Writing Content in Spanish
11 Cues if you Write in Spanish
Improve your Spanish Copywriting Skills
You’re a native English speaker, but you also write in Spanish. Where did you learn Spanish? Maybe you’re a native speaker, or you took some classes in high school and college, or you picked it up because your parents and family members spoke Spanish around you at home, and that’s great!
However, sometimes when writing in Spanish we are still thinking in English, and we make mistakes. Here are a few tips which can help you improve your output of content in Spanish.
If you’re writing content in Spanish you surely have a grasp of the language. That sentence I just wrote, if I was writing it thinking in Spanish I would’ve said dominion instead of grasp, but that sounds totally weird, right? (If you are writing content in Spanish you surely have a dominion of the language, OMG!). So you see, it goes both ways. I could be thinking in Spanish while writing in English.
Most of the weaknesses I find reading some Spanish content includes: Incorrect translation of meaning or context of a word or phrase, writing titles incorrectly, lack of exclamation or question marks, poor use of diacritical marks in words, lack of gender consistency. Here’s what I mean:
Context: Some words and phrases have a different context in Spanish than in English. For the most part double check when you’re writing a phrase or compound words. Literal translation doesn’t work, we all know that. When using your favorite translator such as google translate, Wordrference, or another source, make sure you understand what you are trying to say.
Here’s an example: Hard work — you would think you can translate it “trabajo duro” but its meaning is more about effort or dedication in some cases, as in: We would like to commend you for your hard work at the company. This would translate as: “Quisieramos felicitarle por su dedicación a la compañía”. The phrase “trabajo duro” would not convey the same context, it would sound weird.
Some of these phrases are idioms in English which do not translate literally into Spanish, though some do. Example: “Better late than never” translates almost literally, “más vale tarde que nunca. But “Bite the bullet” won’t. This idiom would translate: hacer de tripas corazón, which literally translated would be: “create a heart from intestines.” I think you get the picture.
Words. Examples of incorrect translation of some words:
Capitalize: to capitalize a word does NOT translate capitalizar. The correct term is Escribir con mayúscula. Capitalizar in Spanish is either a financial term relating to capital or to use in ones benefit. And yes, I’ve seen and heard it, and some people defend its use, but it’s incorrect.
Disturb: though you can translate disturb as disturbar, that is an actual word in Spanish, it doesn’t sound right in this sentence: En caso de encontrar un nido grande de ramitas, y por más que esté desocupado, dé por hecho que pertenece a una de estas especies y evite disturbarlo. In this case I would’ve used perturbarlo, or molestarlo.(I would’ve actually written it completely different, but I wanted to make a point).
Use of Articles: (el, la lo, las, los, un, una, unos, unas, lo). There are many rules on the use or omission of articles in Spanish. If you want to learn more or have questions, go to this site. But to give you an idea of how to use articles, here’s a sample: I found the following sentence in a newsletter: Ciertas especies como halcones, búhos, garzas, garcetas, córvidos y cuervos suelen reutilizar nidos.
However, the correct way to write it would be: Ciertas especies como los halcones, los búhos, las garzas, las garcetas, los córvidos y los cuervos suelen reutilizar sus nidos.
Titles: this is where I find the most mistakes when writing content in Spanish. In Spanish you only capitalize the first word in a title. However, if there are proper nouns or acronyms in the title, those would be capitalized. Here’s an example from the newspaper “El Mundo”: Mínima ventaja de Juan Espadas sobre Susana Díaz entre los votantes del PSOE.
Writing Spanish thinking in English. Here is an example of how I would write a sentence differently in Spanish. This title came up as the first option in a search I did: Cómo Hacer Oraciones Simples en Español. First, every word is capitalized; second, Cómo hacer oraciones means “how to pray.” The correct phrase would be: Cómo escribir oraciones simples en Español. You could also use the word: redactar, formar, or producir instead of hacer.
Flowery verbiage — English is dry and to the point, Spanish is more descriptive. This is specially obvious when writing correspondence, perhaps not in blogs and content, but it is important to be aware of it. For example, in English: “Dear Ms Johnson, I am writing to express my interest in the summer internship program with your marketing company.” In Spanish: “Honorable Licenciado: Me complace saludarle. Le escribo esta carta en réplica al anuncio publicado en internet en la página…” Notice how the Spanish version has a very “flowery” adjective to address the person and it also begins with a formal greeting. In English you wouldn’t even think of doing this.
Exclamation and question marks ¡ ! ¿ ? As our fast paced world has increased our use of text messages and social media to communicate, many Spanish speakers are avoiding the proper use of exclamation and question marks. Remember, in Spanish these are placed at the beginning and at the end of a sentence. ¡ ! ¿ ?
Gender. Unlike English, you have to be aware of gender to keep consistency in a sentence. Example: for “veo al chico” — “lo veo” (masculine); “veo a la chica,” “la veo” (feminine).
Quotes: when you use a quote place periods (.), colons (:), semicolons (;) and commas (,) outside the quotes (“). Example: Benito Juárez dijo: “El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz”.
Accent marks: Explaining the rules for accentuation in Spanish would take a whole piece. When I grew up we were taught NOT to put on accent on a word if it was to be upper case. For example if the word éxito is at the beginning of a sentence. Today the Real Academia de la Lengua Española does call for an accent on upper case letters. If you want to read more about that go here.
Dates: when writing the date it is usually written day, month, year and the month in lower case: 1 de marzo de 2018. If you are abbreviating the date, the month comes first: 3/1/2018.
By no means is this short piece a complete work on how to write in Spanish. I have written this to bring to your attention some of the nuances of writing in Spanish. You may find the world’s most accurate translator, but beware, robots and AI can’t always translate context. If you are pursuing writing in Spanish you may want to pay attention to these few suggestions. I hope these tips help.
If you need more information here are some good sites to visit:
The Real Academia de la Lengua Española — It was created in 1713 to ensure the correct usage of the Spanish language.
WordReference: a very good source for translation. Many phrases are offered in correct context and is very helpful for clarifying meaning or finding the correct translation of a word or phrase.
You can always use Google translate, which has improved a lot over the years. I have used it with Spanish, English, Farsi and Chinese, and I have to say it is superb. However, you also have to be mindful and not necessarily use the first option it gives you. Make sure you are offered the meaning you are trying to portray. Notwithstanding, it’s a good source to employ. Here’s an article on how machine learning (ML) is helping improve its translation capabilities.
By the way, Medium no longer curates or accepts content in Spanish. That sucks! (¡Eso apesta!)
