Perspectives on the beautiful game of soccer; fueled by enormous amounts of coffee
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Lost in translation
Christopher Sitz, Ofori Sarkodi, Daniel Sztela?
I guess the transfer to Spanish did a number on the names of a few of the U.S. U20 players. Tony Beltran's, though, got the extra spice of an accent mark.
When I lived in Costa Rica for a while, I noticed that the newspapers there would constantly have foreign players' names spelled incorrectly. It seemed to me that it was largely because Spanish is phonetical and so writers were not used to spending much time on making sure words were spelled correctly (i.e. if you know how to say it in Spanish, you can spell it). Dealing with "American" names (which are actually, of course, names from all over the place) sometimes seems to be too much work for some lazy journalists. This is not to excuse this practice (everyone who writes for a newspaper can read the names from a media guide, no matter what language it is in), but perhaps it explains what's going on in the article you mentioned and others like it.
Good explanation. I've run across some people whose parents obviously tried to sound out names phonetically and butchered their spelling. For instance, I knew a kid named Aram but his name was really "Adam" because the r and d in Spanish sometimes are pretty much interchangeable (Yuri = Judy).
Also, Sammy Ochoa's brother is named Estif. Yeah, his parents tried to name him "Steve."
It's funny how they can botch common names but get Cuauhtemoc right every time.
I guess what also intrigued me was the trend to make the names formal.
Daniel instead of Danny. Christopher instead of Chris. Robert instead of Robbie. Anthony, and so forth. Only Freddy escaped with his nickname intact. They didn't use Fredua. Also, they spelled his name right. I guess that goes to show something of his stature there.
Andrea,
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in Costa Rica for a while, I noticed that the newspapers there would constantly have foreign players' names spelled incorrectly. It seemed to me that it was largely because Spanish is phonetical and so writers were not used to spending much time on making sure words were spelled correctly (i.e. if you know how to say it in Spanish, you can spell it). Dealing with "American" names (which are actually, of course, names from all over the place) sometimes seems to be too much work for some lazy journalists. This is not to excuse this practice (everyone who writes for a newspaper can read the names from a media guide, no matter what language it is in), but perhaps it explains what's going on in the article you mentioned and others like it.
Good explanation. I've run across some people whose parents obviously tried to sound out names phonetically and butchered their spelling. For instance, I knew a kid named Aram but his name was really "Adam" because the r and d in Spanish sometimes are pretty much interchangeable (Yuri = Judy).
ReplyDeleteAlso, Sammy Ochoa's brother is named Estif. Yeah, his parents tried to name him "Steve."
It's funny how they can botch common names but get Cuauhtemoc right every time.
I guess what also intrigued me was the trend to make the names formal.
ReplyDeleteDaniel instead of Danny. Christopher instead of Chris. Robert instead of Robbie. Anthony, and so forth. Only Freddy escaped with his nickname intact. They didn't use Fredua. Also, they spelled his name right. I guess that goes to show something of his stature there.