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The most detailed English language website on the island ...
... the most detailed English language website on the island.

After more than 20 years, posts here will now only be occasional (see why) for big events such as Tenerife Carnaval, so please "Like" and follow our Facebook Page because that's where to see future updates.

Tuesday, 28 February 2006

Santa Cruz Carnaval Parade Suspended by strong winds and rain in Tenerife

Rain storm in Tenerife

Top items of interest are the Carnaval in Santa Cruz and the weather in Tenerife and today those two themes coincide. With the Coso Apoteosis del Carnaval (main parade), supposed to have been taking place this afternoon in Santa Cruz, I can tell you that the same God who decides the weather for August bank holidays in Britain has been at work here in Tenerife today.

It is generally the case that it will rain at least once during carnival week, but this is the first time in my 14 years on the island that I have known the weather to be so uncooperative as to cause the suspension of events. The islands continue on alert because of high winds again - currently reported to be around 80 kmph. Waves have reached heights of three to five meters in Tenerife, whilst on the north coast of El Hierro, reached a record height of eight meters.

In Santa Cruz de La Palma, 24 inter-island flights had to be cancelled. In the north west of Tenerife it has been tipping it down this afternoon and, by my standards, it is freezing at around 12 degrees centigrade. Reports in the local media confirmed that the main parade of carnival has been suspended today and it is hoped that the parade will now be held on Saturday, March 4th, instead.

Los fuertes vientos y la lluvia obligan a suspender el carnaval en Tenerife

Wednesday, 22 February 2006

Santa Cruz de Tenerife Carnival Queen 2006

Carnival Queen in 2006, Neólida Hernández Martín

Carnival Queen in 2006, was Neólida Hernández Martín in a costume entitled El Carro de la Gloria (The Chariot of Glory), designed by Juan Carlos Armas and representing Grupo AC Bingo Colombófilo.

In 2006, the court consisted:

  1. 1st Maid of Honour: Ainhoa Vázquez Rodríguez, with a costume entitled “Scherezade”, representing Almacenes “El Kilo” and designed by Juan Carlos Ramos.
  2. 2nd Maid of Honour: Jenifer González Díaz, with a costume entitled “La ambición del Dorado” (El Dorado's ambition), representing Centro Comercial Alcampo - La Laguna and designed by Juan Carlos Armas.
  3. 3rd Maid of Honour: Estefanía de Francisco Padilla, with a costume entitled “El Olonés”, representing Centro Comercial Santa Cruz Carrefour and designed by Santi Castro.
  4. 4th Maid of Honour: Erika Salazar Martín, with a costume entitled “Erupción desde lo más profundo del Atlántico” (Eruption from the depths of the Atlantic), representing Centro Comercial del Mueble and designed by Miguel Ángel Castilla Abreu.
The theme of Carnival in Santa Cruz in 2006 was "Tribes": The scenery was transferred back to the The Tenerife International Centre for Trade Fairs and Congresses, due to the beginning of the works of the Plaza de España. There were two stages; one main and one secondary, linked by a walkway. The decoration was based on graffiti and web icons as, at first the theme was to be "urban tribes", but was given a general tone of "Tribes" later. 

Carnival in the streets in 2006 took place between Fri 24 Feb and Sun 5 Mar.

Saturday, 4 February 2006

Dodgy Translations in Tenerife

Hedgehog with snorkel and flippers

A XXX rated salad, a submarine hedgehog and a herd of 5,000 bison rampaging across England's New Forest ... What are these? Sun headlines? Monty Python story lines? No, just the world bent out of shape by linguistic error.

By popular demand, well, OK, one request, I thought I would share with you some of my favorite moments from my linguistic clanger collection. Actually, I don't believe the list is that enviable, but these have caused the odd giggle.

Is that a chicken in your salad, or are you just pleased to see me?

As you may (or may not) know, MOST of the time you can safely change a masculine word in Spanish (one that ends in an O) into it's feminine equivalent, simply by changing the last letter to an A. Of course, there are exceptions.

So there was the time that a friend of a friend once asked her future mother-in-law for "ensalada de polla". Ensalada (salad) is OK. Pollo is chicken. Unfortunately, polla is not hen, that's gallina. Polla is a part of the male anatomy that one does not normally eat as part of a light summer lunch. 

At least not in company of one's future mother-in-law. :)

Screwing with the natural habitat ...

One of my favourite linguistic clangers comes from my days at the newspapers.

What animal is spiky and does a lot of damage to the seabed? A scuba diving hedgehog, maybe? Well, only maybe. The story, which originally ran in the local Spanish press, talked about the plague of erizo that were damaging the seabed around the south of the island, and indeed erizo is the Spanish word for hedgehog, but, I'd never seen a hedgehog in the south of Tenerife anywhere, much less in the sea, so out came the dictionary. Ah, erizo is also the translation of sea urchin, so that would be our plague. Logical really, both being spiky.

(In English, sea urchins are called sea urchins because hedgehogs used to be called urchins until the 15th Century. So sea urchins are ocean hedgehogs!)

This isn't a problem, in context, but it does mean that you have to read the entire context to get the right animal. The funny part is that one of the other English language newspapers obviously didn't read the entire context, because, a couple of weeks after the story first appeared, their translation of the story was published, complete with a picture of a hedgehog. Theirs didn't have a snorkel though!

But, to be fair, even the professionals have off days.

Spanish national news agency EFE used to provide the newspaper I worked for with stories translated into English. One alarming report claimed that a herd of some 5,000 BISON were laying waste to the New Forest in the south of England. This caused us a laugh, but we knew what the problem was. In Spanish, B's are pronounced a bit like V's and vice versa. What was really running around the south of England in its thousands were VISÓN, which when translated into English are MINK, let out of a fur farm by animal activists. Still damaging pests, but somehow I think you'd probably notice the difference if you met one.

On this occasion, we had "our man on the spot", no more than a few hundred yards from a cattle grid into the forest. My late father, always a man capable of maturely assessing a situation and acting accordingly. He did indeed report the sighting of one bison in the vicinity. In the bathroom: a wash hand bison (basin).

Thursday, 2 February 2006

Sweets of Canary

Wild Canary? He was probably livid! ImageJuan Emilio

In the Canary Islands there definitely is a policy to give jobs to locals before foreigners. Understandable, you might say. Legally, particularly in the case of fellow EU member citizens, this isn't allowed, but the fact is that as a foreigner, even if you have perfect Spanish and submit a job application to a Canarian owned company, you mostly just get ignored. This avoids companies from making any open admission to their policy, in writing, and thus suffering its legal consequences. But, whilst I am sure there are many people who do not know about this going on, or deny it, otherwise it's an "open secret".

And there is one area where this policy backfires big-style.

That of translating into English.

My Spanish is sometimes better than the locals, but I am not daft enough to write or translate into Spanish, except for my own personal correspondence, because Spanish is not my native tongue and the result will inevitably come out awkward.

(Well, I don't claim my English is perfect either, but that is a whole other story.)

I'm all up for trying to use Spanish on a day-to-day basis, because this is the right thing to do to fit in (in fact, it's all I speak these days), but if I ever had to produce something vitally important in writing, in Spanish, I'd have it double-checked by a native Spanish speaker. This seems the logical thing to do.

The official diplomatic and business rule is that one should only translate into one's native tongue. One should speak or write in one's native language, then, if there is going to be any misinterpretation, it can only be at the receiving end.

This doesn't seem to bother the Canarians, as anyone who has ever tried to read the results of many a local's efforts of translating into English will attest.

The example of one Canarian produced English language (using the term very very loosely indeed) newspaper springs to mind. If you understand Spanish and thus the errors that are most commonly made, then you may understand what was trying to be said. Otherwise it's pure entertainment. In that particular case, I just could not help but phone up to offer my services to edit it and, in verbal response, was told very bluntly that they have to employ Canarians for the job. Seems short-sighted, but it's futile to argue with this "wisdom".

Another howler was an advertising billboard on the side of the road that joins the south motorway to the north, which proffered the enticing delicacy, "Sweets of Canary". My weird imagination wondered if these were little birds on a stick, maybe with a toffee coating, or very small sweetbreads from said unfortunate songbird. Bet that would take his pitch up a couple of octaves! :) The company in question probably paid pots of money to have that stuck up there in huge letters to advertise, what I presume are their traditional "Canary Islands' Sweets". As advertising goes, I suppose that at least it was memorable, but for all the wrong reasons. Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't caused road accidents from laughter.

Menus everywhere contain similar examples of non-edible things to the point that I've given up on trying to translate their English, preferring the original Spanish, and, the phenomenon is now carried on at many a Canarian website that offers a clumsy English version. It is sort of English, probably automatically and therefore literally translated. You can understand it, but it is long-winded, clumsy and very dry. We would not write English like that, especially not to sell the attractions of something. Oh, if only they would ask a native English speaker to check. It's not like there is any shortage of us capable of assisting. Of course, you could say, leave things as they are, or we will lose a valuable source of entertainment.