador, November 11)."

read the rest of this article here

ally

2011-11-22T10:07:00.001-08:00

ally: aliado

this is an obvious one, but what may not be obvious is how the term gets used in movements in the US and Canada (and the UK?) to mean "people who recognize the unearned privilege they receive from society’s patterns of injustice and take responsibility for changing these patterns. Allies include men who work to end sexism, white people who work to end racism, heterosexual people who work to end heterosexism, able-bodied people who work to end ableism, and so on."

if you have a sense that your listeners or readers do not understand this movement use of the term, it is worth explaining.

(this definition of ally is from this article on tips for white allies in the occupy movement)

why interpreters matter

2011-11-09T22:01:00.000-08:00

great way to promote the use of professional interps, way to go Texas Association of Healthcare Interpreters and Translators!

fun ten minute animated history of the English language

2011-11-03T12:58:00.000-07:00

This is the first of 10 one minute videos - the next in the series should pop up when this finishes playing or you can open it in youtube and they appear as links on the right.

mainstream media

2011-10-21T11:28:00.000-07:00

mainstream media: los grandes medios
(corporate media: medios corporativos)

any thoughts on how to render the slogan "be the media"?

for a fun critique of the mainstream media coverage of the occupy movement see the video below

militancia de investigación

2011-10-16T21:08:00.000-07:00

due to dissertation deadlines this week I am reposting part one of this brilliant translators introduction by By Nate Holdren and Sebastián Touza:

The translation of this significant article, a fundamental piece insofar as it lays bare the values and principles Colectivo Situaciones invoke in their definition of themselves as militants, calls for a reflection on our role as translators. It is our hope that this English version of the article will find resonances among those who practice a politics that is unseparable from thinking in their own situation. But we feel that it is important to share with the reader our urge to dispel any mythical (mis)understanding of the transparency of language. We share with Colectivo Situaciones the conviction that the abstraction involved in the attempt to communicate inevitably impoverishes experience. Translation adds one more layer of abstraction. In this sense, we assume the full significance of the Italian adage traduttore, tradittore. Not because we intend to betray anybody, but because the acknowledgement that every translation is a betrayal is our attempt to keep faith with the concrete situation in which the experience being communicated unfolds.

In this introduction, we would like to go through some of the difficulties we had in doing the translation. We hope that explaining the decisions we made will provide some steps toward bringing the reader closer to the work of Colectivo Situaciones.

We faced our first difficulty when trying to translate the title. We were unsure how to translate the term militancia de investigación. This phrase can be rendered into English as either ‘research militancy’ or ‘militant research’. At the risk of taking words too seriously (always a risk in translation), it may be useful to spend some time on these two possible translations. ‘Militant research’ implies a continuity with other examples of militant research, those presented in other parts of this volume and elsewhere. ‘Research militancy’ may sound strange to the English speaker’s ear and it is less immediately clear what the term means.

The grammatical difference between these two phrases is a matter of which word defines the activity and which word qualifies it, which word will be the predicate of the other. The difference seems to be one of emphasis. Does the Spanish phrase refer to knowledge production which happens to be radical in some way (militant research)? Or does it refer to radical activism which happens to take the form of knowledge production (research militancy)?

Our indecision brought us to ask Colectivo Situaciones which one of the two expressions they felt more comfortable with. To our surprise—or perhaps not—the response was “with both.” “We think of our practice as a double movement: to create ways of being militants that escape the political certainties established a priori and embrace politics as research (in this case, it would be ‘research militancy’), and, at the same time, to invent forms of thinking and producing concepts that reject academic procedures, breaking away from the image of an object to be known and putting at the centre subjective experience (in this case, it would be ‘militant research’).”

Situaciones came together as a collective in the late 1990s. Previously they had been involved in El Mate, a student group notable for creating the Che Guevara Free Lecturership, an experiment oriented to recuperating the memory of the generation of Argentinean and Latin American revolutionaries of the 1960s and 1970s that began at the faculty of social sciences of the University of Buenos Aires and quickly spread throughout several universities in Argentina and abroad. The Argentinean social landscape in which the men and women of Situaciones forged their ideas was a desert swept by neoliberal winds, in which only a few movements of resistance could stand up by themselves. Those were times in which dilettante postmodern thinkers had come to the conclusion that social change was a relic from the past and in which people involved in politics could only see their activity through rarely questioned models.

Research militancy was the response to the need to rebuild the links between thought and the new forms of political involvement that were rapidly becoming part of the Argentinean reality. In the prologue “On Method” of the book Colectivo Situaciones wrote together with the unemployed workers’ movement of Solano, the authors distinguish research militancy from three other relations to knowledge.[1] On the one hand, academic research inevitably reifies those it constructs as objects. Academics cannot help leaving outside the scope of their investigation the function of attributing meaning, values, interests, and rationalities of the subject who does the research. On the other hand, traditional political activists—those involved in parties or party-like organizations—usually hold that their commitment and involvement makes their relation to knowledge more advanced than the work done by academics. But their activity is not less objectifying, in the sense that it always approaches the struggles from a previously constituted knowledge framework. Struggles are thus regarded not for their value in themselves, but rather in terms of their contribution to something other than themselves—the socialist or communist society awaiting at the end of the road. A third figure, the humanitarian activist, also relates to others in an instrumental fashion—in the justification and funding of NGOs (non-governmental organizations)—and takes the world as static, not subject to being changed radically (thus, the best one can hope for is the alleviation of the worst abuses).

Research militancy does not distinguish between thinking and doing politics. For, insofar as we reserve the notion of thought for the thinking/doing activity that deposes the logic by which existing models acquire meaning, thinking is immediately political. On the other hand, if we reserve the concept of politics for the struggle for freedom and justice, all politics involves thinking, because there are forms of thinking against established models implicit in every radical practice—a thought people carry out with their bodies. ....

full article is here

of course the easy way to render this term if you're in a rush, is with the more common in English term "activist research" - but what a treat to take the time to think it through like this! by the way, see my previous post about the term militante

resguardo

2011-10-10T21:30:00.000-07:00

resguardo: indigenous collective property

I have been rendering this term as reservation, but I like this, especially since they don't have the same history, legal status, or politics as US reservations. This term is how it was translated in the article:

M. Chaves and M. Zambrano, “From blanqueamiento to reindigenización: Paradoxes of mestizaje and multiculturalism in contemporary Colombia,” Revista Europea de estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 80 (2006): 5–23.

Most of the current resguardos in Colombia were only recently recognized. After the passage of the new constitution in 1991 31.3 million hectares, over a quarter of the country’s total territory, was legally granted and titled as resguardos (Chaves and Zambrano, p. 9).

moving video in need of subtitles

2011-09-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

watch this gorgeous video, it will leave you inspired. maybe even inspired to subtitle?

Many thanks to Michael Joseph for the translation below - it would be great if someone were inspired to put this up as subtitles! good volunteer experience if you've never done it before. instructions here Let us know if you do it!

Soy, soy lo que dejaron, Soy las sobras de lo que te robaron,
Un pueblo escondido en la cima, Mi piel es de cuero por eso aguata cualquier clima,
Soy una fábrica de humo, Mano de obra campesina para tu consumo,
En el medio del verano, El amor en los tiempos del cólera,
Mi hermano!

I am, I am what was left behind, I am the leftovers of what they stole from you,

I am a town hidden on the peak, My skin is leather so it can handle any climate,

I am a smoke factory, Peasant labor for your consumption,

In the middle of the summer, Love in the time of cholera,

My brother!

Soy el que nace y el día que muere, Con los mejores atardeceres,
Soy el desarrollo en carne viva, Un discurso sin saliva,
Las caras más bonitas que he conocido, Soy la fotografía de un desaparecido,
La sangre dentro de tus venas, Soy un pedazo de tierra que vale la pena,
Una canasta con frijoles.

I am the one who is born and the day that dies, With the best sunsets,

I am development in flesh and blood, A speech with no saliva,

The prettiest faces I have ever known, I am a photograph of a disappeared person,

The blood in your veins, I am a plot of land that is worth it,

A basket full of beans.

Soy Maradona contra Inglaterra Anotándole dos goles.
Soy lo que sostiene mi bandera, La espina dorsal de mi planeta, en mi cordillera.
Soy lo que me enseño mi padre, El que no quiere a su patria no quiere a su madre.
Soy América Latina un pueblo sin piernas pero que camina.

I am Maradona against England, Scoring two goals,

I am what holds up my flag, The spine of my planet, along my mountain range

I am what my father taught me, S/he who does not love their country does not love their mother

I am Latin America, a people without legs but who walk

Tú no puedes comprar al viento,
Tú no puedes comprar al sol
Tú no puedes comprar la lluvia,
Tú no puedes comprar al calor.
Tú no puedes comprar las nubes,
Tú no puedes comprar mi alegría,
Tú no puedes comprar mis dolores.

Chorus:

You can’t buy the wind,

You can’t buy the sun,

You can’t buy the rain,

You can’t buy the heat.

You can’t buy the clouds,

You can’t buy my happiness,

You can’t buy my pain.

=

Tengo los lagos, tengo los ríos, Tengo mis dientes pa cuando me sonrío,
La nieve que maquilla mis montañas, Tengo el sol que me seca y la lluvia que me baña,
Un desierto embriagado con peyote, Un trago de pulque para cantar con los coyotes,
Todo lo que necesito!

I have the lakes, I have the rivers, I have my teeth for when I smile,

The snow that adorns my mountains, I have the sun that dries me and the rain that bathes me,

A desert drunk on peyote, a shot of pulque to sing with the coyotes,

All I need!

Tengo a mis pulmones respirando azul clarito,
La altura que sofoca, Soy las muelas de mi boca mascando coca,
El otoño con sus hojas desmayadas, Los versos escritos bajo las noches estrelladas,
Una viña repleta de uvas, Un cañaveral bajo el sol en cuba,
Soy el mar Caribe que vigila las casitas, Haciendo rituales de agua bendita,
El viento que peina mi cabello, Soy todos los santos que cuelgan de mi cuello,
El jugo de mi lucha no es artificial porque el abono de mi tierra es natural.

I have my lungs that are breathing clear blue,

The altitude that smothers, I am my jaws chewing coca,

The autumn with its fainted leaves, Verses written under starry skies,

A vineyard full of grapes, a sugarcane field under the sun in Cuba,

I am the Caribbean sea watching over the little houses, Doing rituals of holy water,

The wind that combs my hair, I am all the saints that hang from my neck,

The juice of my struggle is not artificial because my land’s fertilizer is natural.

We are walking, we are drawing the way!

[Chorus in Spanish and Portuguese]

Trabajo bruto pero con orgullo, Aquí se comparte lo mío es tuyo,
Este pueblo no se ahoga con maruyos, Y si se derrumba yo lo reconstruyo,
Tampoco pestañeo cuando te miro, Para que te recuerdes de mi apellido,
La operación cóndor invadiendo mi nido, Perdono pero nunca olvido, oye!

Brute work but with pride, Here we share, what’s mine is yours,

These people don’t drown in the waves, And if it collapses I’ll rebuild it,

I don’t blink when I look at you either, So that you’ll remember my last name,

Operation Condor invading my nest, I forgive but I’ll never forget!

Vamos caminado, aquí se respira lucha.
Vamos caminando, yo canto porque se escucha.
Vamos caminando, aquí estamos de pie.
Que viva Latinoamérica.
No puedes comprar mi vida!

We are walking, here we breathe struggle,

We are walking, I sing because you listen,

We are walking, here we are standing up,

Long live Latin America.

You can’t buy my life!

traitors?

2011-09-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

Translators get a bad rap as traitors. Quite the opposite, to translate is to be an ally.

As social justice interpreters in particular we amplify the voices of those less likely to be heard. (no, not the voiceless thank you)

We interpret not so that some can 'listen in' but so that everyone can more fully participate, because we are stronger as a movement when we bring together our multiple perspectives and different knowledges.

Multilingual movements are stronger movements.

do no harm

2011-09-17T09:23:00.001-07:00

do no harm: acción sin daño

Not quite literal, but this is how folks in Colombia who are working with Mary Anderson's framework are translating the term. Her book is titled "Do no harm: how aid can support peace - or war". A free handbook with the seven steps she suggests to ensure you do no harm is available at
http://www.cdainc.com/publications/dnh/do_no_harm_handbook.php

Her *entire* book, translated into Spanish (as Accion sin daño), is available here.

Many thanks to my friend Ricardo Chaparro who teaches at the especilización en Acción Sin Daño de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia and who writes, "La página web de la especialización, para quien le interese, es: www.especializacionpaz.info

Dicho enlace [book above] hace parte de la Biblioteca Digital en Violencia Sociopolitica, Acción Sin Daño y Construcción de Paz "Bivipas", que es la biblioteca que intentamos construir desde la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, y cuyo link es el siguiente:

www.bivipas.info"

Gracias Ricardo!

Activante

2011-09-06T22:59:00.000-07:00

The movement to close the US Army's School of the Americas has come up with this great neologism - see their description of it at the bottom of this plug, reposted from here

Become an Activante* with SOA Watch in Latin America or Washington, DC

Youth leadership in the SOA Watch movement is growing and getting things done. It is the youth of our movement who led the effective Adios Uribe campaign, facilitated the South-North Encuentro that brought together activists from 19 countries, directed the soon-to-be released SOA Watch film, and organized delegations to Honduras. It is the youth who carry the weight in organizing the upcoming massive SOA Watch November Vigil at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia (Nov.18-20, 2011).

Young people have also brought our movement to see the necessity of working from both sides of the border to confront militarization. And, of the importance of crossing over borders to be effective in resisting militarization and promoting a culture of peace.

And, in doing so, their own lives have been forever changed, shaped into global citizens who recognize their own powerful potential as they work together with others.

We would like to invite others to join in this rich experience of becoming an SOA Watch activante* in one of four locations in the Americas. (read on here for further description)

* The term activante was coined by our first international team of young activists, who did not identify with the term "intern." They flipped the Spanish version of the word, pasante – associated to the Spanish pasivo, passive – to its opposite: activante. This term is a good reflection of what the role calls for: energy, leadership, initiative, dynamism, and creativity.

vanishing point

2011-08-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

vanishing point: punto de fuga

see Derek Gregory's fantastic chapter on “Vanishing points” in Violent Geographies: Fear, Terror, and Political Violence (2007): 205–236.

personas notorias

2011-08-19T19:02:00.001-07:00

well known - not notorious!

This is not particularly a social movement term, but I have herd it rendered with the false cognate several times by volunteer inexperienced interpreters and in a social movement context it can easily take a conversation down an unfortunate track.

burnout

2011-08-13T07:39:00.000-07:00

burnout: sindrome del quemado

(what August vacations are good for)

Wikipedia en español lo tiene como sindrome del burnout but that seems like needless Spanglish to me - she says in Spanglish.

vereda (Colombia)

2011-08-04T15:45:00.000-07:00

It's true - I'm obsessed with this term. I said I would stop blogging different options for it but I just can't resist - in Bettina Ng'weno's great book Turf Wars: Territory and Citizenship in the Contemporary State (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2007) she renders it as "smallest administrative unit" (p. 115). Not a term that trips off the tongue like 'hamlet,' but nice and clear.

hollaback

2011-07-29T10:44:00.000-07:00

hollaback: atrevete

The hollaback movement against street harassment has spread to Latin America and is growing. Atrevete is obviously not a direct translation, but is what they are using for the movement. Not what I would have chosen, but hey, it's what I'll use. Check out the Buenos Aires site.

accion de tutela (Col)

2011-07-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

accion de tutela (Colombia): writ for the protection of constitutional rights

segun wikipedia: La Acción de Tutela es un mecanismo creado por la Constitución de Colombia de 1991 , inspirado en recursos similares que existen en otros mecanismos de similar finalidad como el Recurso de Amparo que busca proteger los Derechos fundamentales de los individuos al no haber otro recurso para hacerlos cumplir o en el caso de que exista peligro inminente. Por ejemplo una Acción de Tutela para que le sean suministrados medicamentos a un niño que de no recibirlos moriría.

Según la Corte Constitucional (Sentencia T-451 de julio 10 de 1992), el que un derecho sea fundamental no se puede determinar sino en cada caso en concreto, según la relación que dicho caso tenga con uno u otro derecho fundamental; es decir, la Constitución no determina de una manera clara cuáles son los derechos fundamentales, de tal manera que como tales no se puede considerar únicamente a los que la Constitución de 1991 enuncia en el Capítulo I del Título II.

interpreter orgs

2011-07-11T23:04:00.001-07:00

I added the International Medical Interpreters Association to my list of interp orgs to know about in the left sidebar.

femicide

2011-06-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

feminicidio, rather than femicidio

As a feminist activist in Colombia explained it to me, in Colombia femicidio is understood to mean just the homicide of a woman, whereas feminicidio is when she is killed for being a woman. But in English many people seem to use femicide to mean the latter, though I translated many of the essays in the powerful book Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas, which does use the cognate of the way it seems to be more commonly said in Spanish.

todo para todos

2011-06-17T18:27:00.000-07:00

I love this pic of the white overalls but what, was that machine translation? It's everything for everybody.

translation tip: the glossaries and dictionaries I use most

2011-06-11T16:00:00.001-07:00

When I stumble on a word I turn to my own glossary first, because often I've stumbled on it before. After that I go to wordref in my firefox search bar (see my previous post about how to set that up). Next I often go sideways in the single language dictionaries that I have in the search bar, especially the RAE, looking for synonyms in the source language. After that I turn to the glossaries in proz.

I also have reverso in the search bar, but lately I haven't been as impressed by it.

Others I use at times include

termium, a newly free one from Canada

UN

EU

and I keep forgetting to use google dictionary but when I do I'm often pleasantly suprised. Set the tab to Sp<>Eng.

These days I'll admit I rarely turn to my large collection of specialized hard copy dictionaries. How fast things change!

gyp

2011-06-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

Should we avoid using (or translating into) words with little known racist etymologies? I avoid the word 'gyp'' in English, even though most people no longer associate it with or consider it derogatory towards gypsies. But what about the other words in this interesting post on 8 racist words you are likely to hear every day. The other seven are:
hooligan
vandal
hip hip hooray
barbarian
bugger
cannibal
and picnic.

Know the racist origins of ANY of those? Then does it matter if you use them?

resources for legal 'terps

2011-05-28T18:24:00.000-07:00

A big thanks to Claudia Johnson at the very cool LawHelp Interactive who pointed me to a bunch of great resources.

The Sacramento Courts have one of the best legal glossaries in multiple languages.

She also pointed to the online interviews being created across the country for people who can not afford lawyers that are beind made available in English/Spanish. As she says "There is a huge movement to get the courts in the US to provide language services for all cases." Hallelujah! It's about time! This was one of the things that drove me out of court interpreting it drove me so crazy. She says:

Some of the forms have audio in Spanish: An example can be found here.

Some of the forms have “pop ups” where if the person clicks Espanol the interview proceeds side by side in English and Spanish: NYC Tenant Affidavit to Vacate a Default Judgment Program

And most of their interviews allow people to request printing the instructions in English and Spanish so that they know what do after they assemble the forms, like this

Many legal aid groups are working on making this type of service available, including Colorado, Georgia, Maine, Kansas, etc and it is a very good move forward in the area of access to justice."

I'll say! Thanks Claudia!

clarify with your colleagues how you want to team interpret together

2011-05-21T10:09:00.000-07:00

I was reminded by my fab compa Jeremy of the importance of sending something like this, so I just modified Jeremy's version and sent this to the compas I'm interpreting with this week. I know most of it is obvious, but especially when working outside of a booth and with folks who are newer at this, it's best to have clarity. I've worked even with professionals who have just wandered away from me when they weren't on! so this is what I sent, feel free to modify and use:

Lets switch off every 15-20 minutes. During the speakers this will mean every speaker, during discussion, keep an eye on the clock. The person not interpreting can be responsible for this and point to their wrist when it's time, but the person interpreting then waits for a good time to hand off, don't feel like you have to hand off the mike right that minute.

The person not interpreting is not off. You can go to the bathroom of course, but generally your job is to listen, and if your colleague seems to be struggling to find a term my preference is that you write it down and point to it. Let me know if you want that, or want me to whisper it to you, or just wait until after to tell you. Also please notice if we're using different terms and during break lets agree on one to be consistent. Please also write down any sticky or problematic terms to discuss during break, or other feedback.

If I'm interpreting and get up to walk around so I can see the face of the speaker more clearly follow me. Please stand close enough so that you can hear and so that you could help if I get stuck.

If you miss a phrase or two and start to falter, there is no shame in quickly passing the microphone. Better to give yourself a break and regain concentration than to push through por cabezón.

At the end of a session, or at the end of the day, let’s evaluate how everything went and how we can improve next time

Gracias compas!
looking foward to working together

translating theory in the world

2011-05-09T13:54:00.000-07:00

A book-length translation of the work of Mexican feminist activist and social critic Marta Lamas has just come out, translated by John Pluecker, a reader of this blog. To quote John's blog directly

"The book is the first in a series called Theory in the World edited by Gayatri Spivak and Hosam Aboul-Ela, dedicated to translating, publishing and disseminating theory from the Global South. As the info page about the series states:

Despite the flurry of interest in translation studies, markedly less emphasis has been placed on the process of translating theoretical texts, especially those originating outside of Europe and the U.S. This series breaks new ground by translating book-length theoretical works and taking up the issue of the doubly marginalized text. Theory in the World asks a scandalous question: is “theory” different when produced in the postcolonial world? Has globalization changed the picture? Has localization, touching on transnational gender roles, embodiment, non-Western poetics, reading practice, and canon-formation survived? Finally, it asks how the classical questions of translation studies become altered in this previously ignored geopolitical context and looks at the ways literature and the pedagogy of the humanities take account of these alterations."

So cool! Congratulations John!

why do people insist on using 'translator' when they mean 'interpreter'?

2011-05-07T14:11:00.001-07:00

Interpretation is oral, translation is written. I must have said this one sentence out loud over a thousand times by now. My friends and family are sick of hearing it, but still get it wrong. Sign language interpreters never get called translators - why do we? I had great hopes that after the mainstream movie 'The Interpreter' came out (see it if you haven't!) people would be more likely to get this right. Ha.

I think people are reluctant to use the term ‘interpreter’ due to a common conflation of two different denotations of the term interpret (1: oral rendition from one language to another and 2: analysis of the meaning of a text). Again and again people have told me that they believe interpreters change the meaning and translators go word to word. Argh!!

It is true that untrained interpreters are more likely to change the meaning of what is spoken in the source language, simply because they do not have the skills and ethics training to avoid this while trying to keep up with fast speech. Untrained interpreters are also much more likely to mis-name themselves 'translators' - so actually, if someone calls themselves a 'translator' when they're actually talking about interpreting, I take it as a bad sign that they are likely to distort meaning when they interpret.

If just repeating interpretation is oral and translation is written over and over again does not get through to folks, what is a more effective and catchy educational one liner? Any suggestions?

hue-ism

2011-04-28T09:11:00.001-07:00

hue-ism

as in racism, but, as I understand it, particularly discrimination within communities of color of people with darker skin. I heard this term used by Beverly Mullings on a bridging -isms panel at the US geographers (AAG) conference in 2009 and I love it, but I'm stumped as to a Spanish version. hue is tinte o tono o matiz o color, maybe colorismo? Any thoughts?

primordial

2011-04-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

primordial: fundamental

As in, 'su apoyo ha sido primordial para nosotros'. This is another one of those that sounds really funny if you slip and do the cognate. Kudos to Melissa for getting this and so many other tricky subtitles right in this great little video

in good standing

2011-04-18T09:23:00.001-07:00

good standing: cumplimiento y constancia

as in, member in good standing - miembro cumplido y constante
or, for example, "Miembros de pleno derecho y miembros asociados tendrán un plazo indeterminado, siempre y cuando hayan demostrado cumplimiento y constancia respecto a sus obligaciones."

thanks to Veronika for this one!

language can build solidarity

2011-04-12T23:19:00.001-07:00

"Language and the human spirit are inextricably intertwined. We interpret the world through language. We express ourselves through language. Language is powerful. Language can bring us together or set us apart. It can be used to include — to bridge barriers between cultures, religions, worldviews — at the same time as it can be used to exclude by inflaming xenophobia and racism. Language can establish community and solidarity at the same time as it can be used to erect boundaries and divide communities. More often than not, when we turn on the TV we see language used to occlude — to hide reality — to deceive, to spin, to distract, to disempower, to reinforce us versus them conceptions of humanity. Language is no longer innocent. We can no longer conceptualize language as some kind of neutral code that can be taught in classrooms in splendid isolation from its intersection with issues of power, identity, and spirituality." – Jim Cummins, Language and the Human Spirit (2003)

palabras que nos cambiaron

2011-04-06T21:27:00.000-07:00

es es titulo de una exposición lindisima que ví en Bogotá. Acabo de encontrar el glosario de la exposicion enlinea aca, la recomiendo altamente.

Por ejemplo definen colonialismo como:
A fines del siglo XVIII el término colonialismo comenzó a adquirir una connotación negativa. Las primeras veces que se utilizó desde la perspectiva de la América española fue en las quejas de las elites criollas que cuestionaron los intereses de centralización política y explotación mercantil de los Borbones, en el contexto de una creciente tendencia al libre comercio en el Atlántico. Luego, durante la invasión napoleónica de la península, los mismos criollos denunciaron la desproporción en la representación de América en las cortes, con mayoría de peninsulares. En una época en que se valoraba la participación política, el espacio mínimo que se otorgó a las Américas reflejaba una injusta y desigual relación de poder.

Los territorios americanos, “Las Indias”, se habían integrado a la Monarquía como reinos y no como colonias. Y la relativa calma que perduró durante tres siglos dentro de la misma revela que, políticamente, el mundo hispano era estable. Esto nos obliga a pensar la historia de la Monarquía por fuera de supuestos (contemporáneos) de dominación, que le adjudican a la variedad de súbditos americanos una constante o natural pretensión “anticolonial”. Así pues, si utilizamos el concepto de “colonial” o “historia colonial” para demarcar el periodo durante el cual América y España estuvieron vinculadas dentro de una misma estructura monárquica o imperio, es necesario evadir perspectivas teleológicas que impiden comprender cómo se producían las identidades imperiales hispanas.

Los movimientos independentistas hispanoamericanos reinventaron el pasado negativamente y aprovecharon el potencial revolucionario del anticolonialismo en una época de rápido cambio político y volatilidad simbólica. Paradójicamente, al inventar las estructuras políticas y legales nacionales, las elites vencedoras revelaron ser portadoras del impulso centralista y colonialista (a menor escala) que le habían cuestionado a la Madre España.

Marcela Echeverri
Historiadora
2010

sere un nerd academica total, pero me parece fascinante - y la version virtual tiene arte grafico al estilo "colonial" que me encanta

minga

2011-04-02T22:01:00.000-07:00

minga: minga (collective work action)

la minga llega a Bogota

The above are photos I took of the Colombian minga at the end of their long march, as it was coming in to the heart of Bogotá in November of 2008.

I have posted before about the term minga, so forgive me for going off about it again, but I continue to be frustrated that a lot of interps and translators are just leaving minga as minga into English, which I think will not make sense to most readers and loses some of its power. Yes, it is a powerful and complex enough word that we should work on importing it (like we have campesino) and educating English only listeners as to what a minga is, but to do that you have to add a quick simplified definition when you use it. I propose adding collective work action the first few times you use it.

In the Jan/Feb issue of NACLA there is a great article by Deborah Poole about the Colombian minga, in which she explains that:

"Minga is a Quechua word meaning “collective work” with wide currency among popular and poor sectors, both indigenous and mestizo, of the Andean republics. The Cauca-based minga of 2008 was grounded in the territorial and cultural demands of Colombia’s indigenous peoples, yet it is a movement that now extends across the Andes, engaging indigenous and non-indigenous sectors in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru (see “Against the Law of the Jungle"). Minga, however, is a concept that has traveled not only because of the “natural” cultural solidarities that run through indigenous ideals of community life, but also because Andean authorities long ago found in the minga a useful means to organize corvée labor, first in colonial mines and then later for the roads and public works that would provide evidence for the state’s presence in their nations’ otherwise forgotten indigenous territories. Thus the ACIN’s call to join in minga, as a name for a collective action that is at once local and international, gains force from both its cultural and historical references to a shared experience of subjugation. By calling their movement a minga, the indigenous participants call attention to both the work that must go into politics and the idea that that work must be collective. They also, of course, reclaim it from long histories of state-led attempts to organize and control collective politics and community organization."

Interpreters do it

2011-03-26T14:48:00.000-07:00

… in two languages
… with their tongues
… with their mouth open

environmental security

2011-03-16T11:56:00.001-07:00

environmental security: seguridad ecológica

See Simon Dalby's book by this name. I'm not sure Simon would include the breaking nuclear disaster but it has me thinking about this again.

no fly zone

2011-03-09T17:37:00.000-08:00

no fly zone: zona de exclusión aérea

though this editorial in the Guardian argues that it's a euphemism for war

machine translation

2011-03-03T21:45:00.000-08:00

Spanish...¿Cómo como como? Como como como!!

English equivalent...what do you mean how I eat? I eat the way I eat!

Try this with ANY machine and tell me what you get.

(Thanks to Ed Zaldibar for this one)

That said, I had always said before don't bother starting with machine translation and trying to clean it up, it will just get you going down the wrong track - BUT if you do this inside a good translation memory system (I like freetm.com) AND you've got a document with a lot of standard UN terminology, I've found that it CAN save you time looking up names of UN departments, etc. now that all UN translations are in google translate. But then, my poor editor has had to do a lot more clean up for me than normal when I use that crutch so .... I guess I'm still torn.

tip: keep a glossary

2011-02-23T15:24:00.000-08:00

I haven't been good at keeping up my promise to offer tips for becoming a better interpreter on this blog, but here is one that will painfully obvious for the pros who read this, so forgive me. For those of you who are activists who get thrust into interpreting, let me suggest that if you don't already, you keep your own constantly growing glossary.

In my ideal world all solidarity orgs would have an organizational glossary of their key terms and put it online. But then, our soawatch one is out of date and we don't do a good job of sticking to it, so who am I to say. The USSF interpreters developed a great one which is online here.

My personal system for my own glossary is that when I'm interpreting and run across a word I either stumble on or think aha! that's a good rendition, I circle it in my notes (ojo, I always interpret with a notepad in hand, even when doing simultaneous - this one of the first rules you learn in any professional interpreting training and one far too few activist interpreters follow). When I'm done I go back through and write those down either in a glossary notebook or just straight into my excell glossary. I also keep track of social change related words that I hear other interpreters trip up on or render in less that stellar ways. I always have a little notebook in my purse and when I'm in conversations, listening to the radio, reading, etc - if a good term comes up I write it down and then move these to my excell file on Fridays. I am not as good at regularly importing that file into my translation memory glossary, which I usually build up as I'm working on written translations (I use the free online translation memory program at freetm.com which compares remarkably well to the super expensive programs).

Al glosario compas!

yellow dog union

2011-02-17T19:45:00.000-08:00

yellow dog union/ company union/ false-front union:
sindicato charro (Mx), sindicato proteccionista (Mx), sindicato corporativizado (Mx), sindicato patronalista (Col), la patronal (just Mx?), and the safest, for being widely understood in a mixed audience: sindicato falso

You don't hear yellow dog union too often in the US, but more in Canada, as I was reminded today. It comes from the term yellow dog contract.

lobbyist

2011-02-07T21:10:00.001-08:00

lobbyista

I know, it sounds funny, but check out this article that uses it.

Also see my previous post about lobbying in general. I agree with Dan's comment that hacer incidencia is a broader concept than just lobbying, but I still think it works.

crazy translation ap

2011-01-31T17:47:00.001-08:00

Point your iphone at a word on the wall and *poof* have it machine translated. What is hilarious about this ad for it is that it is riddled with machine translation errors. BUT what machine translation IS good for is getting the gist of what something is about. Ss a gadget geek, I am pretty impressed with this use of it. Haven't actually seen it in action yet (no smart phone) - has anyone else?

degrowth

2011-01-26T21:41:00.000-08:00

degrowth: decrecimiento

With props to my student Skyler, who first taught me about this great concept, and even worked on this wikipedia entry on it for class.

Este documental lo explica bien, es super interesante y divertido - y la recomiendo especialmente para cuando estas tentada a comprar algo nuevo!

sapo

2011-01-20T15:18:00.000-08:00

sapo: snitch

If you haven't heard the dramatic story of the activist snitch recently exposed in the UK check it out here.

minga

2011-01-11T19:06:00.001-08:00

minga: collective work project/exchange/party/action (my favorite is the last) I DO think it is worth translating at least once - just leaving it as minga will not be easily understood and is the easy way out that seems to me to be taken far too often.

Thanks to Autumn Zellers who (after we talked about it over dinner with Mary Roldan at the LASA conference) sent me this quote from Joanne Rappaport's book Intercultural Utopias, pp 92-3:

"Manuel Quintin Lame, a Nasa leader of the early 20th century, spread his indigenista message through "teaching mingas" (mingas adoctrinados), meetings at which his political demands for indigenous territorial rights and self goernment were aired (Castrillon Arboleda 1973, 91-2). These gatherings adapted the traditional notion of the minga, an Andean institution coordinating the reciprocal exchange of labor that unites members of a community within a network of mutual obligations (Alberti and Mayer 1974), to the highly charged political context of Lame's movement."

Autumn suggested that this made it sound like a kibbutz. Personally I don't know alot about how kibbutzes work and am not sure many others do either. Lately I heard it rendered as 'pow wow'. I *have* been to a lot of pow wows and I certainly don't think they're anything like a minga!

I like the definition Nicole Karsin put up on her fundraising site: "Across Colombian native cultures, a "minga" is a community action aimed at improving the collective well-being. It is the undertaking of an important task that can only be achieved if everyone participates. Defend human rights and native peoples in Colombia by joining this particular "minga" and guarantee the completion of the important ‘collective action’ that is this film." The film is We Women Warriors, a great project to share the stories of brave and inspiring indigenous Colombian women - support her kickstart campaign and help her get it out!

subtitle software, take two

2011-01-06T21:19:00.001-08:00

I posted before about dot sub as one subtitling software option, and in a comment (thank you all commenters!) Manuel suggested Subtitle Workshop, an open source option designed in Uruguay.

Now there's one that is designed just for YouTube, called Caption Tube. It is described here. I haven't used any of these, since all I do these days is dissertate, but I thought I would put it out there for folks looking for something super quick and easy for a short protest youtube video you uploaded directly from your handy flip camera, or what have you!

primero Dios

2010-12-30T18:14:00.000-08:00

primero Dios: if it is God's will

I have often struggled to interpret this saying, which is sometimes sprinkled liberally throughout sentences. I liked this version in today's Democracy Now! headlines. If you're not listening to these daily online - why not? Best independent media out there, in both English and Spanish. Great way to practice.

So the relevant headline today was about Dilma Rousseff being sworn in as Brazil’s first female president on Saturday. Outgoing president Lula said:

"It is deeply symbolic that the presidential sash is being handed over from the first working-class president to the first female president. This will be a landmark in the beautiful path our people have been building to turn Brazil, if it’s God’s will, into one of the world’s most equal countries."

May this new year bring more equality to us all! Many thanks to those of you who read this blog and care about making our movements more multilingual, and especially to those who comment. May we achieve better working conditions as interpreters and translators in the new year!

tertulia

2010-12-24T13:56:00.000-08:00

una tertulia: a 'salon' or an artsy 'get-together'

When I went looking for images online, they were mostly of men talking. Hmmm.

Interestingly, the word has made it into the English language wikipedia, which says that it is "a social gathering with literary or artistic overtones, especially in Iberia or Latin America. The word is originally Spanish, and has only moderate currency in English, in describing Latin cultural contexts."

The Spanish language wikipedia dice "Una tertulia es una reunión, informal y periódica, de gente interesada en un tema o en una rama concreta del arte, ciencia o filosofia, para debatir e informarse o compartir ideas y opiniones. Por lo general la reunión tiene lugar en un café o cafetería, y suelen participar en ellas personas del ámbito intelectual. Es una costumbre de origen español y se mantuvo arraigada hasta mediados del siglo xx en las colonias independizadas del imperio español. A los asistentes se les llama contertulios o tertulianos." y claro, la definición de ahí sigue y sigue.

Anyways, hope you have some fun artsy conversations over the holidays!

no manches

2010-12-15T11:21:00.000-08:00

no manches: you've got to be kidding!

Yes, it's a cleaner version, but what I came up with. Any other suggestions?

Never heard this saying? Then you must have never 'shot the shit' with a Mexican!

caminar la palabra

2010-12-07T17:03:00.001-08:00

walk our talk (be the change)

I've seen all sorts of strange literal versions of this - most recently 'may words walk'! very poetic, but just not how we're used to saying or hearing it in English. When someone's words and actions are congruent we say they walk their talk. They practice what they preach.

For more on whether or not Gandhi actually said 'be the change you want to see in the world' see this good bit on it from the metta center.

I came back to academia in part because of my frustration that solidarity organizing often did not ‘walk the talk’, and had trouble ‘being the change’ we wanted to see in the world. It is hard to work together across gulfs of distance and difference without falling into old colonial patterns. My other blog, decolonizing solidarity, talks about these issues. Much, but not all, of it focuses on the tactic of solidarity. I turned to accompaniment for my research because it is the solidarity tactic that most explicitly uses inequalities based on colonial histories. Can even accompaniment be decolonized? Can geopolitical/racial privilege actually be used against empire and for justice and peace? Dissertation deadline? early May.

School of the Americas Watch

2010-12-02T20:44:00.000-08:00

SOA Watch = Observatorio por el cierre de la Escuela de las Americas
(I've been leaving out the por el cierre but the Latin American encuentro of the movement settled on this, for greatest clarity)

check out this AMAZING presence on the stage at the SOA Watch vigil last week by MECHA students.

derechos de petición (Colombia)

2010-11-29T19:07:00.000-08:00

rather than translate literally I would render this as: similar to freedom of information requests (known as FOIA requests in the US - but just freedom if information in the UK and Canada - and since this is understandable in the US I would go with that).

Kudos to Peter Cousins, of FOR, who used this phrase in a newsletter talking about the new book by Javier Giraldo about the peace community of San Jose. As he puts it, "The substance of the book meticulously recalls the acts and threats of violence against the Peace Community over the 13 years of its existence, and details the derechos de petición (similar to freedom of information requests) concerning these attacks which have been sent to various governmental representatives, and either ignored or treated superficially."

the black caucus (US)

2010-11-19T20:36:00.001-08:00

bancada de congresistas afrodescendientes, o la bancada negra

fue como tradujeron a Angela Davis en este articulo sobre racismo en Colombia

great social justice translation/bilingual media work opportunity

2010-11-12T19:31:00.000-08:00

did you hear about the great protests in Copenhagen for climate justice? want to be part of the fun and excitement in the next round?

Climate Justice Now! is looking for Mexican and other students from the region committed to climate justice to serve as CJN!-COP16 interns/press room support at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP16) in Cancun Nov. 27-Dec. 11.

Students interested in helping must be committed to fighting for climate justice and working to support grassroots activists, leading policy thinkers and researchers, especially those from the global south.

Ideally, each student should be FLUENT in Spanish & English so they can work fast, in the frenzied UN conference space. Each student MUST have her/his own cell phone and her/his own laptop, with functioning WIFI--and with SKYPE up and properly functioning.

Students will be in and outside of the official conference hall and they might be assigned to cover external side events.

Responsibilities will include, but will not necessarily be limited to:
• Assisting on internal and external media operations: Press releases will be in English and Spanish, at least. It will be a MAJOR PLUS if interested students speak any other UN languages...French, Russian, Arabic, or Chinese.
• Logistics

• Blogging in English & Spanish.
• Note taking: Interns may be asked to divide up and cover sessions deemed relevant by the CJN! and strategic affiliates. They should be expected to take session notes in English &/or Spanish and may be asked to write blog entries or co-write press releases on these sessions--in cooperation with our press team--in English or Spanish.
• Possible co-support, rapid research as needed and requested for marginalized observer and country delegations.

Again, ideally each student will be FLUENT in Spanish & English so they can work fast.

These positions are unpaid. Students must arrange and fund their own travel to Cancun.

Interested applicants send resume to Lauren Gifford at laureng@dartmouth.edu

great training for social justice interpreters

2010-11-09T22:46:00.000-08:00

At Wayside, in Virginia, Dec 3-5

WHO THIS IS FOR:
Bilingual social justice activists and workers who would like to learn more about interpreting and translating in a social justice context to empower immigrant communities and build alliances across communities.

SESSIONS WILL INCLUDE:

* Interpreter Role and Ethics
* Interpretation modes
* Use of interpreting equipment
* Differences and similarities in social justice interpreting
* Impact of language barriers in social justice movement building
* How to create a multilingual space

More info here

it's a piece of cake

2010-11-08T20:44:00.001-08:00

pan comido

now if only finishing my dissertation were that easy!

zona campesina

2010-10-31T21:22:00.000-07:00

"small farmer reserve zone" - see the video below about this zone, one of various attempts in Colombia to create safe/peace spaces - also called humanitarian zones, peace laboratories, peace communities, communities for dignity and life, communities in resistance, and I'm sure other names that I've missed.

plata o plomo

2010-10-21T12:56:00.001-07:00

I recently watched this movie, and in it a DEA officer mangles this saying. His Spanish is so bad he says they were facing "plato o pluma"!! Talk about how accent can change meaning! Plate or pen. I'm still chuckling in horror about this. Dramatically less dire than bribe or bullet! If you want to be even clearer and aren't doing simultaneous, you could render this as 'take the bribe or take the bullet' - as Winifred Tate does in her fabulous book (2007, p. 49). This is a threat that was widely used on Colombian government officials by drug traffickers in the 80s.

Tate, W., 2007. Counting the Dead: The Culture and Politics of Human Rights Activism in Colombia, 1st ed. University of California Press.

compromise

2010-10-15T11:17:00.000-07:00

It depends on the way the word is being used (ie, with what definition),
but it is usually NOT compromiso!! (a common and dangerous false cognate).

My friend Sarah Henken asked me to blog what I use for this. I like punto medio acordado (and when doing simultaneous after the first time I just use punto medio). There's also acuerdo mutuo. Any other suggestions?

lobbying

2010-10-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

lobby: hacer incidencia (cabildeo, lobby)

Last week John Pluecker commented on advocacy that Mexican human rights activists and lawyers were using the term "hacer incidencia" - but this is actually what I use for lobbying, as distinct from the broader term of advocacy. In Colombia I often hear the term lobby used in English, as in, 'toca hacer lobby.' I think the RAE would probably go for cabildeo, but this seems more formal and less widely understood to me than incidencia. Thoughts?

advocacy/advocate

2010-09-29T11:48:00.001-07:00

advocacy: intercesion
advocate: intercesora

This is my favorite for general use, but in some contexts defensora or promotora might be a beter fit. I'm not a huge fan of abogacia because intercesion covers it, but doesn't get people thinking of it as something only done by abogados.

dichos

2010-09-20T01:44:00.000-07:00

Dicho: caballo matado siempre se pandea. A horse with a sore back will always flinch. What do you think this means? It is supposed to mean that people are sensitive to the mention of their defects, but would you have guessed that if you didn't know? Here's a good example of where translation is not enough. Sayings can be SO hard.

white man's burden

2010-09-12T21:41:00.001-07:00

white man's burden: la carga del hombre blanco

see the English and Spanish wikipedia entries about this, as linked above.

The term comes from Rudyard Kipling's famous poem, which begins:
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

mountaintop removal take two

2010-09-05T23:02:00.001-07:00

Here's another activist video about this tragedy, this time about how it is being done in Colombia. The term they use here is "mineria contaminante a cielo abierto", which I like better than megamineria a lo abierto, which is what they used in this Argentinian video

be part of the Voice of Love project

2010-08-31T16:38:00.000-07:00

THE VOICE OF LOVE Project is a pro bono, all-volunteer project spear-headed by Advocates for Survivors of Torture and Trauma and Cross-Cultural Communications (which has resources for community interps - check them out).

THE VOICE OF LOVE project is developing a three-day interpreter training program to support quality services to survivors of torture, trauma and sexual violence.

As part of needs assessment for this project, the VOL team is currently conducting focus groups and surveys of interpreters who work with survivors and staff who works with survivors and interpreters. These work products will be made available free of charge to any agency that serves survivors.

If you interpret for survivors of torture, war trauma and sexual assault, in refugee resettlements, and/or for mental/behavioral health services, please take a minute to support this great work by taking this survey.

vereda (third time is the charm?)

2010-08-27T15:59:00.000-07:00

vereda: hamlet; rural community.

I've posted twice before about the Colombian term 'vereda. I keep changing my mind on what I like. FOR these days seems to mostly use hamlet. PBI in the video below uses rural community which I like, though it's pretty vague.

the amazing babel box

2010-08-20T18:42:00.000-07:00

Affordable appropriate tech simultaneous interpreting equipment. Need I say more? This is so obviously a wondrous and dearly necessary thing. Check it out, from the uber activist geeks with the mostest, the Intergalactic Interpretation Collective, it's the ...... babel box! Great name or what? They provided the equipment for the recent US social forum. See the set up below, and their site here.

the language you speak shapes how you think

2010-08-14T12:01:00.001-07:00

Well, duh. But great article about recent research on this here, in the WSJ. Strangely, as my stepdad pointed out, it doesn't mention the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. But still, worth a read.

I recommend the whole thing, but here are some good nuggets:

Take "Humpty Dumpty sat on a..." Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say "sat" rather than "sit." In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can't) change the verb to mark tense.
In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the verb than if, say, he had a great fall.

In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how you acquired this information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your own eyes, you'd use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or heard about it, you'd use a different form

...

* Russian speakers, who have more words for light and dark blues, are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue.
* Some indigenous tribes say north, south, east and west, rather than left and right, and as a consequence have great spatial orientation.
* The Piraha, whose language eschews number words in favor of terms like few and many, are not able to keep track of exact quantities.
* In one study, Spanish and Japanese speakers couldn't remember the agents of accidental events as adeptly as English speakers could. Why? In Spanish and Japanese, the agent of causality is dropped: "The vase broke itself," rather than "John broke the vase."

what is the easiest way to do subtitles?

2010-07-31T11:53:00.000-07:00

A friend just pointed me to the site dot sub as a free and easy way to do subtitles.

Has anyone used this? Liked it?

Any other suggestions for subtitling that's easier and more accesible to activists than full on video editing software?

regalías

2010-07-30T10:47:00.001-07:00

regalías (Mex): benefits (ie sick days, health insurance)

This is a great 15 minute documentary that you should watch if you've ever been on a vaction to Cancun, or are considering it. It reminded me that regalias is used this way in Mexico, though it certainly isn't recognized as meaning this by the RAE. You might notice that they also translate barraca as labor camp.

tokenism

2010-07-20T13:23:00.001-07:00

I've posted before on the term token, and there was a great discussion in the comments about how token is different than the effort to reach equality through quotas - basically quotas can be useful as a way to get to equality, as loaded as they can be, and it is not a term to participate in pejorativizing. Months later my colleague and friend Jonathan Sanders just sent me this great follow up idea:

"I had a thought about how to translate "tokenism" and related adjectives, nouns, etc.

"hacer acto de ser incluyente" or "hacer acto de inclusión". The same way you can "hacer acto de presencia" in the sense to "put in an appearence" just so that they you know you were there, you "hacer acto de ser incluyente" so that you go down on the record as supporting diversity. What do you think?"

I think it's fantastic! What do others say?

talking heads

2010-07-08T15:14:00.000-07:00

talking heads: cabezas pensantes

Thanks to my friend Juan Carlos in El Salvador for this one. It cracks me up that in Spanish they think, in English they just talk. No, I don't mean the band. You know what I mean, the old guard leadership (las vacas sagradas) all up at a speakers table, just talking at us, no interaction, no participation, very old school. I continue to be frustrated at how much of this still goes on in the movement. Let's walk our talk and talk differently!

(the lettering on this New Yorker cartoon is tiny but it reads "the subject of tonight's discussion is: why are there no women on this panel?")

reverso

2010-07-01T14:37:00.001-07:00

I've been having good look lately with reverso, an online dictionary that's new to me. Even better yet, it has twofirefox add-ons so you can get in that fabulous little search bar in the upper right where my word-reference dictionary also lives (links to those and other goodies you can have live there in the tools section on the left of the blog).

mountaintop removal

2010-06-24T18:16:00.000-07:00

fantastic video! which Argentinian tv refused to air. here they call it la megamineria a lo abierto. what term have you been using? and how many mountains went into your gold ring?

sufragios y coronas

2010-06-20T16:45:00.000-07:00

sufragios y coronas: funeral prayers and wreaths.

I was very proud to interpret for Yessika Hoyos this morning at a national labour convention (of NUPGE). I watched this video to prepare and was struck by the translation of these two macabre forms of death threats. Of course sufragio can also refer to the vote, so pay attention to context, but I'm afraid that today's vote in Colombia is likely to lead to more death threats for unionists and human rights workers if Santos wins. All the more reason we need good translation and interpretation of the brave Colombians struggling for justice!

planes de vida

2010-06-14T16:46:00.000-07:00

planes de vida: plans for life, vs life plans

I've seen this phrase, common in Colombian social justice movements, rendered as life plans, but I think that in English we're used to that meaning our individual life plans - ie, to buy a house, have a baby, etc. In the Colombian context these are community plans for protecting and sustaining life, as in, actually staying alive, and then about thriving.

art by Rini

US Social Forum interpreting needs support

2010-06-10T12:12:00.000-07:00

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD

Join GGJ in supporting Language Access at the USSF
The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance is committing $500 to support the Language Access Support Fund (LASF) of the United States Social Forum (USSF). The LASF was established last month to support the expenses of bi-lingual interpreters volunteering their services for USSF activities. As we know translation and interpretation is hard work. Interpreters at the USSF are volunteering their time but in many cases will not have funds to cover basic expenses while in Detroit. The fund will help cover living expenses for up to 25 interpreters who will work many hours translating and interpreting workshops, plenaries and Peoples' Movement Assemblies.

The USSF has established a goal of $20,000 for the LASF. GGJ's contribution will bring the total amount raised thus far to $7,500. Seed funding of $4,000 was provided by the USSF, the French American Charitable Trust based in San Francisco has also contributed $3,000.

We urge all organizations, individuals and foundations to help us reach our goal and match the contributions of the USSF, FACT and GGJ. Any amount will be significant! To make a contribution, please make checks out to Praxis Project/USSF. Please put a note in the memo line that it is for Language Access Support Fund!

Send checks to:
Praxis Project
1750 Columbia Road NW, Second Floor
Washington DC 20009

For any questions related to Language Access, please contact Roberto Tijerina, Chair, Language Access Working Group: roberto@ussf2010.org.

Únase a GGJ en apoyar Acceso Lingüístico en el Foro Social

La Alianza Popular para la Justicia Global (GGJ por sus siglas en inglés) ha comprometido $500 al Fondo de Apoyo para el Acceso Lingüístico (LASF por sus siglas en inglés) del Foro Social Estadounidense (FSE). El LASF se estableció el mes pasado para apoyar con los gastos de interpretes bilingües que están sirviendo de voluntarios/as en las actividades del FSE. Como sabemos, la interpretación como la traducción requieren mucho esfuerzo. Los/as interpretes del FSE están sirviendo de voluntarios/as pero en muchos casos no tienen los fondos para cubrir sus gastos básicos mientras en Detroit. El fondo ayudará cubrir los gastos de 25 interpretes que trabajaran muchas horas traduciendo e interpretando los talleres, sesiones plenarias, y Asambleas de Movimiento Popular.

El FSE ha puesto la meta de $20.000 para el LASF. La contribución de GGJ alza la suma actual a $7.500. El FSE proveyó $4.000 de fondos iniciativos, el Fideicomiso Caritativo Franco-americano (FACT por sus siglas en inglés) basado en San Francisco también ha contribuido $3.000.

Encomiamos a todas las organizaciones, fundaciones, y a individuos/as a ayudarnos en alcanzar nuestra meta con donaciones pareadas a las del FSE, FACT, y GGJ. ¡Cualquier cantidad es significante! Para contribuir, por favor escribe su cheque a Praxis Project/USSF. Por favor anote que es para Language Access Support Fund!

Mande los cheques a:

Praxis Project

1750 Columbia Road NW, Second Floor

Washington DC 20009

Para preguntas relacionadas al Acceso Lingüístico, por favor comuníquese con Roberto Tijerina, Presidente, Grupo de Trabajo de Acceso Lingüístico: roberto@ussf2010.org.

stakeholders

2010-06-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

stakeholders: partes interesadas

Wikipedia in english defines as:

those entities within or outside an organization which:

a) Sponsor a project or,

b) Have an interest or a gain upon a successful completion of a project.

c) May have a positive or negative influence in the Project Completion.

But I actually don't like that definition much - besides being poorly written, it doesn't seem to apply well to a social justice context. Anyone up for editing the wikipedia? It's easy! Though of course this is generally a more business-y term, far too often imported into social change work for my taste.

campesino

2010-06-06T08:54:00.001-07:00

I've posted twice before about campesino

Human Rights Watch recently put out a report on the "new" paramilitaries in Colombia, and included a page with short videos about it. This is a great strategy as most of us probably won't want to wade through the report. They have great subtitles throughout, especially in the short videos labeled "three stories". The translator clearly prioritized being compelling and easily readable rather than overly literal - important for this sort of work. One of the things that jumped out at me was that they used farmworker for campesino. The thing is, that in the US this implies that you don't work your own land, but someone else's - which is often but not always true of campesinos. The nice thing about campesino is that it includes both the English terms 'small farmer' or 'family farmer' and 'farmworker'. Ah, the challenges of there being no exact equivalent!

(pic by Rini)

interpreting tip: body language and um's and ah's

2010-05-23T19:54:00.000-07:00

Another useful reminder from the ATA Chronicle article in the December issue on the pitfalls of long consecutive mode in the courtroom, by Janis Palma.

" When a witness uses body language to complete a verbal message, the consecutive interpretation has to be delivered within a timeframe that allows the target language listeners to put the words and gestures together in a way that makes sense. We cannot emulate those gestures and incorporate them into our verbal rendition. Interpreting “He went like this and then I felt something here and as we were struggling I felt him hit me over here, so I went like that and hit him back, but then he threw a punch and I ended up on the ground" interpreting after the witness is done gesturing, without matching those gestures to his words, will be a senseless exercise that will surely leave the target-language listeners wondering what it all meant."

Generally my sense is that movement interpreters with little training tend to do consecutive that is TOO short to make sense, but here is a case where shorter consec is important. Janis also says that in long consecutive it is nearly impossible for the interpreter to deliver all the right pauses, inflections, hesitations, incomplete sentences, false starts, and repetitions. I have heard interpreters attempt it, plummeting into this mechanical read-back of copious notes, with absolutely counterproductive results because the listener is missing out on all the nuances, even
when he is getting all the words. "

Of course sometimes repetitions and hedges are meaningful, sometimes not - and we can be more flexible about this in a community speaking event than in the courtroom.

mesa de trabajo

2010-05-12T11:35:00.001-07:00

working group (or sometimes comité is more appropriate if it is an ongoing group)
NOT worktable or, as I recently heard it rendered, workshop.

falsos positivos (I promise to quit obsessing about this term)

2010-05-06T11:39:00.001-07:00

I couldn't resist posting about this one more time because I really liked the rendition in this article:
"the body count scandal". It seems to me that this one gives readers/listeners not familiar with Colombia much more of a clue of what it might all be about. This obviously won't work when your speaker refers to a so-called "false positive", but if they're talking about the scandal as a whole, I vote for this version.

translatability

2010-05-05T11:22:00.000-07:00

One of the things we can do to improve translations for social change is to educate our movements on how to write (and edit) documents so that they are more easily and clearly translatable. To this end I want to share here some great suggestions for this from technical writer Fiona Hannington:

"Writing for ESL and writing for translatability makes for good technical writing, regardless of whether we have ESL readers (we do) or expect the docs to be translated (maybe one day).

In particular:

Use simple sentence constructions of subject-verb-object.

Use the active voice. The passive voice, although appropriate sometimes, can introduce ambiguity (who or what is the actor?).

Use pronouns clearly so that the antecedent is obvious.

Avoid turning verbs into nouns (nominalization).

Avoid phrasal and modal verbs. Phrasal verbs have two or more words. Choose a one-word verb that says the same thing. Modal verbs express the mood of the main verb ("should," "could," "can," "would," "might," and "may"). Use these when there is no other way to make these subtle distinctions. Certainly avoid using both phrasal and modal verbs together.

Avoid noun strings (more than one adjective).

Use positive language: avoid negative constructions.

Choose one term for a concept and use it consistently.

Do not omit articles and prepositions when they help to clarify the meaning.

Avoid wordiness: keep sentence length under 20 words.

Example:

Before:

To maintain synchronization [nominalization] between the two controller cards, the operating system occasionally performs an automatic reload of [nominalization] the standby controller card. To facilitate the automatic reload [repetitive; nominalization] of an controller card, the auto-boot? variable must be set [passive] to true.

After:

To synchronize the two controller cards, the operating system occasionally reloads the standby controller card automatically. To enable this process, set the auto-boot? variable to true."

Fantastic. Thanks Fiona!

artivist

2010-04-29T12:36:00.001-07:00

artivist: artivista

according to the (longer) English wikipedia definition:
Artivist is a portmanteau word combining "art" and "activist". Artivism developed in recent years while the anti-globalization and antiwar protests emerged and proliferated. In most of the cases artivists attempt to push political agendas by the means of art. Yet this is not political art as it was known before, in the sense of artworks being political. The artivist is often involved in Streetart or Urban Art, Adbusting or Subvertising.

When I went looking for this word in Spanish I found that Kayhan Irani has the fabulous website artivista.org (though she's of Iranian descent, so maybe this word works in Farsi too, but I'm guessing she got it from the Spanish). She also edited the great book, “Telling Stories to Change the World: Global Voices on the Power of Stories to Build Community and make Social Justice Claims”, which I really enjoyed.

The photo here is graffiti in Bogotá.

arengas (interpreting tip)

2010-04-24T15:09:00.001-07:00

I haven't found a great rendition of the word arenga itself - rallying cry just has a less powerful ring to it. But check out the great Spanish wikipedia entry on arengas -

and here are some arengas I interpreted at the last vigil to close the School of the Americas (the picture here is from an action to close the SOA that I was part of last Monday while I was in DC - which is why I haven't posted in a while):

por que, por que, por que nos asesinan, si somos la esperanza de america latina!

why, why, why do they assasinate us, we are the HOPE of latin america!

por nuestros muertos, ni un minuto de silencio, toda una vida de lucha!
for our dead, not one minute of silence, but an entire lifetime of struggle!

That last one you'll hear alot from Colombians. The key to interpreting at rallies is to know that it's likely the speaker will throw in an arenga. They usually know before they get on stage which they will use, so be sure to ask them ahead of time and figure it out before hand so that you can be calm and say it strongly and with passion, instead of panicking about rhymes, etc. In this situation finding one with a better ring is more important than being strictly literal.

accents (becoming a better interpreter tip)

2010-04-05T13:57:00.000-07:00

One of the skills you need as an interpreter is being able to understand different accents, mumbling, and voices in general. One fun (and sometimes crazy making) way to practice this is by listening to music and making out what they're saying. Now there's a fabulous web site where you can practice this, called lyrics training. Select Spanish or English in top left and it will play you music videos in that language (you pick which, but one of the ones you could choose is this Oreja de Van Gogh one, above), and if you select easy it will give you most of the lyrics with some blanks to fill in. If you're an interpreter though, you should pick hard, where you have to fill in all of the lyrics. The great thing is that it stops the song at the end of each line until you catch up with the typing. It's a fun game - you won't even notice that you're improving your interpreting skills!

falsos positivos (yet again!)

2010-03-29T14:13:00.000-07:00

I keep posting about this term because it drives me crazy. It is such a dangerous euphemism! I ran into another proposal for what to call them in the video above (which has a part two), where they suggest simply calling them 'state crimes'. Of course it's not just any crime, it's assassination, presented as a (fake) combat death. It occurs to me that "assassination by the state" is more clearly understandable, and sounds more like the crime that it is, than the more legalistic term I've suggested before of 'extrajudicial execution'. But neither implies that the dead are then presented as a fake combat kill. Thoughts?

Ojo, the video is melodramatic and the translation of the subtitles is not great, but it's still important good work worth watching.

interpreting tips: emotion

2010-03-22T13:15:00.001-07:00

The ATA Chronicle had a good article in the December issue on the pitfalls of long consecutive mode in the courtroom by Janis Palma. Some useful reminders:

"You have to modulate your voice so it conveys sentiment, not drama. For example, when someone cries or laughs, you are not expected to laugh or cry, but you should modulate your voice accordingly such that the nonverbal elements of the source- language message are not completely lost to the target language listener. If someone is crying and you are using a cheerful voice to interpret what that person is saying, the target language listener cannot possibly get to remorse a source language speaker may be trying to convey, or the sense of loss and tragedy, just from the words alone. Your performance has to carry the emotional aspect across languages as well.

Also, part of your responsibility as an interpreter is to bring all that feeling across from the source language to the target language without laying it on too thick. When you do, the attention shifts from the witness and what the witness has to say, to you and how you are putting on a show for the jury and everyone else in the courtroom."

moral? not NO intonation or inflection, but also not too much.

no basta rezar

2010-03-11T19:53:00.001-08:00

(from the classic movement song in the above video)
no, no, no basta rezar, hacen falta muchas cosas para conseguir la paz:
no, no, it's not enough to pray, there's a lot of work to do to make peace come our way

heh. pleased with the rhyme!

pendejo

2010-03-08T20:48:00.001-08:00

funny video about the different meanings of pendejo and coger. from a priest no less! from the fabulous narco news.

interpreters are organizing

2010-03-01T13:37:00.000-08:00

this video is from a great campaign to try to save interpreting services in Washington state and allow interpreters union organizing rights.

Victory #1: More than 200 Interpreters came to Olympia to demand lawmakers listen to our concerns!

Victory #2: We got the funding for interpreters restored in the budget! ($16 million restored!) Finally lawmakers see how important the work of interpreters really is.

Victory #3: We won a majority of votes in the Senate for our bill.

Victory #4 is close: Now we must win a majority of votes in the House of Representatives before Fri.

We need your help. if you are in Washington state, please:

Please call and email your House of Representative lawmakers today and ask them to support interpreters by passing ESSB 6726.

It will take 2 minutes. Your phone call and email may make the difference between winning or losing a voice for interpreters to improve this professional. Please call today!

Just call 1-800-562-6000 and they will connect you with your appropriate lawmakers for your legislative district. You have 2 Representatives in the House of Representatives and 1 Senator. Make sure you leave messages or speak to all 3. Follow up with an email asking for their support.

What do you say when you call? " Please pass ESSB 6726 and give collective bargaining rights to interpreters!"

full campaign page here

becoming a better interpreter

2010-02-26T12:39:00.001-08:00

Professional interps reading this, forgive my stating of the obvious, but those of you movement types breaking in to interpreting, here's a tip:

I can't recommend enough the importance of videotaping yourself interpreting. At least do audio, but video is much better, and is so ubiquitous these days. It can be from a phone, an ipod or a flip (pictured at right. surprisingly cheap).

Get a friend to do film you, either next time you interpret for real, or just for practice. You'll realize all sorts of things that you're too busy or nervous to catch in the moment. Look at your rendition - given time to think about it is that how you would interpret it next time? But also look at your style. How is your tone, your face, your body language?

One of the things that makes a lot of inexperienced movement interps stand out is bad use of body language. For some reason a lot of untrained interps are uncomfortable holding a pad of paper, and then they don't know what to do with their hands when in front of a crowd. You know who you are!

One of the first things you learn in any interpreter training is the importance of always having a cuadernito. Figure out which kind you like, and always have one on you. Always. Think of it as your security blanket. Even if you never write anything down on it but numbers and names, you have something in your hands. Of course, for good consecutive you really need to be writing down much more than numbers and names, but that's another topic.

If you're in Colombia norma puts out a great little green cuadernito. 80 hojas rayadas. The classic one most interps in the US use is just a steno pad. You want it to be small enough to carry easily, but not so small you have to turn the pages during a segment of speech.

solidarity

2010-02-22T11:59:00.001-08:00

solidarity: solidaridad. what I'm writing now to ask you for.

This time, the traffic changed, and they weren't able to force a car crash. This time, it was clear that Martha was in a bulletproof car, so when they pulled the machine gun out all they could do was yell and point it at her. This time, international solidarity will be strong, so that there won't be a next time.

Who wants to kill Martha? Why do they want to kill her? Well, I've writt en about her case before. Martha is a key witness in the case of several Colombian army soldiers who are accused of killing her father, Orlando Giraldo, an innocent civilian, and dressing him up to look like a guerrilla (to improve their 'combat kill' bodycount). He was one of thousands of documented cases of so called 'false positives'. There has yet to be any justice in any of these cases. Instead there has been all sorts of delays in the few cases that have made it to court, and many threats and attacks. Just last year Martha's uncle was shot in the head on the way to court to testify on this case.

Martha is incredibly brave to keep pressing forward on this case. Not only did she keep going to court after her uncle was shot, she came to the United States to speak about this case! She testified just a few months ago in front of Fort Benning at the vigil to close the School of the Americas (video of her speaking here), connecting the training of Colombian soldiers there to incidents like her father's murder. I was very honored to walk with her at the vigil, holding a banner remembering her father (see picture, I'm in orange and she is next to me).

Coming to the SOA vigil might have put her at even more risk now. But even after this attack, she has chosen NOT to flee into exile, but to keep pressing for justice. This is risky.

But you and I can do something to help protect Martha, especially if you are a US citizen. The US is not only a training but also funding the Colombian army. That's our taxdollars we're talking about (well, if you're in the US it is). So we can write and say that we are concerned about funding these fake combat kills in general, and Martha's dad in particular, and that we want justice in this case, and safety for Martha as a witness in it. There's a quick click system online to do this (with one click you can also send a message to Obama asking him to close the School of the Americas).

But you can do better than this oh-so-easy online action. Please also take two minutes to actually CALL the State Department Colombia desk. They got a bunch of calls on Friday, so I waited until today to ask for more calls. But we need to keep calling. If they get enough calls I do believe that they will be sure that the US ambassador says something to the right Colombian general who will say something to someone who will call off the death squad goons. Of course, please don't say that when you call. Below is a quick script of what you can say. You are likely to get an answering machine but go ahead and leave a quick message! Or if you get them, please be brief and polite.

The State Department folks to call are Terry Steers-Gonzalez (202-647-4173) or Susan Sanford (202-647-3142). Here is a little script you can go off of:

I am deeply concerned for the safety of Martha Giraldo and her family in Colombia. Martha's father was killed by the Colombian military in March 2006. Members of the 3rd Brigade are currently on trial for the killing. As Martha and her family have been working to bring justice to this case, they have received threats and her uncle--a witness in the case--was shot in the head by assassins last year. This week, while Martha was driving through Cali, gunmen tried to run her off of the road and pointed their guns at her.

Given the seriousness of this case, I ask that the State Department take a special interest in it. Please urgently communicate your concern for the safety of Martha Giraldo, and the rest of her family, to the appropriate Colombian government authorities, as they are at serious risk simply for calling for justice in the case against the killers of Jose Orlando Giraldo.

Also, as is typical in Colombia, the trial against her father's killers has been repeatedly stalled. I urge you to inquire about the status of the Jose Orlando Giraldo trial and express the State Department's interest in its swift completion.

Finally, please send Martha and her family a short letter of support. Martha is scared. Knowing she has support makes a huge difference in her spirits and her ability to keep moving forward on this case. Please take a minute to send her a letter today--in English or in Spanish (Witness for Peace will translate them if need be).

Actually, the truly last ask is for you to please hold Martha in your hearts and prayers, hold her in the light, send her energy of protection, or however it is you think of these things. Together we hold each other.

judicializaciones

2010-02-18T21:37:00.000-08:00

judicializaciones (Colombia): bogus/trumped up/false criminal charges

As is detailed in this short video, the idea is not only to send a message to the death squads that it's open hunting, but to keep people busy fighting these charges and thus take their time away from political organizing. This is a growing perverse tactic used by the state to squash dissent.