Una traducción fatal: espero que tu tostador no quedó pa la cagá

No estoy seguro si se usa la frase “pa la cagá” en otros países hispanohablantes. ¿Alguien sabe? De todas maneras en este caso significa “destruido”.

El otro día se me antojó un paquete de Risotto. Desafortunadamente quedó asqueroso pero gracias al proceso de cocinarlo leí algo super chistoso. Estoy hablando de la traducción de las instrucciones de “coccion tradicional”. Estoy citando, escribieron “cocción” sin tilde.

(mmm quiero risotto)



No quiero que te pongas ciego con intentar leer las instrucciones en la foto por eso escribí la parte importante abajo.
Echa una mirada al paso cuatro.






En Español
4.) Cocine a fuego suave sobre tostador por 20 minutos en olla tapada, revuelva de vez en cuando.

En inglés
“Cook on a low flame over a toaster for 20 minutes in covered pot, stir occasionally.”

No hay ningún problema grave con la gramática de la traducción pero es obvio que el traductor desconoce la cocina del hablante nativo de inglés. El diccionario dice que tostador es “toaster”, pero hay un problema.

En Chile esto es un tostador. Según el diccionario tostador es "toaster"





En Estados Unidos esto es un “toaster” Evidentemente el ejemplo es un “toaster” cochino (o sucio en español “normal”).

Ahora, “Cocine a fuego suave sobre tostador por 20 minutos en olla tapada, revuelva de vez en cuando.” Después cuéntame, cómo quedó tu “toaster”.

Para los que no tienen ni idea como funciona el “tostador” hay que prender la cocina (el equipo) colocar el pan encima y darle muchas vueltas para que no se queme. Es como si uno fuera cocinado o friendo el pan ya que está horneado pero igual hay que tenderlo.

Yo sé que cometo errores en traducciones pero antes de intentar traducir hay que saber de “relatividad cultural” o cómo son las culturas de ambos lenguas involucrados en la traducción.

Ojo con tu “toaster”.

Risotto with a pinch of former-toaster

The other day in the supermarket I saw some instant risotto and I thought I’d try it. Unfortunately the risotto was pretty nasty. But the good news is that in the process of cooking what turned out to be some nasty risotto I stumbled upon something delightfully hilarious: the English translation of the directions for how to cook the risotto.

(mmm risotto)





I don’t want my readers to go blind so, in order to make it easier to read, I typed the directions bellow.










In Spanish
4.) Cocine a fuego suave sobre tostador por 20 minutos en olla tapada, revuelva de vez en cuando.

In English
“Cook on a low flame over a toaster for 20 minutes in covered pot, stir occasionally.”

There are a couple things about this sentence which are a little weird. However, while there aren’t any huge problems with the sentence’s grammar it is painfully obvious that whoever translated this has never set foot in a kitchen in the US. If you haven’t already honed in on what’s so weird about this translation –the title to this article should give you a clue- think about what the directions tell you to do with “a toaster”. Most likely someone looked up the Spanish word “tostador” and saw that in English the word is “toaster”.

So, what exactly is it that they are trying to tell you to do, when they say “Cook on a low flame over a toaster”?

(In Chile this is what is known as a “tostador”. If you look up “tostador” in a Spanish/English dictionary you will most likely find the word “toaster”.)





(In the US this is a “toaster”)


Now take your toaster and your risotto and try to “Cook (it) on a low flame over a toaster for 20 minutes in covered pot” Afterwards let me know how it went. Does your toaster have a warrantee? Does it cover melting your toaster all over your kitchen stove’s burner? Now I guess while you’re at it you’ll also have to see if your oven has a warrantee. On second thought, maybe you should just use a “tostador” like the one in the picture above. That would probably save you a lot of trouble.

If you’re at all like me if you had to confront a “tostador” you probably wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what it does. Well now that you know what it does here’s how you use it to toast some bread. Turn on the burner and adjust it to a low heat. Put the “tostador” on top of the burner and then keep an eye on your bread to make sure it doesn’t burn. You’ll probably have to constantly move the bread to keep it from burning. I call this cooking bread because it’s already been baked but you’re not really toasting it since you have to watch it and flip it around a bunch so that it doesn’t burn.

Ok. I know that I sometimes make mistakes when translating but I also know that before anyone tries to translate anything they need to know about cultural relativity and the differences between the two languages involved in whatever it is that you are translating.

In the meantime, be careful with you’re toaster. We wouldn’t want any crazed risotto recipes killing it now would we?

Public relations, Chilean style.

My title is a take off on another Chile blog, called “Just Married, Chilean Style” which is also written by a foreigner. Now back to my idea, it’s worth noting that public relations in Chile are usually one of the three following things.

1.) Orwellian
2.) Bizarre
Or
3.) Non-existent

My college had some problems with getting accredited by the Chilean federal government. In the end they were accredited. I don’t understand or have access to all the details; however accreditation here has two different aspects.

1.) A school is either designated as a University or a technical institute. My school’s name is Universidad de Las Américas and they have been accredited as a University for a while now.

2.) A school can also be “accredited”. This supposedly means that the school is of a higher quality but I am not so gullible. I know that some accredited schools aren’t as impressive as they supposedly are. For all practical purposes being accredited only means that students have more access to government loans and scholarships. Scholarships that I, being an American, could never apply for in the first place.

Accreditation is a voluntary process. I should mention that getting government loans here is a sweeter deal than it sounds like. In Chile they don’t exactly enforce laws about paying off student loans. So, getting a loan is almost like getting a scholarship! I am happy to say that Andrea (my girlfriend) intends to pay off every peso of her college loans because obviously- it’s the right thing to do.

As I mentioned, at the end of last year (since Chile is in the southern hemisphere the Chilean school year is from March to December) my college had some problems getting “accredited” which as I explained before basically means that its students are able to apply for government loans and grants. I heard about this from some teachers however there was no news whatsoever from the school’s administration. I also heard through the grapevine that my college appealed the government’s decision. However, during the summer no progress was made since, in Chile, in the summer everyone with money goes on vacation and Santiago’s population goes down by about 20%. Bottom line is that in the summer you won’t get much done. Don’t bother applying for a job because the boss will most likely be out of town. People who are lucky enough to get jobs working for the Chilean government reviewing a college’s application for accreditation are definitely on vacation during the summer. I also recently heard that many of the people on the board that accredits universities work for other Universities and it just so happens that they decided to accredit our school right after the deadline to enroll had passed, coincidence? After living here two years: I think not.

When I came back to Chile and started classes my college was still appealing the decision. This brings me to the public relations part of this article. Our school has two newspapers. One is written by paid employees of the college and basically promotes all of the good without reporting any of the bad things about Universidad de las Americas’s three campuses. The second is a small two-page student run newspaper only available in one of the seven campuses. I am one of the three people involved in this publication.

The administration’s newspaper did not include a single word about the accreditation process but did have about 30 pages of positive news. I have no problem with my college promoting itself however I also think it should defend itself. I have studied in more “prestigious” Chilean public universities and I still think that the only reason my school wasn’t accredited is that many powerful elements in Chile would love to see private universities eliminated.

In the following sentence I put “prestigious” in commas because I am literally translating what Chileans would say. In Chile, when talking about schools, “prestigious” is a synonym for “old.” Many people here think the longer a school has existed the better it is. A lot of people here will say, “my high school was one of the best in Chile, its 150 years old”. I don’t think a school being older that makes it any better but here many people do. To be fair there is a grain of truth to this common belief. Some of the best school’s have been around for a while and schools that have been around for a while do everything possible to prolong this stereotype. I can’t blame them it works like a dream, but the fact that a school has existed for 200 years doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s “awesome”.

Anyways I think that my college should have done one of two things in respect to not being accredited:

1.) Defend itself from attacks by people who work in other universities and try to manipulate accreditation processes.

2.) Inform its students about what it is doing to become accredited instead of acting as if nothing happened and leaving them wondering whether they are doing anything at all.

The newspaper I am involved in ran an editorial that said that it was “rather inconvenient that our college was still not accredited.” The girl who wrote that editorial was the lucky recipient of a stern lecture from someone in the school’s administration about the damage that she may have done to the school’s image. As if someone who didn’t already know that we weren’t accredited would find out through our tiny student newspaper.

So, you’ll understand why I chose to write my article about something that had almost nothing to do with our college. My article was about the importance of Spanish for Chile and at an international level. I thought this was an important issue since many people here always talk about how important English is in a way that subliminally says “Spanish isn’t that important”.

Unfortunately, I think my account of my college trying to get accredited is a pretty good representation of the state of investigative journalism in Chile. Said journalism is legal, except if it defames someone in the government. There is an old law here, which makes it illegal to defame important people in the government. This law prevented many people involved in Pinochet’s government from being prosecuted. So while investigative journalism here is legal it’s about as easy to find as a family of vegans in an all you can eat steak buffet. So just remember if you work in PR in Chile, ‘mum’s the word’.

Update on investigative journalism in Chile: I have, thanks to http://www.blogger.com/www.c.hileno.com (I do make an attempt to acknowledge sources), found a source of investigative journalism in Chile! http://.ciperchile.cl/ (In Spanish) My discovery of this is the equivalent my metaphorical vegans figuring out that the all you can eat steak buffet has bread: i.e. this is but a small step in the right direction. Nevertheless, I am overjoyed for Chile that I was, albeit to a small extent, wrong about investigative journalism in Chile.