Lost in translation.
I am corresponding with a person who only speaks Spanish and I only speak English and we are having a difficult time understanding one another by using a translation program. She used a translation program for the following phrase: "if you say the age for me love was not a regime in love is less important when there is love." To me this makes little sense, what I think she is saying is that "age differences in a loving relationship make no difference," but that's only my best guess. When I translate the phrase back to Spanish I get: "si dices la edad para mí el amor no hubo un régimen en el amor es el menos importante cuando hay amor." But, my understanding of Spanish is so poor that I can't tell if the phrase makes any more sense in the Spanish. Talk about "something being lost in translation!" To further complicate the issue is that she is in the Dominican Republic and their Spanish has many variations on the Spanish spoken in other parts of Latin America. So, my question: Is there a translation program that would do a better job of translating Spanish to English/English to Spanish or should I just knuckle down and learn Dominican Spanish?
4 Answers
Thank you all for your input. I just spent about 3 hours writing a short 4 paragraph email to my friend. I used the translation program to translate from English to Spanish, then translated that back to English and then I adjusted the English until the Spanish said what I wanted it to. That's definitely too much work!
As far as the phrase in my first post, that is all there is. As I said, my best guess is that she was saying that our age difference is not important to a loving relationship. There is another line that says that she prefers older men, so that is why I made the guess I did.
I did ask her if she could verify this, but haven't heard back as of this writing. I am definitely going to have to learn Spanish!!! Writing emails in this manner is making me crazy, not to mention the time I'm putting in to it. I really like this lady, so to me it is worth it, but I can't keep this up forever.
Are any of you familiar with the program called Rosetta Stone? It is some what expensive, but I have heard that one can learn a foreign language very quickly using this program. But, I don't know anyone that has personally used it. The company claims that the U.S. State Department uses it to quickly train diplomats and such in foreign languages, but who knows if that is true.
I already know a good bit of Spanish, but I can read it better than speak it. When I read something in Spanish I can usually figure out the words I'm not familiar with because many Spanish words are similar to English words, like "to care for" is a la atención de. Atención is close enough to "attention" that I can get "to pay attention to" and then in context figure out that "to care for" is really what is meant, but that's a lot of time consuming work also. I have learned that Spanish is a syllable-timed language and that English is a stress-timed language which has a lot to do with why it is difficult to translate from one to the other. But, I really need a way to immerse myself in the language, but there are very few Spanish speakers where I live and I don't know anyone who is fluent enough to really help me and a college course is more expensive than the Rosetta Stone program.
Again, thanks for your input, it was more helpful than you may realize.
Not really. Translators are ok for getting the general sense of what it is being said in the other language, but as you can plainly see, you may lose important bits of information when you come down to details and nuance.
I suggest you spend some time here learning regular Spanish, and then, if your romance hasn't fizzled out by then, go ahead and try to learn some Dominican slang. It will take some time and effort, though.
If you type English gibberish into a translator, you're going to get Spanish gibberish as a result. Heck, you get Spanish gibberish sometimes when you type perfectly grammatical English into a translator! It sounds like maybe you just need to learn Spanish. There are some regional differences, but Spanish is still Spanish.
Also, you said that group of words was a phrase. Is there more to the sentence that could help us help you? Or, perhaps, some context?
You will need to knuckle down. I don't think it's imperative that you learn Dominican Spanish; standard Spanish, as is taught in school, broadcast on television, and sung in popular music, should be understood universally, and anyone knowingly corresponding with a non-native speaker should have the good grace to avoid regional idioms. I have never had success with translation programs. But you're in the right place with SpanishDict.com. Do the lessons, and persevere. ¡Buena suerte!
