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Re: Spanish Group

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 3:13 am
by James29
Question about the use of the word abogado/abogada.

I am reading the translation of John Grisham's book "El Cliente." The book was released in 1993. The translation is pretty neutral but has a noticeable slant toward Spain Spanish. The lawyer representing the star character is a woman lawyer. The translation always uses the masculine abogado. She even uses the word abogado to describe herself. Why is this? What am I missing? Why would you not use the word abogada for a woman lawyer? Is this something that has changed since 1993? Here are some examples from the book:

"Soy el abogado de la familia..."

"?Es abogado y no le interesa el dinero?"

"Mark seguia aturdido, cansado, asustado y con una sensacion de vacio incluso despues de hablar de la situacion con su abogado."

Re: Spanish Group

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 3:27 pm
by zenmonkey
James29 wrote:Question about the use of the word abogado/abogada.

I am reading the translation of John Grisham's book "El Cliente." The book was released in 1993. The translation is pretty neutral but has a noticeable slant toward Spain Spanish. The lawyer representing the star character is a woman lawyer. The translation always uses the masculine abogado. She even uses the word abogado to describe herself. Why is this? What am I missing? Why would you not use the word abogada for a woman lawyer? Is this something that has changed since 1993? Here are some examples from the book:

"Soy el abogado de la familia..."

"?Es abogado y no le interesa el dinero?"

"Mark seguia aturdido, cansado, asustado y con una sensacion de vacio incluso despues de hablar de la situacion con su abogado."


"Abogado" is still used sometimes (and correctly) to designate both male and female lawyers. However, never say "la abogado" but "la abogada". A lot of job designations remain genderless (but masculinised) in Spanish, French, etc... You will see both uses and lots of fights about it.

Re: Spanish Group

Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2019 12:05 am
by MorkTheFiddle
eido wrote:Does anyone have any recommendations for books to read in Spanish, whether translations or originals?

I have access to Audible, so audio book recommendations are fine. But I'm looking for text recommendations as well.

I like self-help books (but ones which lean towards actually helping you), books on theory or thinking, and books in the supernatural or slice-of-life genre, among others.

Harry Potter's just not working for me.

For the supernatural, you might want to take a look at Horacio Quiroga, a writer from the 19th century whose stories some say resemble those of Edgar Allen Poe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horacio_Quiroga, though I must say he is not to my taste, nor is Poe, when you come right down to it. But, different strokes and all that. Good luck in your search.

Re: Spanish Group

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2019 12:57 pm
by BOLIO
I don’t know if it has been posted before but I found a really nicely done audio libro on you tube for the Count of Monte Cristo. I just found it and it appears to be unabridged and it follows along with my Penguin Clásicos version. The link below is to the first part.

https://youtu.be/3G9qDn0GGpM

I love this story as it always sits at the top of my list of favorite novels.

All the best,

BOLIO

Re: Spanish Group

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2019 2:47 pm
by NoManches
This is a cool read from El País:

“El español se está apoderando hoy del inglés a grandes pasos”

https://elpais.com/cultura/2015/02/03/a ... 55629.html

Re: Spanish Group

Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2019 12:22 pm
by Kraut

Re: Spanish Group

Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2019 6:18 pm
by James29
zenmonkey wrote:
James29 wrote:Question about the use of the word abogado/abogada.

I am reading the translation of John Grisham's book "El Cliente." The book was released in 1993. The translation is pretty neutral but has a noticeable slant toward Spain Spanish. The lawyer representing the star character is a woman lawyer. The translation always uses the masculine abogado. She even uses the word abogado to describe herself. Why is this? What am I missing? Why would you not use the word abogada for a woman lawyer? Is this something that has changed since 1993? Here are some examples from the book:

"Soy el abogado de la familia..."

"?Es abogado y no le interesa el dinero?"

"Mark seguia aturdido, cansado, asustado y con una sensacion de vacio incluso despues de hablar de la situacion con su abogado."


"Abogado" is still used sometimes (and correctly) to designate both male and female lawyers. However, never say "la abogado" but "la abogada". A lot of job designations remain genderless (but masculinised) in Spanish, French, etc... You will see both uses and lots of fights about it.


An interesting note, as I continue to read there is a judge in the story that uses letrada (with an A) to refer to the female lawyer instead of abogado. I find it interesting that they would translate abogado and letrada for the same person.

Re: Spanish Group

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2019 11:04 am
by Kraut

Re: Spanish Group

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2019 10:26 am
by Jaleel10
Para cualquiera que busque algo fácil y entretenido de leer, actualmente estoy leyendo una serie de novelas policíacas para adolescentes escrita por Beatriz Osés llamada Erik Vogler.

Estoy a la mitad del primer libro y realmente lo estoy disfrutando ^_^

Re: Spanish Group

Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2019 7:27 pm
by adelante
zenmonkey wrote:
James29 wrote:Question about the use of the word abogado/abogada.

I am reading the translation of John Grisham's book "El Cliente." The book was released in 1993. The translation is pretty neutral but has a noticeable slant toward Spain Spanish. The lawyer representing the star character is a woman lawyer. The translation always uses the masculine abogado. She even uses the word abogado to describe herself. Why is this? What am I missing? Why would you not use the word abogada for a woman lawyer? Is this something that has changed since 1993? Here are some examples from the book:

"Soy el abogado de la familia..."

"?Es abogado y no le interesa el dinero?"

"Mark seguia aturdido, cansado, asustado y con una sensacion de vacio incluso despues de hablar de la situacion con su abogado."


"Abogado" is still used sometimes (and correctly) to designate both male and female lawyers. However, never say "la abogado" but "la abogada". A lot of job designations remain genderless (but masculinised) in Spanish, French, etc... You will see both uses and lots of fights about it.


This is indeed what the Real Academia Española says.

An interesting historical note appears in A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish (6th ed., 2019), Section 1.2.7:

As the social status of women improves, the stigma once attached to some feminine forms of professions is vanishing. The following should be noted:
* El/la abogado 'lawyer'. The form la abogada is now widely accepted, but it originally meant 'intercessionary saint'.


A Google n-gram comparison shows that 'la abogada' began a steady rise in the late-70s through the latest available year of data (2008) in Google's Spanish corpus.

"ABOGADA o ABOGADO / LETRADA o LETRADO", by Beatriz Monasterio Chicharro, from the website of La Asociación Libre de Abogados y Abogadas:

Llevo muchísimos años ejerciendo y, desde que me colegié, he dicho que soy ABOGADA, puesto que soy mujer y la acepción está permitida por la Real Academia de la Lengua. Así, la escritora María Ángeles Sastre nos dice sobre este tema que,

En el caso de «abogada», el Diccionario académico registra «abogado, da»; por tanto, habría que decir «la abogada» y no «la abogado». Sin embargo, en una nota dice que se usa la forma en masculino para designar el femenino. Según esta nota del diccionario, muchos hablantes podrían interpretar que «la abogado» no sería una forma incorrecta para designar a la mujer con la acepción señalada más arriba. Pero la recomendación de la RAE es clara en el Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (2005): «No debe emplearse el masculino para referirse a una mujer: ‘la abogado’».


But none of this really explains the curious - and surely incorrect - use of 'el abogado' to refer to a female lawyer. :?