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Me gustaría hablar de los errores que nos encontramos con mucha frecuencia en las ediciones digitales de los periódicos. No sabemos si por la premura o inmediatez con la que se escriben las noticias o porque estas realmente no pasan por un filtro de revisores, y los redactores simplemente se limitan a pasar el corrector ortográfico del procesador de textos.

De todos es sabido que no se puede confiar en el corrector ortográfico del procesador de texto, pues si, por ejemplo, una palabra bisílaba o trisílaba como “último” o “límite”, pudiendo por su acentuación ser esdrújula, grave y aguda, aunque tengamos activada la opción de ‘revisar gramática’, este tipo de cuestiones no se detectan. Lo cual obliga al lector a releer el contexto varias veces para saber si se quería decir último/ultimo/ultimó o como en límite/limite/limité, con la correspondiente variación de significado y así, podríamos enumerar un sinfín de ejemplos.

Que el corrector ortográfico del procesador de textos detecte esta idiosincrasia de nuestra lengua, a día de hoy, es ciencia ficción.

Como ya he comentado en otra entrada, la prisa o la rapidez no debe ser una excusa o una puerta abierta a las incorrecciones en los textos publicados, independientemente de que sea en la red. En el artículo publicado en EL PAÍS queda bien patente lo que comento y así nos lo indica la defensora del lector. De ahí, la importancia del revisor o corrector, esa figura que debería estar presente en todas aquellas empresas que se dedican a la comunicación o transmisión de información. Los textos con errores dejan al descubierto la imagen y la calidad de una empresa.

También sería interesante que la asignatura de Lengua en las facultades de las Ciencias de la Información tuviera la relevancia que se merece, dado que los nuevos comunicadores deberían dominar todas las normas de la Lengua tanto escrita como hablada.

Espero ansiosa las noticias de este próximo agosto para ver si siguen los errores y horrores o si se ha mejorado en este aspecto.

Christmas greetings

Navidad 2011-12

This is my Christmas greetings to all of you. I hope you will enjoy the photograph taken at more than 6,500 feet high. The view is  from Whistler Mountain Peak and it belongs to my Postcards from Canada collection from my summer tour.

I hope the New Year brings all of you the joy and illusion for your dreams to come true.

Here is my Christmas present, a beautiful son by Adele. Enjoy it!

Postcards from Canada III

Spirit Island and Maligne Lake

This is my second postcard from Canada. From this small island called Spirit Island which is in the middle of Maligne Lake you can see three glaciers. The view is really amazing!

To get to  Spirit Island you must take a tour by boat which only runs  in the spring to autumn season  because the rest of the year the lake is totally frozen. Maligne Lake is fed and drained by the Maligne River.

Maligne Lake, as well as Maligne River, Maligne Mountain and Maligne Pass takes its name from the French word for malignant or wicked.

Before arriving to this lake you pass by Medicine Lake. Medicine Lake is a geologic anomaly in the sense that it is not actually a lake but rather an area in which the Maligne River (flowing from Maligne Lake into the Athabasca River) backs up and suddenly disappears underground. And maybe because of this effect, it takes its name or it would be better to say due to a not very accurate translation from the aboriginal language. It is said that the natives used the same word to express ‘medicine’ and ‘wizardry’. A good example of how a misunderstanding endures through time.

Nevertheless, it is the world’s largest underground stream.

Twocabulary

Today on the International Translators Day I would like to talk about the easiness in adapting to changes the human being has. This chameleonic skill includes itself the vocabulary which is present in our lives and in the way we interact with others. Thus, it is very interesting to see that as we get used to new technologies with the chances they give us to communicate with others via Internet, we create a new vocabulary to harmonize with these new changes. This is happening with Twitter, the social networking which is having strong impact on our lives and consequently on our vocabulary.

In this sense, I expressly chose “Twocabulary” as the title, a compound word from  “Twitter vocabulary”.  This is a curious example of our ability to create neologisms,  some of them will endure and others will have a limited existence, but this is not an obstacle to find them somehow interesting, sonorous and maybe eccentric.

Here below there are some of these compound words I came across with  surfing the Internet and which I would like to share with you. I hope you will find them interesting and maybe you can add some new ones:

  • Celebritweet – A celebrity who uses Twitter.
  • Egotwistical – Tending to talk excessively about oneself on Twitter.
  • Fly-Bye – Signing off of Twitter
  • Followorthy – A Twitter user who is worthy of being followed.
  • Illtwitterate – The uninitiated. For those who just “dont get it”.
  • Puntwit – Someone offering opinion or criticism in an authoritative manner on Twitter.
  • Regurg-a-Tweet – The act of re-tweeting a tweet that someone originally tweeted about you.
  • Serentwipity – Funny, ironic, or thought-provoking pairing or grouping of tweets in a timeline
  • Speedtweet – A grouping/list of favorite or most contacted user on twitter.
  • Spitter – A Twitter spammer
  • Star Twek – A tweet about or involving anything related to Star Trek. Trekkies who are also tweeple, Star Twek
  • Twacker – A computer programming who is hacking Twitter.
  • Twacklist – Twitter + blacklist
  • Twam – Short for Tweet Spam
  • Twaphasia – A language disorder where twitter speak makes its way into real life.
  • Twatter – Twitter chatter.
  • Twavatar – Twitter avatar
  • Tweaven – Twitter + heaven
  • Tweeffic – Tweetering while stuck in traffic.
  • Tweek – Twitter geek (Twitter + Geek)
  • Tweekative – Talking or chatting in twitter too much.
  • Tweeps – Twitter + peeps (friends)
  • Tweetheart(s) – Twitter + Sweetheart(s)
  • Tweetlover – The fondness or lover of tweets.
  • Tweetsperity – Someone who is successful, flourishing, or thriving on Twitter.
  • Tweetup – Twitter + meetup.
  • Twendy – Twitter + trendy.
  • Twequilibrium – When your number of followers exactly matches the number of people you follow.
  • Twetin – Twitter + cretin.
  • Twewbie – Someone new to Twitter. A Twitter newbie.
  • Twictory – To solve a problem using twitter.
  • Twiller – A thriller written via twitter.
  • Twinfomercial – The selling of ones own product, disguised as a tweet
  • Twingo – Twitter lingo. The informal language and speech of Twitter users
  • Twinion – The ones who follow you on twitter.
  • Twitalicious – Something super awesome, twitter style.
  • Twiterature – Literary works in twitter.
  • Twitetiquette – Etiquette of using twitter.
  • Twitness – Witnessing a tweet you’d rather not.
  • Ttwit Twat – Chit chat for twitter.
  • Twitterholic – A person who is addicted to using Twitter.
  • Twitterkend – A person who spends the weekend using Twitter
  • Twitterphobe – A person who is afraid of Twitter.
  • Twitterpuff – A person who uses Twitter to pat themselves on the back for their accomplishments.
  • Twittery – Characterised by twittering.
  • Twollow –The act of following someone on Twitter
  • Twork – What I should be doing instead of twittering.
  • Tworkortunity – About work: a job opportunity.
  • Twypo – A typo on Twitter
  • Twvision – Twitter + Television

Canadian Rockies

Moraine Lake and the Ten Peaks

Though the day was not bright enough to see the Ten Peaks reflected on the lake, I must say that this spot of nature captivated me, as well as the whole West of Canada. Wordless in front of  such beauty of nature.

 Postcards from Canada: Moraine Lake is a glacially fed lake in Banff National Park, 14 kilometres outside the Village of Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada. It is situated in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, at an elevation of approximately 6183 feet (1884 m). The lake has a surface area of 0.5 km².

Digital literacy

Recently the OECD’s Programme for International Assessment (PISA) published the results of the survey on digital literacy  www.oecd.org/edu/pisa/2009 . And once again we could see that Spanish students didn’t pass the reading test though this time it was focused on digital reading. It seems that to be a digital native, those who have been born almost with a PC in their hands, does not necessarily imply to be a good digital reader. The survey illustrates that most of the 15-year-old boys and girls are not able to localize and interpret the information they get access when this is not conducted expressly.

According to the survey this would mean that these students won’t have full access to the education, job and social opportunities in the 21st Century.

If the aim of this survey is to help countries see how their school systems match up globally with regard to their quality, equity and efficiency, in Spain  schools have a lot of work ahead if they don’t want to be at the queue. We see that we are not the number one in reading nor digitally.

But, as the OECD illustrates, computer use at school had little impact on results, while using a computer at home had a more marked impact on results. To help students at school, computer use should be integrated into curricula and more invested in training teachers to use them for teaching and to help students learn.

We hope that next time our schools improve in digital reading though, in my opinion, maybe it is a question of attitude more than aptitude.

If you want to know further details about PISA test, you can visit La prueba PISA de lectura digital at Libros y Bitios by José Antonio Millán.

El Día E

La semana pasada se celebró el día del idioma español, el Día E y no quería dejar pasar la oportunidad de aportar mi granito de arena respecto a dicho tema.

También debo reconocer que la palabra favorita ganadora de la votación llevada a cabo por el Instituto Cervantes a través de Internet  no la conocía: Querétaro, nombre de un estado de México, y destino turístico de muchos, y que a buen seguro que ve aumentada sus visitas tras esta elección.

Según el diario El Nacional, algunos lingüistas ubican el origen del término en las palabras K’erhiretarhu o K’erendarhu, que las tribus Purépechas utilizaban para referirse a “lugares de peñas grandes”, aunque también se especula con que “Querenda” fuera el origen real del actual Querétaro. En cualquier caso la palabra reinará todo un año como la favorita entre todos los hispanoparlantes.

No deja de ser sorprendente que los hablantes de una lengua debatan y se preocupen por temas lingüísticos, ello  denota que está viva y en constante evolución, a pesar de que  haya detractores o pesimistas que aleguen que se están perdiendo expresiones, que cada vez se cometen más faltas de ortografía, etc. En mi opinión, la lengua debe ir con los tiempos y evolucionar conforme a los hábitos y usos de los hablantes, claro está que las expresiones que escuchábamos a nuestros antepasados han podido caer en desuso, pero ello no quiere decir que las que se utilicen hoy día sean mejores ni peores.

También  resulta interesante ver el uso del lenguaje en la comunicación por influencia de las redes sociales. Hoy prima la inmediatez, tener la información desde el minuto cero y comunicarla al momento, la brevedad es la reina, de ahí que la limitación de espacio, en algunos casos, sea una verdadera fuente de inspiración y creación, no sin falta de ingenio, por supuesto, dando lugar a una economía de lenguaje y a unas abreviaturas como si de la taquigrafía del siglo XXI se tratara.

Pero  “la rapidez no quita la corrección”, o por lo menos, no debería. Por ello, aquí os dejo el enlace del debate de la 2, en el que hablan de “El futuro del español” y que se realizó con motivo de la conmemoración del Día E. Espero que lo disfrutéis.

http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/el-debate-de-la-2/debate-2-futuro-del-espanol/1132519/

Words are always in our mind

Words are our raw material

Words seduce us

Words are our toy

Words are clay in our hands

Words are the meaning of our living

We all surrender to words

Words belong to the world in which every translator immerse herself/himself

Every translation is a journey to the understanding through words