Translating and mistranslating a Spanish hotel registration form - lost in translation

 

I kept my registration form from a hotel in Spain, Hotel Zenit Coruna, and used it to revise my Spanish vocabulary. I experienced a few surprises, words I had mis-translated in my mind,

1 Datos del viajero looked like dates of the trip. It was not. It was details of the traveller.

2 Segundo apellido was not second name of middle name, meaning second given name. It was second surname or family name. Spanards use their mother's maiden name or family name as a middle name. 

3 Direccion is not directions but address.

4 Fecha is not facts but dates.

5 Firma del viajero is not confirmation of the trip/journey/stay but signature of the traveller. 

Spanish - English

datos - data/ 

detalles - details

direccion - address

direcciones - direcions

fechas - dates

segundo apellido - second surname

viaje - journey

viajero - traveller

https://translate.google.com/

English - Spanish

address - dreccion

data - datos

dates - fechas

details - detalles

directions- direcciones

journey - viaje

Useful Websites

Trasnslate google

https://translate.google.com/

 

Second set of Portuguese words - learn 15 easy to remember words

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I can't stop learning Portuguese and Spanish.

English - Portuguese

taxi - taxi
hotel- hotel
bank - banco
port - puerto
blue - azul - (like azure which is a bright blue)

name - nome
first name - primeiro nome (like primary school)
family name/surname - sobrenome
table - mesa
room - quarto (like living quarters)

one - um (like French un and English one - remember: How many? Um - one.)
two - dois (like two dice)
three - três (tr as in triple, tricycle, trio; think of three trespassers)
four - quatro (like quadrangle in English and quarter and quatre in French)
ten - dez (sounds a bit like decimal)

Useful Websites
Languages
translate google
duolingo
duolingo.com

https://www.visitbrasil.com/key-information/language.html
memrise
memrise.com
https://www.mezzoguild.com/portuguese-and-brazilian/

Travel
https://www.visitportugal.com/en
https://www.visitbrasil.com/

About the Author
Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer, speaker, author, and teacher of languages.
Latest book: An ebook  Improve Your English. Several books by different authors have that title. Make sure to add the name Angela Lansbury.
I have written a post about the Spanish restaurant in Melaka, called Salud which means cheers.
Please share links to your favourite pages.
Update
Contact Angela Lansbury by attending Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Club online.

Why you should label family and travel photos

Problem
The day after my mother died I started going through family photos to find a nice photo of her to display at the funeral, and put on the dining room table for the prayers and meal at home afterwards.

I stayed at my father's home to comfort him and went through my father's photos. He's with my mother and somebody else. "Who's this?" I asked. "Where was this? When was this?"

Dates, Places, People's Names
Some of the photos had nothing written on the back. Others had one word such as Venice, or a date, such as 1999. From the one word, helped by the pictures, he was able to identify many of the photos. From the date, he could identify a place. From a place name, he could identify a date.

He could identify family, friends, and strangers. I added as much detail as I could. "Aunty Carrie? What was her surname? Who was her husband? Your aunty or mother's aunty? Did she have any children?"

If she had children, I wrote the children's names. I might want to call them later, or recognise them on a genealogy site such as Ancestry.

I didn't bother to write childless. I should have done. It would save time searching for possible descendants, who didn't exist.

Writing Carefully
I wrote carefully behind the white frame of each photo, careful not to indent the photo, especially not the faces. When I worked at a photo agency, we typed out the captions and stuck them on the back of photos. You never wrote on the back of a photo. However, with a funeral to arrange, I didn't have time for such neatness.

Now, go back to your family's wedding photos. Add as many names as you can, and dates, and the place where the photo was taken.  When you have time, type it all up neatly. Stick the label on the back. Add a caption inside the glass of any framed photo.

If you have just got married, or recently married, type out a label giving the date, the venue, the people in the main wedding photo, and another sheet listing all the guests. Years later you will be saying: "What was the name of the people you used to work with? What were your parents' neighbours called?"

I have an old wedding photo taken in around 1910. I have no idea if it's a family wedding or one they attended. I don't recognize any of my relatives in the picture. I wish they had written the date on the back, and the name of the bride and groom.

 I went back through my family history to see who would have married then. The only people were my late mother's parents in 1910. But they are not the couple in the photo.

Now that another ten years have passed, I am starting to wonder whether I had mixed up photos from my family with my husband's. Could it be somebody on his side of the family?

When you write your family history or memoirs, you will want captions in the book, giving the names of every person in the photo, the date and place.

Please label your photos.

You can thank me, later.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
Writer of family histories:
My Secret Life Revealed.
The Mad Musician - a musical by Angela Lansbury.
This is your life Pearl Sharot.
Soup and Sympathy.

Photos Which Keep You Happy? Avoiding Embarrassing Photos, Caught Out By Captions?

Problems
Am I giving out too much information? Or not enough?

Answers
What is Too Much Information?

PICTURES
NO
2 Instant revelations of people out of their home which could lead to them being burgled.

3 Pictures of private homes or stately homes revealing valuables or windows which could lead to your being accused of revealing too much to potential robbers.

4 Pictures of family groups where family insist on including their children, then afterwards decide children should not be put on the internet.

5 People don't want you to use a photo of a group which includes their children. (Answers: Crop the photo. Take at least one picture of adults only.

CAPTIONS
1 Surnames of people who have privacy concerns.
2 Names with complicated spelling you might get wrong and can't check.
3 Wrong caption.

SUBJECT COMPLAINS OF SHUT EYES
'Take down the picture - I've got my eyes closed. Use another picture.'
When I am the subject I rarely complain. If you are a nuisance, the photographer just cuts you out of all future pictures.

Sometimes I tell a group:
face the front,
keep your eyes open wide,
smile,
check you are not taller than the person behind,
don't wave hands - it creates blur.

The photographer might say, or think, "Sorry. I'm working I don't have time to edit pictures. I've taken 100 people. If I had to edit every picture I'd spend all week on it. I'm not getting paid. If you don't want to be photographed, don't come to the meeting."

CHECK CAPTIONS FOR ERRORS
1 Check spellings of all names. Look for missing double letters. Compare names with public records. If in doubt, phone and ask.
2 After an article or email or web post is published, read back a moment later, a day later, even years later. Today I discovered that an email I had sent including the place name B o r e h a m Wood had been changed by an automatic spell checker to Boredom Wood!

PHOTOGRAPHER'S NAME INCLUDED:
It is useful to include the photographer's name.
1 A professional or semi-professional photographer might expect a credit as advertising and a form of payment.
2 The amateur photographer may feel flattered that you think the pictures are good enough or that you have taken the time and trouble to thank them and remember that they spent so much time photographing and editing photos.
3 You can go back and ask, "Do you have any more pictures? We want to include one of the mayor / VIP visitor / the first place winner."

MAKING HUMAN INTEREST
The club banner might be useful as a tiny postage stamp size to head every letter.
If you want the name read, you need to enlarge it.
Make sure you have permission to use a copyright item - you must not use it so it appears you are representing a company if you are not.

Add human interest, a badge being worn by the winner.
However, if the winner wants to be anonymous, the photo of the badge or trophy alone could be helpful.

A vast hall with only four people in it looks empty.
Cut or crop the picture to just the four and you have a happy little group.
However, if you want to show the size of a cathedral the picture including just one little person shows the scale and grandeur of the building.

If you person on the end of a row of seats has arms crossed looking belligerent or bored, I sometimes crop them out.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Why You Should Sign And Date Signatures And Photos

Problems
How old was I then? Was that in our first house? What was the name of the hotel? Who are these people?

Answers
I now label photos and paintings with my name, the date, and the place.

On the back of the photo you can stick a detailed label. A smaller one on the front can be seen when the photo is framed, and is security in case the label falls of the back. You might not have space on the front and not want to damage the picture's surface.

In a painting you don't have much space and don't want to distract.

I have experimented with putting my name on a poster as part of the picture. Some artists like to use a symbol. Two different people have used a mouse. One was a carver in the north of England.

Stories
1 I have a photo of a wedding group in a back garden in the East End of London. I wish I could identify it.

Is a member of my family in it? Could it be my grandmother's wedding?

I don't recognize the bride nor any of the people. Maybe it's a member of my mother in law's family? But, if so, it's also a member of my extended family, because I married a second cousin (my husband's late mother was my late mother's first cousin.)

I have labelled the back of the photo '1910?' I was going through my family history and noted the date of my grandmother's wedding, 1910. (My mother was born in 1912, two years later.) I have a photo of the wedding couple on the upstairs landing of their house. She is not the same woman as the bride in the photo.  She is wearing different clothes.

2 Why did she not label the photo at the time? Most people do not label wedding photos. The bride and groom know each other and their parents. But the photos will be kept and passed on to grandchildren. By the time the grandchildren are teenagers or in their twenties and interested to look at the photos, or do family tree research, the grandparents will probably be dead, their full first names, surnames, maiden names, and married surnames not recalled, especially if the grandchildren knew granny as as 'Nan' or Bubba' or 'Granny Sally'.

3 I was talking to a group on one of my themes, Why You Should Write Your Family History. I showed a picture of my wedding and told the audience they should label their wedding photos. I turned over my photo and realised that I had not labelled my own wedding photo! I have now remedied that.

4 My full maiden name is Hazel Angela Lansbury. That's a lot to put on a drawing. I dropped the Hazel after I left school where teachers called me Hazel and fellow pupils had nicknamed me Nut.
(When I looked for a name for a publishing house or a stage name for performing comic poetry I found that Hazel Nut is copyrighted as a brand name by all the nut producers. I had to quickly take Hazel Nutter, which is fine for comedy, being amusing, but too silly for any other business.)

Signature
I needed to condense my name to fit into a tiny space when drawing caricatures in the small notebooks, A6 or postcard size. I often drew the picture, then found very little space in the corners for my signature.

I now have a new system. When I remember, I sign the page before I start drawing. This has two advantages:
1 I leave sufficient space for the signature and date.
2 I don't forget.
3 The person being drawn getting impatient or called away, or the event end, doesn't make me close the sketch book quickly before I have time to finish.
4 I can discuss the location or my signature as a distraction to the sitter to get them used to sitting without starting with the nerve-wracking and tense instructions to sit still and look this way commands.

Abbreviating My Signature
At first I abbreviated my signature to Angela. But there are many people called Angela. When I tried to get Angela, combined with London, recalling the author Jack London, I found that at least a dozen people already had that idea. That's why my email is not Angela but Anna. I decided to change my signature from Angela to Angella. That also combines ANGELA and LA nsbury.

You might like to remember that when looking at my signature, or when creating your own, or suggesting a name for a person, or business.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, illustrator. I have many posts on painting and destinations. Please bookmark and share your favourite posts.

Serbian Language Secrets revealed, the Cyrillic alphabet, sounds and colours

Problem

A colleague of mine is employing some people from Serbia to do work for him online, helping with his news website. He says it's cheaper than employing people in the UK. If he writes to them, no problem. 

But speaking to them on the phone or on Skype would be a problem. So would going to meet them. He can't pronounce their names!

How often would you meet people who speak the Serbian language? Even if you are not planning travelling to Serbia in the near future, you might meet Serbian speakers in Bosnia, Croatia, the Czech Republic or Romania. Wiki says:

Official status
Official language in	Serbia  Bosnia and Herzegovina  Kosovo[a]
Recognised minority language in	Croatia  Hungary[3]  Montenegro  Slovakia[4]  Czech Republic[5][6]  Macedonia[7]  Romania

Serbian Letters

Cyrillic Latin IPA value А а A a /ä/ Б б B b /b/ В в V v /v/ Г г G g /ɡ/ Д д D d /d/ Ђ ђ Đ đ /dʑ/ Е е E e /e/ Ж ж Ž ž /ʐ/ З з Z z /z/ И и I i /i/ Ј ј J j /ʝ/ К к K k /k/ Л л L l /l/ Љ љ Lj lj /ʎ/ М м M m /m/

Cyrillic Latin IPA value Н н N n /n/ Њ њ Nj nj /ɲ/ О о O o /ɔ/ П п P p /p/ Р р R r /ɾ/ С с S s /s/ Т т T t /t/ Ћ ћ Ć ć /tɕ/ У у U u /u/ Ф ф F f /f/ Х х H h /x/ Ц ц C c /ts/ Ч ч Č č /ʈʂ/ Џ џ Dž dž /ɖʐ/ Ш ш Š š /ʂ/

How do you remember them? You'll have to make up some memory aids. Here are some of mine:

The b looks like a Big B written in a hurry so it's like a small b and the small b looks like a b written in a hurry of a number 6. Six bees. however the B shape is like v. I think of the word believe. When I see the letter b, which is at the start of the word believe, I go to the end of the word believe and find the V.

The Gamma is next. (Alpha, beta, gamma). It looks like a pointing r. Revving up. Go go go! Get the Gamma.

The D or delta looks like a door.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Cyrillic_alphabet

http://mylanguages.org/serbian_alphabet.php

Serbian Latin Alphabet

From Wikipedia; credit author Albatalad.

Serbian Names

Once you have managed to read the names, you need to know how to say them. I found a helpful website which gives names in both a Latin and a Serbian lettering plus a recording of the sound.

How do you get to hear the name? You see a wide oblong with the triangle on the left. At first I kept clicking on the oblong or on the teeny symbol alongside the triangle. I would tap several times and eventually hit the right place by chance. I thought the site was slow or not working. Then I wondered if it was me.

You have to be sure to click on the triangle, not just anywhere in the oblong.

The girl's name Anna looks like AHA in the Serbian script. (I remind myself, 'aha - it's Anna! But the vowel is pronounced more like u n n a , or uh-ha.

https://www.hearnames.com/pronunciations/serbian-names/serbian-boy-names/

https://www.hearnames.com/pronunciations/serbian-names/serbian-girl-names

https://www.hearnames.com/pronunciations/serbian-names/serbian-surnames

I decided to try to learn a couple of words. I went onto another website and chose colours. At first I could not see the icon for play. Then I realised I had to download flash player in order to see the bar which starts with the triangle pointing forward for go.

My next problem was that the words didn't match up with the colours in the columns. then I realised you read the two words on each line horizontally, zig zagging down the page. The words which sounded almost the same as English were Orange and Brown.
http://mylanguages.org/multimedia/serbian_audio_colors.php

If you go to Serbia, what is there to see? The Nikola Tesla museum. It is in Belgrade, the capital city. Belgrade is known as the White City, The White Castle, and The city which never sleeps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla_Museum
http://www.nikolateslamuseum.org/web/index

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English, public speaking, and learner and speaker of other languages. Please share links to my posts.

Translating European and Romanian Names - Red, Maria, Michael and more

Problem
How do you recognize a personal name in Romanian?

Answer
The good news is that, unlike German, proper names have capitals and ordinary nouns start with small letters.

Reading and Saying Names
First the good news. Most Romanian names look similar and sound similar to English names.

Now the bad news. There are slight variations which may confuse you.

Story
I was learning Romanian on Duolingo. I saw J O A N A . Easy, peasy, I thought. That must be Joanna. Wrong. It translates as Jane.

If you go into name websites, or have studied names, you will appreciate that the basic biblical names and names from olden times and the Hebrew and Greek and Roman languages have numerous variations all derived from one word.

The language is phonetic - same as it sounds, so redundant letters are dropped. That means losing double letters (except when showing plurals?)

SAME SAME!
Women's Names The Same In Romanian and English
Alexandra - Alexandra
Daniela - Daniela
Maria - Maria
Sofia - Sofia

Men's Names The Same In Romanian and English
David - David
Gabriel - Gabriel

Romanian - English
ROMANIAN MEN
A n d r e i - Andrew
C r i s t i a n - Christian
L u c a - Luke
M a r c u - Mark
M a t e i - Matthew
Michael - Mihai

ROMANIAN WOMEN
A n a - Anna
A n g e l i c a - Angela (Same in Romanian and Italian. Not surprising, as Romanian means from Romans, who were Italian.)
C r i s t i n a - Christina
I o a n a - Jane
Maria / Mary - Maria

English - Romanian
ENGLISH MEN'S FIRST NAMES
Basil - V a s i l e (More in the older generation.)
John / Jon - Ion
Luke - L u c a
Mark / Marc - M a r c u
Matthew - M a t e i
Michael - Mihai
Peter - P e t r u / P e t r e (Spell in Romanian like the French / European spelling of metre for meter and theatre for American theater.)
Stephen / Steven - S t e f a n

ENGLISH WOMEN'S FIRST NAMES
Angela - A n g e l i c a (Same in Romanian and Italian. Not surprising, as Romanian means from Romans, who were Italian.)
Christina - C r i s t i n a
Elizabeth - E l i s a b e t a / I s a b e l l a
Jane - I o a n a (Not Joanna but Jane)
Sarah - I can't find any translation into Romanian. However both Italian and German use the simplified version S a r a.
Susan - S u s a n a

Easy to remember ROMANIAN SURNAMES:
Albu - White
L u p u - Wolf
N e g r u - Black
M o l d o v e a n u - from Moldova
P e t r e s c u - Peter's child
R o ș u - Red
Ursa - bear

One popular Romanian surname is P o p a meaning priest. (Like the Jewish origin name Cohen means priest.)
P o p e s c u means priest's son or daughter.

Tips on Translation and Names
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_name
To translate names into any language go to
http://www.namepedia.org/en/firstname/translate/
While researching the name priest and Cohen I found a website which analyses the endings (suffixes) of many European names used in the USA:
http://www.jewfaq.org/jnames.htm

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker, language teacher. Please read my previous and future posts and when you find a favourite, share it with family, friends and colleagues.

Name Days And Names Worldwide

Problem
How do you remember people's names?

Answer
1 Keep repeating the name.
2 Discuss the meaning of their name, or why they were given that name. Some names are related to name days.

Story
How did I get my names? I was given my first name by my grandmother (my maternal grandmother - my mother's mother). My second name was chosen by my mother. The surname came from my father.

My surname is Lansbury. That's on a deed poll for change of name. The original name was from Ukraine. After WWII my parents wanted to change the name to something which sounded more English. Easy to pronounce and patriotic.

I thought that my parents changed the surname before I was born. After my parents both died I opened a deed box and discovered that my name was changed when I was a toddler.

The name of the new surname copied the initial letter of the original name. In my family we also kept the initial letters of our first names over three generations. Albert-Angela-Anthony. It makes it easy to have one set of name tapes, or handwritten labels, or initials, especially if you borrow each other's hats, gloves, bags, suitcases and umbrellas.

I could celebrate my name day, for Angela, on the English day, which is the same as the day in German and Austria, but other countries have more dates!

Tip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_day
Wikipedia covers 22 countries:
Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romanis, Russia, Scandinavia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Hispanien America, Sweden, Ukraine.
http://www.happynameday.com/country.php
(Name days for these 18 countries: Austrian, Bulgarian, Czech, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish. The site sells greeting cards and ecards.

Author
Angela Lansbury

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker, teacher of languages.
Please follow my posts and share. More on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube. Books by Angela Lansbury on Amazon.com and Lulu.com