Translating Headlines - Translation Practice

One of the best ways to improve your Spanish is obviously to practise it, and that goes for reading as well as speaking. Reading whole books, magazine articles or newspaper columns can be daunting to start with, so a good place to start is with bite-sized chunks of text like newspaper headlines. Here are a few examples to try and translate. I'll post the English version tomorrow so you can check your answers against mine. The headlines link back to the original websites if you want to see them in context.

From El Pais -

La policía británica tenía fichados a los autores del atentado de Londres

Un bebé se salva con una prótesis creada con una impresora 3D

Los disturbios se extienden en Suecia por cuarto día consecutivo

 

From RTVE

 

David Cameron: "Es una traición al Reino Unido y al Islam"

Muere a los 79 años el cantante y compositor francés Georges Moustaki

 

Relax - It's okay to make mistakes

I find that when reading or speaking in a foreign language it is easy to get hung up on the meaning of every word and end up going far to slowly. When speaking this might mean speaking more correctly but it also might make you sound unnaturally slow. It can often be better to just let your tongue run away with you and make the odd mistake in grammar or pronunciation. The person you are speaking to can always ask you to repeat something if they did not understand first time. This might depend a little bit on the circumstances and you probably do not want to talk to friends in the same way you might speak at a business meeting.

Similarly, when reading it can be slow and tedious if you pause to consider the meaning of every word. This is even more true if you overuse the dictionary. If you can learn to 'gist read' the text to get the meaning of it without every single word you will find that books become much more enjoyable.

Compund words

Sometimes Spanish words are similar enough to English words that they can be guessed at. Others bear little resemblance to their English equivalents. One class of words I like is those (in either language) that can be broken into shorter words that are direct translations, for example:

honeymoon = luna de miel
honey = miel
moon = luna

abrebotellas = bottle opener
abre = he/she/it opens
botellas = bottles

I like these words where the meaning of a longer word can be deduced from the meaning of simpler words.

Other examples include bookmark = marcalibros; deathbed = lecho de muerte or treehouse = casa del arbol.

Some Free Short Stories in Spanish - Website Review

My Favourite writer (in any language) is Carlos Ruiz Zafón, author of La Sombra del Viento, or The Shadow of the Wind amongst other novels. His website, www.carlosruizzafon.com is a great resource with plenty of free stuff to download in the 'Descargas' section, including first chapters of all his novels. My favourite part is 'Relatos' where you can download a selection of unpublished short stories featuring the trademarks of Zafón's longer works - dark plots and Gothic settings in his native Barcelona.

Also available to download are wallpapers, videos and music. As expected the site also hosts a lot of information about the author and his books, including a mini site for each of his novels.

Back in Andorra

This summer I showed myself how hard it is to stay motivated to keep my Spanish moving forwards while I was in France. I didn't abandon Spanish completely, but I did put a lot less energy into it. I also did the obvious thing and tried to learn some more French while I was there. This blog was an obvious casualty of all this, as can be seen by the fact that this is the first post since late July.

So, here are the things I kept doing -

Watching Telediario en 4 minutos a couple of mornings a week on the RTVE website.
Speaking to Spanish speakers on the few occasions when I had the chance.
Watching El Aguila Roja (also on the RTVE website).
Visiting a couple of favourite Spanish websites.
Cooking dishes from my Spanish recipe book (in Spanish).

And things I should have done but didn't -

More of all of the above
Writing this blog
Reading Don Quijote
Looking for other Spanish websites
Reading Spanish newspapers
Looking for other Spanish sites


Back in Andorra it is time to 'poner las pilas' and get a bit more motivated, now that there are a few more people to speak Spanish to.

Useful website for Spanish and recipes

I am always on the look out for Spanish and Latin American recipes to try, and I have just seen a great one for Cuban Arroz con Pollo (Chicken with rice) at Learning Spanish is Fun which is a great Spanish blog and resource. I think cooking dishes and learning the words for different foods and ingredients is a great way to learn about a culture. The recipe is well written and illustrated with a really mouth watering photograph - you can tell that the blog's author, Sabrina, really has a passion for her subject matter. I'm really looking forward to trying out the recipe if I can track down some of the ingredients.

The weather

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sitting and watching torrents of rain beating against the windows, it seems a good time to get out the dictionary and revise some weather words. Like in English there are nouns (the rain) and verbs (to rain / it is raining). In English we also use a lot of adjectives to describe the weather - 'it is cold / hot / windy', whereas in Spanish nouns are also used for these. It is like saying 'there is wind' or 'it makes heat today'.

Rain

la lluvia = the rain
llover = to rain
llueva = it rains / it is raining
está lloviendo = it is raining (right now)
va a llover = it is going to rain
lloverá = it will rain
llovió = it rained
ha llovido = it has rained
llovía = it was raining

Snow

la nieve = the snow
nevar = to snow
nieva = it snows
esta nevando = it is snowing (right now)
va a neva = it is going to snow

Wind

el viento = the wind
hace viento = it is windy (lit. it makes wind)

Temperature

hace calor = it is hot (it makes heat)
hace frío = it is cold (it makes cold)

Sun

el sol = the sun
hace sol = it is sunny (it makes sun)
soleado =sunny

Cloud

los nubes = the clouds
nublado = cloudy
la niebla = the mist