Miami Ghosts

During a recent stop in Miami, I had the chance to spend some quality time with my lovely friend and song writer/singer Juliet Dibenedetto, whom I’ve known since I was 14! We met up in a local dive bar/restaurant in Coconut Grove and we found ourselves talking to the charming bartender who began to tell us about the ghosts in the place. Yes, indeed he proceeded to tell us about the ghosts, whom he had managed to befriend by leaving them glasses of rum every night. Apparently, there had been a murder on site. A woman was having an affair and her husband had intended to kill her lover but in the midst of their argument he shot his wife instead. Distraught he then killed himself. Its said the couple’s spirits still reside there and they make their presence known by turning lights and music off and on, flushing the toilets and breaking glasses. As he was telling me this story mostly in English with a dash of Spanish and the occasional "Spanglish", I wondered if the ghosts were listening in on our conversation. But more importantly I began to ask myself if they could understand us. As a ghost perk do you get unlimited linguistics abilities? :)

Enjoy the SNEAK (sssh) Juliet Sample.... Copyright Juliet Dibenedetto. All rights reserved.

JAM Share It & Spread It xoxox

Chinglish: Follow-up

My mother fell sick the last couple of days of our stay in HK but I still managed to get a few examples of Chinglish around HK!

JAM English Flashcards: Fruit and Vegetables available online at jam.shop now!

The Delicate Business of Translating

Fabulous friend, founder of Amazing Women Rock and life coach Susan Macaulay, had been contacted by a feminist organization in Mexico. In an effort to collaborate across the Atlantic, she asked if I would translate some content they wanted to share on her Amazing Women Rock website from Spanish to English. I immediately agreed as I had never done anything like it before and really how difficult could it be?

That’s what I thought until I found myself staring at my computer screen trying to figure out if the author meant to use the word “predio” for property, estate, building or farm. The definition is ALL of these. Since unfortunately, I was translating a story about a 17 year student which had been brutally murdered and “predio” was being used to describe the location of the crime scene, it was certainly an important detail. This was my first stumble but there was more. I came across more complex details which when translated verbatim to English would have sounded ridiculous or totally inappropriate. And that’s when I found myself just retelling the story in English in my own words. The key here being in my own words manipulating, deleting and adding. Keeping to the story as much as possible just in English . . . in my own words English :)

And so I leave you to wonder, the next time you pick up a book by Brazilian author (Portuguese speaking) Paulo Coelho in English or any other language (67 languages to be exact) how much of it is it really his words and not those of his translator?

JAM English Flash Cards: Fruit & Vegetables

Chinglish

We have started our around-the-world journey to live in Brazil… first stop: Hong Kong. A melting pot of people with differing languages, cultures, colours and religion - sandwiched into tiny apartments, busy restaurants, glass covered offices - means that effective communication is very important. Cantonese, Mandarin and English are the most abundant of the dozens of languages and dialects spoken here.

English…or Chinglish… is one of my favourite past times here. As you walk around this city you can’t miss advertising hoardings, signs, notices and shop names that can make you laugh outright or are completely inappropriate or just plain wrong! I’ll collect some examples to post here by the end of our stay in Hong Kong. Check out some other examples here.

JAM English Flashcards: Fruit and Vegetables available online at jam.shop now!