"To escalate" as in to increase in importance

Question

Hi everyone,

I'm installing a system at work that tracks emails from clients, and if they haven't been answered in a certain time changes their status to "escalated". This is fine in English, but one of my Spanish colleagues who is testing it noticed that with the language switched to Spanish this has been mis-translated as escalado (climbed) which makes no sense in this situation. She is having trouble thinking of a single verb that I can replace escalar with to give the same meaning in Spanish as escalate in English. The dictionary here gives aumentar and crecer as alternatives but the explanatory notes for those translations don't sound like what I am looking for.

Does anybody have any suggestions please?

Thanks in advance, Richard

Answer 1

There is not a single Spanish verb that covers all the meanings of escalate. In this case, I would suggest "darles prioridad", to give them (the emails) priority, instead of change the status to "escalate". Sometimes you have to give up translating word by word, and rephrase the entire whole expression to convey the same meaning and achieve a natural expression.

Thanks Lazarus, I guess that's why my Spanish colleague couldn't think of an appropriate word immediately. - Richard-Thomas, Jun 16, 2011

OK, no other suggestions so I guess I asked a difficult question, jeje. Unfortunately priority or prioridad is used for something else in this system, but I will have a think about it and discuss it with my Spanish colleagues. - Richard-Thomas, Jun 17, 2011

Answer 2

"Sobrepasar el plazo" sounds good enough; "caducar" means no longer useful or completely spoiled or worn out, so I wouldn't use it.

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What about using "plazo vencido" for this?

Thanks Guillermo, we discussed this but my colleague said vencer/vencido isn't really used in Spain, it's more common in Latin America. - Richard-Thomas, Jun 17, 2011

Answer 3

elevado

Answer 4

"Sobrepasar el plazo" sounds good enough; "caducar" means no longer useful or completely spoiled or worn out, so I wouldn't use it.

Answer 5

OK, no other suggestions so I guess I asked a difficult question, jeje. Unfortunately priority or prioridad is used for something else in this system, but I will have a think about it and discuss it with my Spanish colleagues.

Then "preferencia" could do the trick instead.

Answer 6

Thanks again, I'll throw that in as a suggestion. I suggested caducar, as it refers to items that have passed a deadline without an answer, but my colleague was worried that people might think they have expired as in they are not relevant anymore. She came up with "tiempo sobrepasado", which might work (I need to use a verb, adjective and noun forms at various points in the software).