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Spanish Translation Help


Abigail
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We have a very important meeting coming up at my boy's school on Monday regarding changes as a result of budget cuts. Their school has a number of Spanish speaking families who know little to no English, yet they are among the very few parents I see within the school daily and I believe they very much care about what happens at this school. I was hoping to ask one of the parents that I do know speaks English well to translate, but so far I haven't been able to find him, I think his son has been out sick.

I think I can find a translator for the meeting itself, through a local community center - but I need to get the information ABOUT the meeting out to them TODAY.

Can one of you tell me how to say the following in Spanish:

IMPORTANT SCHOOL MEETING

Monday, October 24, 2005 at 6:00 p.m. in the school gymnasium

Due to budget cuts a number of changes will be taking place. Some of these changes will impact your children. Your attendance at this meeting is important. Please come and show your children, their teachers, and the administration you support.

I put this through a translator thingy on the internet, but I suspect it is gramatically very inaccurate.

Thanks for helping. :)

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My Spanish isn't great, but altavista gave me enough to work with.

REUNIÓN IMPORTANTE DE LA ESCUELA

Lunes, el 24 de octubre, 6:00 P.M. en el gimnasio de la escuela

Debido a los cortes de presupuesto, un número de cambios ocurrirán. Algunos de estos cambios afectarán a sus niños. Su atención en esta reunión es importante. Por favor, venga y demostrar a sus niños, sus profesores, y la administración que usted le apoya.

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Well, ya must not have done too bad Raf. I watched one parent scratch his head in confusion towards the middle, but in the end it seemed to communicate what I wanted. :)

And, I was finally able to contact one of the bilingual parents and he agreed to come and translate! Thank you for helping ensure that an imporant part of the school community was not left out of this upcoming meeting. :)

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I use altavista-babelfish regularly into and from German to share information with genealogy researchers. If you want to check thereliability of a translation, translate it into a language and then back to the original language. It yields some strange results sometimes. LOL

HOWEVER- if the goal is to try and convey my meaning, it is better than my attempts at using my own limited 11th grade german class memory. Altavista-babelfish does that level of translation quite well usually.

~HAPe4me

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IMPORTANT MEETING OF THE SCHOOL

Monday, the 24 of October, 6:00 P.M. in the gymnasium of the school

Due to the budget cuts, a number of changes will happen. Some of these changes will affect their children. Its attention in this meeting is important. Please, it comes and to demonstrate to his children, their professors, and the administration that you support to him.

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umm, what was that we learned about interpretation being the gist of what is spoken in tongues, not a translation.?

<------HAP tries to recall from this PFALwashed brain

Does gist include not being able to translate?

Yeah, that's what we learned in PFAL

However, when you're talking about conveying what is said in one language into another, the words "translation" and "interpretation" are virtually synonymous.

The point is always to communicate the meaning of what is said. Translating the literal definition of each word (which is what Wierwille was referring to when he used the word "translation" in opposition to "interpretation") will often confuse those who hear or read a translation like that. Take into account that idioms and other figures of speech almost never make sense when literally translated.

Jargon and other technical terms are also difficult. We have several people in my store (myself and our human resources coordinator included) who speak pretty fair conversational Spanish. However we're lost when trying to explain to employees things like insurance, profit sharing, OSHA regulations and anything that requires precise terms. I've been trying to convince our company to hire someone who is a certified translator to handle these tasks, rather than depend on the Guatamalan janitor to explain 401(k) benefits.

Edited by Oakspear
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