Spanish words for writing, reading, printing, communicating

  

Countries where Spain is an official language.

Spanish - English

arreglar - to fix

candidato - candidate

capitulo - chapter (not capital letters)

chatear - to chat

comunicar - to communicate

conciertos - concerts

en persona - in person

escritor - writer (like the words scribe, and script and manuscript)

firmar - to sign (confirm)

gol - goal

grupo(s) - group(s)

historia - history

libro - book

novela - novel

politica - political

problema - problem

vegano - vegan

English - Spanish

book - libro

chapter - capitulo

to sign - firmar

You fill in the rest.

Useful Websites for translating and learning Spanish

duolingo.com

translate google

wikivoyage Spanish phrasebook

-ends-

Please follow m

Spanish words for the weekend

 

Countries where Spain is an official language.

Spanish - English

antes - before (like a.m. which is Latin for before mid-day)

un buen fin de semana - a good weekend

cable - cable

celular - cellphone

chatear - to chat

contactar - to contact

creativo - creative

en mi casa - in my home

fin de semana - weekend

enorme - huge / enormous

momento - moment

salud - cheers

volver - to come back (like revolve)

English - Spanish

before - antes

cable - cable (pronounced car-blay)

to chat - chatear

cheers - salud

creative - creativo

to come back - volver

cellphone/mobile - celular

to contact - contactar

huge / enormous / huge - enorme

moment - momento

weekend - fin de semana  (finish of the week, similar to French semaine for week, but the French say bon weekend)/ a good weekend - un buen fin de semana (like the English words final and finish)

Useful Websites for translating and learning Spanish

duolingo.com

in my home - en mi casa

translate google

wikivoyage Spanish phrasebook

-ends-

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Webex - what is it? Another online meeting system?

Yes, Webex is another online meeting system. i was invited to join a Webex meeting today. I am used to Zoom and learncool. I did not have to download anything, just sign in on my little lap top lnked to a larger screen.

Luckily my husband was able to help with Webex. He said he used it at work twenty or thirty years ago. It predated Zoom which has zoomed up.

Mute
It is amazing how much I have learned in the three months March to May from online meetings. I was immediately looking for the mute icon. I could signal to everybody, shrug - I'm lost

Chat
The word chat is confusing. Usually you mean the Webbex Chat or the Learncool Chat or the Zoom chat but you could mean the WhatsApp Chat.

Useful Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_conferencing_software
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Hangouts

Facebook polyglots
https://www.facebook.com/groups/polygotcommunity/
translate google

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
I and my family have lived in the UK, Spain, the USA and Singapore. I am a trave writer and phtographer and teacher of English A level and English as a foreign language.

Please come to a Toastmasters International Club where the English clubs have a langauge evaluator or grammarian.  We also have French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and clubs based in Singapore and many more online around the world which because of Covid-19 are now meeting online.

I am President of Braddell Heights Advanced, meeting every Wednesday, on zoom the first Wednesday of the month but the other wednesdays are workshops on app learncool.sg
Or quicker, tinyurl.com/BHACOOL

Time Zones
In Singapore we are on the same time zone as Malaysia, Hong Kong, and China (Beijing and Shanghai).
Please share links to your favourite posts.

How to create and run an online meeting

Decide to hold meetings online. If possible find a few others who agree and will help you. If not, just set it up, so you are ready to answer questions, fend off objections, and then ask for help.

Decide which system you want to use, zoom or another. This may depend on the length of the meeting, whether you are willing to pay, how long you want the meeting to be.

Set up your meeting account. Make yourself and possibly somebody else an admin.

Send the attendees their link.
Tell them that they need to sign in.

On zoom, show them the buttons to click on for:
 mute and unmute
chat - to everyone or message one person such as yourself the admin or another
How to leave the meeting
How to be recorded
To record sound only
To record video

Zoom
If you use zoom, you fill in the link.
Sign up with your name.
https://zoom.us/postattendee?id=7

Free Conference Call
https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/

Your name or reference number is added on the end of the above link.
You can also use Whatsapp and Google.

More later. See next post.

About the Author
Angela Lansbury. Please save links to your favourite posts.

Chatting: Signalling Come and Go and Personal Space

I wrote about the I talk to Strangers badge on Facebook. A friend of mine on Facebook (a real friend who found me on Facebook but knew me years ago from a post graduate literature club) told me on holiday she used body language if she needs to discourage chats from a fellow diner at a hotel who apparently thought she ought to eat the dish he had ordered and in the way he suggested.

Mostly I'd be delighted to chat about food to a stranger, and adopt their suggestions on the principle of try anything once.

She was making another point. That you can use body language to encourage or discourage conversation.

Touching
Closeness is another factor. I recently sat next two three Singaporean friends (two long-standing friends and another I met on an aircraft and chatted to for several hours). In all three cases these ladies were tactile. The first two prodded me with their fingertips to hold my attention when making a point.

Arm Rest
The third was taking over my arm rest. I kept trying to move away each time our arms accidentally touched. I considered putting up a cushion as a barrier.

But we were friends. We were deep in conversation. Since I wanted to be psychologically close to her, I decided physical closeness was the way to go. If you can't beat them, join them. So I snuggled up withy arm comfortably against hers.

Photo Barriers and Linking Arms
On another occasion I was standing in the back row of a group being photographed. The jolly and friendly club committee member standing in front was blocking the view of me by standing arms akimbo. I could not push him out of the way. I instinctively took hold of his elbow. Since did not take the hint to move, I linked arms with him and hugged his arm tightly. Much better visually and psychologically. I was now friends with him in the picture and in life.

As a photographer, if one person is blocking another, you could ask them to link arms.

Angela Lansbury

How To Make Friends And Chat Whilst Travelling

Wear a badge which says, I want to chat. What a great idea. Not chat on social media, but chat to a real person near you.
What a great idea.

I love chatting to people.

A Singapore Taxi Chat
Sitting in a taxi to the airport, I got chatting to the taxi driver. The first comment I/we made was about noticing a new housing development. That led to discussing cutting down the jungle to make way for more houses.

What did the taxi driver think? More housing was needed, he conceded. Then he added an amusing and insightful comment on changing times. "Old Prime Minister (Lee Kwan Yew) planted trees. His son cut them down."

So true; so funny.

You can follow this train of thought in many directions. That each generation does the opposite of the previous generation. That the reason is that everybody wants to be different. That it's the swing of the pendulum. Sons rebelling against fathers.

Planting
In a country, developing and planting faces the same problems as when you plant a garden, as we did in London, England. First you have not enough greenery, not enough shade, not enough plants, so you plant trees and bushes. For a brief period things are just right.

But a few years later the trees are too tall and the bushes are merging and the grass is growing knee-highs if you don't spend every week cutting it down. Soon you are constantly pruning the trees and cutting down the bushes. Finally, you have to cut down the trees you planted.

I could write a poem or a PhD thesis or a book about this, just inspired by one sentence from a Singapore taxi driver. What pleasure from talking to stranger. I am an extravert and love talking to strangers. Maybe I should get a badge. If you get one, maybe one day I shall talk to you.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/i-talk-to-strangers-the-badge-campaign-encouraging-humans-to-actually-engage-with-one-another-a7319996.html

Translation Services - what rude words are we saying?

Four problems arise in translation.
1 You translate your words and your new friends/acquaintances/shopkeepers don't understand you.
2 They understand and reply - but you don't understand the answer.
3 They understand and laugh and you wonder what you said wrongly.
4 They mutter to each other or make hostile remarks and you wonder what they are saying about you.

I dutifully learned to say goodbye and thank you in Korean and happily waved goodbye as I left restaurants and hotels. My efforts were not greeted by polite, appreciative thanks, but by hilarity. The smiled incredulously and equaled with laughter into their handkerchiefs, tears of laughter streaming down their faces as I left.

When I returned to Singapore I found out why. I asked a Japanese lady friend if she knew any Korean. She knew a little. I asked if she could explain why my attempts to say goodbye and thank you were greeted with hysterical laughter.

She smiled knowingly. Ah so. Japanese, and, Korean sta-ca-to.  Eng -rish - ve-ry sing-song.

Ah - like the time a man from Cardiff tried to chat me up on the phone in a Welsh accent. When he said I was ve-ry pre-tea, instead of being pleased at the compliment, I could not stop laughing. I now know I could give a humorous speech in Korean or Japan and my accent alone would get them grinning.

So, what do I think of a live translation service as an alternative to the computer generated ones? As far as I'm concerned, the more the merrier.

Any problems? What about people who deliberately send rude translations, or insult you for your efforts?

If somebody says something to you, or about you, and it's rude, you might want to know what they are saying. The trick in translation is you translate from your language into another, then use another source to translate back.

I once tried to do French, Spanish and German translations for a beauty product including a nail file. In French the automatic translators came up with the kind of nail you hit with a hammer (chou - the translation hadn't a clue), followed by portmanteau, clearly a file for carrying papers.

You might well want to allow the enquirer to ask for a translation of something rude. The large dictionaries manage to translate lots of words and phrases. They say ... pejorative or .... (vulgar).
I might legitimately ask - somebody is talking about me - saying .... what does this mean?

Instead of blocking, the site could just add some neutral explanation (eg 'The speaker/taxi driver/seller/passer by is insulting you using an exaggerated compliment, terms referring to acts/body parts/the speaker thinks you are stupid/naive' .... ' 

"A non-confrontational reply would be: 
(I understand (language. 
No need to be rude. 
/Please don't make personal remarks. 
Thanks, I'll take another taxi. 
I don't expect personal remarks from the staff of ... ) 

You might want to know if your romantic interest who just swore undying love is telling his friends unromantic things about you. Or if the shopkeeper or hotel staff are not happy to oblige.

My former neighbour in Singapore was a young man studying to be a doctor who did National Service. He was taught all the terms for male and female body parts, both the technical terms and the 'street names' in assorted languages: English, Chinese (Mandarin), Cantonese, Malay, Tamil and more.

A male doctor in a clinic with pregnant women might want to know how to translate rude words for body parts or sexual activity into polite terms. The male patient at a clinic faced with a lady doctor might want to know the polite words to describe where he has the problem. As a translator, I might need another translator to help me translate new words in my own language. It could be quite educational!

More details of the site:
https://www.techinasia.com/linqapp-live-launch-real-time-human-translation/

Angela Lansbury B A, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker.