Translating the strange dialect that is Internet English

A couple of notes on the translation of rapidly evolving usage

A large part of what 'is news' today concerns the social media posts of public figures. What does so-and-so think about X issue? From influencers to politicians, we get to hear it from their own thumb as they post away. Each social media platform comes with its own constraints, tropes, and modes of expression. (The traditional 140-character tweet probably re-defined the way people wrote in English.) In the midst, the Internet develops a language variant all of its own. Something somewhat akin to Airport English, a simplified variant of the language which ignores any regional usages in favour of ease of communication between speakers who may have English as their only language in common. Airport English language which no speakers are native in. Internet English might be something like that, or perhaps the opposite: Internet English as an ultra-specialised variant, full of obscure references to famous tweets and memes that only the true native speakers and and connosseurs would understand.

And because tweets consitute legit journalistic sources, they often then need to be translated into other languages, with translators being left with the conundrum of attempting to preserve the style while bridging the fact that such informal language would not normally feature in journalism in their target language.

I try out a list for of words that would require creativity when translating into Spanish, as there is no direct equivalent that I know of (please correct me if I'm wrong!):
- binge-watching
- mansplaining
- manspreading
- gaslighting
- ghosting
- non-binary parent
- they / them (as a gender-neutral singular pronoun)
- woke
- deep fake
- ratio (as a verb, meaning to flood (a tweet or its author) with negative replies such that commenters as a group take control of the momentum and message away from the original poster)
- stand up against/ stand with
- zhuzh (to make lively or interesting)
Looking at the list, I see it's mostly verbs, which makes sense as English tends to have by far a greater number of verbs than Spanish does (eg, to walk, stride, stomp, sashay, scutter, pace, cut through, parade, troop, mosey, amble, mince, hobble, strut, swagger, etc are all ‘caminar’ in Spanish. We don't care much about defining the exact manner in which an action takes place, it seems).


How will Internet English terms eventually solidify into their equivalent in Spanish, the 3rd most used language of the web? I can think of two ways. One would be (for want of a non-hierarchical expression) ‘bottom up’, where the speakers themselves, through usage, decide what terms are useful, until it settles into accepted usage. In this context, speakers either find a rough equivalent in Spanish, use the English term, or create a Spanglish equivalent, by adding a Spanish ending or conjugation to an English word (e.g., the verb "to ghost" could easily be used in a sentence as "mi novia me ghosteó"; the term "bullying" has already made its way into Spanish, albeit in a slightly tongue-in-cheek way: "mamá, mis hermanos me están buleando.")

The second way would be ‘top bottom’, where (largely academic) translators would do their creative work and find a sophisticated and economical equivalent that works well, is easy to understand, and may or may not eventually take on (e.g., "burnout" becomes "síndrome de la fatiga laboral"; "they" as gender-neutral 3rd person singular becomes "elle" or "ellx" - this of course is not born from translation itself, but translation does perhaps demand its usage in ways that writing could work around).

Native Internet Spanish terms don't seem to make their way as easily into formal publications such as newspapers as their English cousins do, and I'm nearly 40, living abroad and off social media, so my Spanish is arguably on the brink of going out of date! (Though the strong hold of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) on the language is keeping me pretty safe for now). So I would love to hear of any more examples you may have. From other languages too!

~ In other news ~

I was in London for a European Poetry Festival event celebrating Irish and Scottish poets (of which I am one, apparently :) ) I managed to write into one of the poems (commissioned specifically for the event) Chris Kalman's comment on an earlier issue of this newsletter. A little tribute! Some cracking performances on the night, can all be watched here https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/irishandscot

I had my book launch in Madrid with Tomás Sánchez, María José Bruña Bragado and Jorge Volpi, can be viewed here https://fb.watch/v/szX7spwn/

I also made it to a front cover of a magazine! The issue looks great, can't wait to tuck in.

That's it from me this week!