Bumps in the Road

I'm no native speaker and naturally, there are going to be some mix-ups. Besides that, there are some words that I want you to know about. Non-Spanish speakers, have no fear; it's not too technical.

Tonight, as I was looking through the fridge to find some dinner, Dona Dora (the host mom) called to me and said that there was some "Carne con ongo" in the fridge. I was thinking, "meat with fungus?" Maybe I misheard. "Meat with what?"

"Ongo."

Hmm. Sure enough I found meat with fungus. It was steak with mushrooms. Suddenly it all made sense. All of you readers probably saw it coming, but in the heat of the moment, I was baffled.

Another time I was talking with Dorisabel, Dona Dora's daughter, about what she does. She said she was a law student in the mornings and in the afternoons she worked in a "bufete." That's weird, I thought; why would a talented law student work in a buffet all afternoon 5 days a week? "What do you do there?" I asked in Spanish. "Do you serve food or something?," thinking that maybe she had a waitress job to make extra cash or something along those lines.

She was like "What?!"

Now I'm thinking "Uh oh big mistake. Something went wrong." "What is a 'bufete'?"

"A law firm" she said in English.

"Oooooooh." How embarrassing. How did I never learn that word beforehand? It's certainly sealed into my memory now.

Vocabulary time:
Sometimes things in English and Spanish translate really well. For instance, backpack in Spanish is mochila. Backpacker is mochilero. It makes perfect sense and it's possible to understand what someone is talking about when they start talking about all of the mochileros around town, even if you haven't heard the word mochilero before. You can piece together that it means backpackers. Theses direct, logical translations are great.

Other times, translations work, but they don't quite capture everything the original word had to offer. For instance, the "Twin Towers" becomes "Torres Gemelas." It's a direct translation and it's easy to understand, but it loses the alliteration of all those T's and W's.

And lastly, sometimes the best translations are loose translations. In English, we call those bumps in the road to slow you down "Speed bumps." Makes sense. In Spanish, or at least Nicaraguan, they call them "policia acostada." That means "police lying down." That's a much more entertaining way of looking at them.