“Yes, we can” Translation

I was reading an article about Obama and the Spanish speakers in the States and I found that the journalist translated, the “YES WE CAN” campaign slogan as “si se puede” (if we can), instead of “Sí, se puede!”  (Yes we can!). What a difference an accent mark can make!

The funniest thing about this was that the title of the Article was “Obama’s Message Lost in Translation” and it turned out that the Journalist was lost in translation too.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080714/OPINION12/807140316/1002/OPINION

Of course, it would have been good for the journalist to have done a little homework on this or asked someone.

Related posts

• President Obama and The Power of Words (1)
• The Rise of Spanglish (0)
• The Importance of Language in Diplomacy (0)
• Split Infinitives and the Monster of Prescriptive Grammar (6)
• President Obama, the Power of Words, and Official Chinese Translation (5)

Tags: democrat campaign, democrats, elections, elections 2008, hispanic, hispanic voters, mistranslation, Obama, obama campaign, Obama hispanic, obama slogan, Obama Spanish, sí se puede, spanish speakers, yes we can

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 1:15 pm and is filed under For Translators, Professional Translation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.