To translate 50 news articles a week, NYT en Español looks for the common ground in a language spoken by 500 million people in many different ways.
By Eliezer Budasoff
July 4, 2019
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
One of the most frequently asked questions we get at The New York Times en Español is how we choose the articles that we translate. This has been a constant query — both from readers and from people at The Times — since the project began in February 2016. It’s a polite discussion editors of the Español site hold daily — one that is inextricably linked to a more heated, less polite discussion: How do we translate it?
From Los Angeles to Buenos Aires and from the Galápagos to Barcelona, the Spanish our readers speak varies widely. Latin Americans alone have more than 15 different words for popcorn, at least 13 terms for drinking straws and 10 ways of naming a humble ladybug — as many as there are for soccer cleats. Soccer, in fact, may or may not carry an accent mark (fútbol or futbol) depending on where you live. There are different names for the same fruits, cuts of meat and the universal heartache. The exact word (however colloquial) that Venezuelans use to describe their anger is, in Peru, an expression of a prurient desire. And of course, all readers are adamant that their way of using the language is the right one.