Cooooool.
Héctor Julián Coronado Cervantes has translated my Is Science Faith-based? post into Spanish! He posted it on his own blog, Libre Pensar (he also has a translation of my Welcome to Science speech, too.)
I assume he did a good job. My Spanish is limited to Where is the bathroom? and May I have cold bottle of coke, please? both of which I learned on a trip to Mexico with the then-future Mrs. BA.
Seriously, I’m pleased about this. A lot of us activist skeptics are concerned that we’re not reaching across borders enough; women, Latinos, African-Americans, and other groups are not represented well at skeptic meetings, and I would bet that reflects a reality of the population. That’s something we need to fix.
Update: Jetzt auf Deutsch!
February 28th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
My spanish is limited to Fajitas, Tacos and buritos. <_<
February 28th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Hey, if you want skeptic hispanics to be represented, just send me the cash and I’ll be more than willing to go to the next Amazing Meeting
February 28th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
As I said before, that blog post was one that will stay with me. It deserves to get a large audience. Hopefully it will be anthologized at some point.
Now, who’s going to translate it into French, Italian German, Chinese and Klingon?
February 28th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
first i thought ‘hey, i saw this already’, but it took me a while staring at the rss to figure out why i was feeling disoriented.( wait… is spanish? did Phil got tired of boulder already and moved south?)
Hector did a great job, or at least we both understood the same thing when we readed your post.
Michelle; is easier for us spanish-speakers to get food in your country; get into a mcdonalds, point at a hamburger picture and rub your belly. it works!
February 28th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Phil,
What are you thinking!! Get Cel to translate it for you.
Congratulations. Thanx to Mr. Cervantes.
Mom
February 28th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
I was a Spanish major in college, but I haven’t really used it much in the last ten years.
I looked it over, and he did an excellent job translating it. I also put it through: Babelfish to double check my memory, and as you can see, it matches up very well.
My only suggestion to Hector would be to add an additional link to the AiG site via Babelfish to translate it into Spanish (even though it’ll still be mere rubbish whatever language you put it in), so those he translated your post for can see the rubbish, too. I’ll comment that on his blog.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Stupid work, blocking sites. X(
I’ll try to remember when I get home. Here’s the link of the Babelfished AiG site.
I lost the comment I was writing to Hector.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
“”Now, who’s going to translate it into French, Italian German, Chinese and Klingon?”"
Hey, I could translate it into Portuguese. =P It’s not as cool as Klingon, though.
February 28th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
How does the percentage of women/non-whites/PWD (people with disabilities) at skeptics’ meetings compare to the percentage at AAS meetings? My guess is it’s just a spinoff of how women/non-whites/PWDs are underrepresented in the sciences and technology in general. Solve the one and we’ll solve the other.
February 28th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Pretty good translation if you ask me, being spanish my native languaje I can say that Hector did a terrific job ont ranslating and posting your speech.
And as he points at the very end of the post:
Phil Plait Rules!
February 28th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Ah, btw, you’ll be surprised as to how famous are you in latin countries like México! same goes for the skeptic movement. (Alas, at least we don’t have cuacks who want to impose ID teaching on schools, and that’s a good start
February 28th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
What’s the politically correct term for a black person who was not born in the United States? African-Guatemalan? African-European? African-African?
February 28th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Hi, I’m Héctor. I’m glad you people found the translation satisfactory. It was a good idea to babelfish the link to AIG. I updated the link already.
And yes, Phil is a well known skeptic at this latitude. I discovered Bad Astronomy during a search for info to debunk Apollo moon landing hoax claims a couple of years ago. Since then I’ve been following periodically the Bad Astronomer.
Here in Mexico haven’t ID teaching… yet. Although there are several other issues to apply skepticism here, we also follow with concern the Evolution vs ID debate. And celebrate when reason prevails.
I’m better translating english to spanish than writting in english. I hope this is not so unarticulated.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:19 am
“”Now, who’s going to translate it into French, Italian German, Chinese and Klingon?””
Whats Italian German?
I could translate it into German but Italian German…
Anyhow, that was the first BABLOG title I had to translate with Babelfish…
February 29th, 2008 at 1:04 am
Black people in Britain are sometimes described as “Afro-Caribbean”, although my impression is that most would rather be known as, in no
particular order, “black”, “West Indian”, or “people”.
February 29th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Vous seriez surpris du nombre de Français sceptiques qui lisent Phil’s Blog et site Web. L’astronomie est très populaire au Canada et en Europe.
February 29th, 2008 at 3:29 am
Heya BA, writing anything about that fark link earlier re: universe expansion’s effect on observing other galaxies etc? The thread was an interesting argument regarding whether or not light can make it, dunno who to believe so I headed here.
Link is: here if you’re not sure what I’m on about.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-end-of-cosmology
If tags are disabled.
February 29th, 2008 at 4:02 am
You both did a terrific job. They’re a great post and a great translation!
I would like to suggest Héctor to submit a copy of the translated article to “El escéptico digital”, a Spanish skeptycal e-zine published by ARP-Sociedad para el Avance del Pensamiento Crítico (ARP- Society for the Advance of Crytical Thinking). Sure they will be pleased to publish it in their next issue. Any comments, letters, articles and collaborations can be sent to their e-mail:
eed@arp-sapc.org
Good job and congratulations to both of you, Phil and Héctor.
February 29th, 2008 at 5:01 am
Phil said: “A lot of us activist skeptics are concerned that we’re not reaching across borders enough; women, [ ... ] are not represented well at skeptic meetings, and I would bet that reflects a reality of the population. That’s something we need to fix.”
I think you’ll find that women are too busy living in the real world – you know, the one that needs *someone* to do the shopping and the cooking and the washing up and the cleaning and the washing and the ironing and the looking after the children – and probably also holding down a job… [Sits back and waits for howls of anguish. {g}]
It’s a similar story in our local quiz league – they’re too busy to bother. At the average quiz night, out of twelve people playing, there will only be two or three women. Often, I’m the only one.
Oh, and I’m the webmistress for our website. It also has a little astronomy quiz on it and a link to this site and Chris Lintott’s, so I’m doing my bit:
http://www.grimsbyquiz.co.uk/gystarrynightquiz.htm
–
February 29th, 2008 at 5:14 am
Hey, I translated part of that post into Chinese back then (with my own comment):
http://blog.timc.idv.tw/posts/is-science-faith-based/
The question I asked on my post (in Chinese of course) is: We assume that the Universe is following its own rules, BUT do we *assume* we could figure every one of them out?
timdream (from Taiwan)
February 29th, 2008 at 5:38 am
!Phil Plait es un cientifico famoso!
February 29th, 2008 at 5:45 am
Sue Mitchell: The important question is not *what* women (etc.) are doing instead, it’s WHY are they doing it instead, and why aren’t men doing it? If your hypothesis is right that women are doing all the “work” and men have more free time, why is it that women feel obligated to do these things and men don’t? (And if that’s true, we’d also find that in all leisure fields there are more men than women – in video games, bowling, tennis, movie watching, gambling online, reading books, knitting, scrap booking, …)
February 29th, 2008 at 6:02 am
Zandperl said: “The important question is not *what* women (etc.) are doing instead, it’s WHY are they doing it instead, and why aren’t men doing it?”
That would be because, in general, they have a greater sense of responsibility.
[Sits back and waits for more agitated flak.] Why aren’t men doing it? Because they’re generally more incompetent at it – or like their womenfolk to think so. 
Except for my better half who’s brilliant. Well, relatively speaking.
Me? Well, our children have grown up and left home, so I’ve developed a lesser sense of responsibility. I’m now free to do the things *I* want to do, which is why I’m here now.
–
February 29th, 2008 at 6:14 am
I’m from Argentina, and I also agree that the translation is very good (dialects aside).
From what I can see in my own country, and in Latin-America in general, there is no big creationist or ID movement, but since religion does have a big influence in some sectors of public opinion and, alas, we tend to copy the worst from what we see happening in the United States, I can only hope it won’t happen with creationism (I’d say “I’ll keep my fingers crossed” if I wasn’t such a skeptic).
Actually, I attended a private religious school, and I remember my science teacher saying once “Excuse me, but I don’t come from monkeys”. I remember being confused with that comment, since I have always been a science buff, but I was only 11-13 years old. Today I would have answered “Yeah, I can see you haven’t evolved from them”.
I haven’t experienced, heard about, or seen on the media something like that again. I have seen, yes, signs of religious fanatism, and there is controversy each time that a new law with a hot topic for the church (abortion, contraception, homosexuality, etc), but the church hasn’t intervened in science education like it has in the States.
I have closely followed all that has happened to you (the “doomification” of each State), and I feel anger that this is possible in a modern, industrialized, mostly educated (although I have read about 1 in 4 students not knowing who Edipus or Hitler were, or that they can’t place any most countries or even regions in a map), first-world country; and fear that it can spread over here.
What if there are followers over here and they multiply?
What would the people over here think about a movie like “Expelled”?
One thing is for sure, I would do everything I can (no matter how big or small an influence it would be) to stop it.
February 29th, 2008 at 6:19 am
Renanon: Hey, I could translate it into Portuguese. =P It’s not as cool as Klingon, though.
Hot Brazilian women speak Portuguese. Con attendees that even other con attendees find unbearably dorky speak Klingon. QED, Portuguese is cooler than Klingon.
February 29th, 2008 at 6:28 am
The translation is perfect, and keeps the point perfectly.
And about those who base the science on faith… as one of the viewers of Libre Pensar said, “There is no worse blind man than the one who doesn’t want to see”.
February 29th, 2008 at 7:14 am
Cyber JIT-
Another reason why you haven’t seen as much of a push for creationistm in the Latin-American countries might be because the Roman Catholic Church, which is still the dominant religion, doesn’t have any issues about teaching evolution. With the increasing growth of evangelical and fundamentalist Christian churches, though, this may become an issue in the years ahead.
February 29th, 2008 at 7:22 am
I’m from Mexico too, I’ll read Héctor’s post as soon as I get time for it. However, I got to ask, Phil can we use your posts every once in a while and translate them so we can spread your knowledge? Giving due credit of course. Start them saying “El AstronomoMalo publicó“… I always want to discuss your stuff with friends and people at work, but I cannot just link them to your blog because not everyone understands english. Also, just like Hector, I found the BadAstronomy site looking for some Moon Hoax Debunking.
February 29th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Very cool. I hadn’t read the “Welcome to Science” speech before is great! On thing though, looking at it both through IE(7.0) and FireFox(2.0) on Windows I get some odd formating of the apostrophes. The come out looking like this:
It’s a mountain, and it’s on the Moon.
February 29th, 2008 at 10:19 am
If you don’t know Daniel Altschuler (former director of Arecibo Observatory, now at the University of Puerto Rico), you probably should. He’s written extensively in Spanish about science and pseudo-science, and would probably be fairly well described as an ‘activist-skeptic’.
February 29th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
[...] wurde anlässlich der spanischen Übersetzung des Artikels auch nach einer deutschen gefragt. Na [...]
February 29th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
well, I found BA some years ago, but not by looking for moon hoax but rater for bad science in movies! I found it really good, and I visit the BA every day ever since.
July 8th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Are you sure that your computer infected dialers and other *hit?Are you protected from spyware?TAKE A LOOK HERE AND SCAN YOUR PC NOW AT OUR SITE!
>>> [url=http://www.telecentre.org/index.cfm?event=user.detail&id=14601]bacteria and virus review[/url]
online
July 8th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Are you sure that ur computer is spyware and other *hit?Are you protected from spyware?SCAN YOUR PC HERE AT OUR SITE!
>>> [url=http://www.telecentre.org/index.cfm?event=user.detail&id=14601]free virus cleaner[/url]
antispyware