Found in Translation

Shopping Tips
Here is a helpful hint to remember when reading labels in a foreign grocery store. Preservative
(English), préservatif (French), Präservativ (German), prezervativ (Romanian, Czech, Croatian),
preservativ (Slovenian), preservativo (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese), prezerwatywa (Polish),
(Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian), prezervatif (Turkish), præservativ (Danish),
prezervatyvas (Lithuanian), Prezervat vs (Latvian), and preservatiu (Catalan) all sound alike and
are actually all derived from the same Latin word. And they all mean the same thing. All but one.
Only the English word does not mean “condom.”

---

Come Dine with Me
Imagine inviting someone to lunch. Which term for lunch would you choose?
The answer might seem fairly straightforward in English, but it isn’t always so
simple for some languages. What if you had to issue your invitation in
Spanish? The three meals of the day that you’ll typically learn in a basic
Spanish class are desayuno (breakfast), almuerzo (lunch), and cena (dinner).
Easy, right? Not so fast—out of these three, the only mealtime term that you
can safely use almost anywhere in the Spanish-speaking world without any risk
of being misunderstood is desayuno. That means the first meal of the day in
most of the Spanish-speaking world.
It’s after breakfast that things start to get tricky. In Colombia, you might be
served a meal after breakfast called mediasnueves or mediamañana. However,
go to some parts of Mexico, especially rural areas, and around that time of day
you’ll be served almuerzo instead. Almuerzo isn’t lunch in this case, but
something more like brunch, because it falls between breakfast and lunch.
Of course, in many places where Spanish is spoken, almuerzo means lunch
instead of brunch—but not everywhere. In Spain and in many parts of Mexico,
lunch is called la comida instead. But head over to Cuba, Puerto Rico,
Colombia, and Peru, and la comida means supper, not lunch. To confuse
matters even further, la comida is also the word for food in general. We’re not
kidding!
Even though Ecuador borders both Peru and Colombia, supper isn’t called
la comida there, but rather la merienda. In nearly every other country, a
merienda is a snack. If you want to talk about dinner in most Spanish-speaking
places, you could always use la cena instead. Several countries, like Mexico,
Panama, Argentina, Spain, Costa Rica, and Venezuela, use la cena for the third
main meal of the day. Cena is understood in other places, too, but often implies
a more formal meal (think dinner instead of supper).
Terminological differences can be fun and interesting for sure, but
professional translators have to know a lot more than just “how to speak
Spanish” to do their job well. Often, knowing just one Spanish is not enough.