Broadway’s current revival of West Side Story had some of Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics translated to Spanish as an attempt for authenticity for some of the Puerto Rican characters. But this summer, the directors saw that the new lyrics weren’t paying off the way they had hoped.

In some pivotal moments, in fact, the meaning is lost altogether for English-speaking spectators.

Sitting together in tears on Maria’s bed, Anita delivers this message — as well as a rebuke to the interracial romance of Maria, who is Puerto Rican, and Tony, who is Polish-American — in the song “A Boy Like That,” toward the end of Act II:

A boy like that who’d kill your brother,
Forget that boy and find another,
One of your own kind,
Stick to your own kind!

Director Arthur Laurents said that audiences were getting the general message, but weren’t jolted by it, which made subsequent scenes less poignant. After discussions with the producers and cast, the decision was made to change some of the lyrics back to English.

[Producer Jeffrey] Seller noted that, in postperformance conversations with friends and audience members, he was surprised by how many people had never seen “West Side Story,” with music by Leonard Bernstein, onstage or its film version and lacked a strong grasp of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” which was the basis for the plot.

“It means we have to work a little bit harder in making sure people understand the show better,” Mr. Seller said.

Not all is lost: “I feel pretty,” Maria’s opening number in Act II, remains mostly in Spanish with a few English lines thrown in for greater effect.

Read the full New York Times article “Some ‘West Side’ Lyrics Are Returned to English.”

An online article on eCommerce discusses the importance of translating your website. It’s not a simple as you might think—and definitely not as easy as sticking your text into a machine translator and hoping for the best.

First, everyone needs to understand the value of hiring a human vs. machine translator. A human translator will pick up the idioms and intricacies of the target language in a way that a machine could never do. To use one example of an idiomatic translation, “never judge a book by its cover” would be most appropriately translated to French as “l’habit na fait pas le moine” (”the clothes don’t make the monk”).

The goal, especially in the advertisement world where words sell, is a natural-sounding and never literal translation.

The eCommerce article recommends rewriting and reducing content before having it professionally translated, not only to reduce costs but to reduce idioms as well.

Let’s take a look at a descriptive example:

Like they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover. This humble looking pocket knife has every feature short of the kitchen sink, including two cutting blades, a corkscrew, a can opener, and a global positioning system.

This product description (which I realize is not necessarily an example of a well-written paragraph) includes an idiom, a metaphor, and other figures of speech that would be hard to translate. Now, we rewrite it:

This folding knife has two cutting blades, a corkscrew, a can opener, and a global positioning system.

Having removed the idiom, the metaphor, and the term “pocket” which may not make sense in other languages, we have a matter-of-fact sentence that is ready to translate.

The article’s additional pieces of advice include: hire a professional translator, check the translation for errors (which a professional translation services should provide), hire a professional writer, and consider translation memory (also something a translation service should provide).

Note: the article cites some rather pricey costs for professional translation services. You’ll probably find better prices out there among the more competitive companies.

My best advice: discuss your options and goals with the translation service you choose from the very beginning. You can figure out how to cut corners from the start without having unknown costs spring up down the line, especially if you foresee lots of changes to your eCommerce website in the future.

Read the full article and recommendations here.

A columnist of the Brownsville Herald delves into the origins of the Spanish language in two parts. Part I: How it came to be.

Geography plays a huge part in the diverse roots of the Spanish language. Many words were borrowed from the various ethnic groups that occupied the Iberian peninsula over time. And of course, each of those cultures spoke a language developed via a combination of other languages.

The Latin language came to the Iberian peninsula with the Roman invasion in 218 B.C., and was mixed with other languages used at the time.

That “language” soon developed into two versions: one was called “Latín clásico” and was spoken by Spain’s educated. The other was called “Latín vulgar” and was spoken by ordinary people. We find evidence of this in the literature of the time, the “Jarchas,” a type of “Cántigas de Amigos” poetry written 100 years before the “Poema del Mío Cid” (1140 AD). That combined the three languages alive in Spain at that time — Hebrew, Spanish or Castilian, and Arabic.

In  “Poema del Mío Cid” we see an entirely new language that later became known as Castillian, or Spanish. From the classic Latin, Spanish derived words such as  “alegre” (“alacrem”), “cueva” (“cava”), “frío” (“frigidum”), “leer” (“legere”), and hundreds of others.

Thousands of Spanish words are also derived from Arabic due to Islamic presence on the Iberian peninsula from 711 to 1492 A.D.  One such example is “ojalá,” which is Spanish for “I hope” or “I wish that…”, from the Arabic phrase “God willing.”

Read the full article here.