I am now doing the same as Lourdes, but in the Dutch language. The first part is already on line. You can find it here: http://sereniteit.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/phil-plait-bad-astronomer-beantwoordt-vragen-over-astronomie-deel-1/

The subsequent parts will follow in the coming days and weeks…

- Herman -
P.S. I am also the Dutch translator of the Skepdic’s Dictionary (http://nederlands.skepdic.com)

Now, I don’t think our pedantic friends would like to go against THE Royal Academy, would he?

Also, just to clarify again, the language is called Spanish (fine, or Castellano, if you prefer) even if it’s spoken in Mexico or Argentina or wherever, unless you also want to distinguish between English English and Canadian/Australian/South African/etc…

Oh, and João, thank you for including Mexico in North America, but it is my understanding that everything north of Panama is technically in North America.

Mil gracias Lourdes, es bueno ver que en México si tenemos personas que disfrutan y aprecian la astronomía y la ciencia!

It’s not complicated, but it seems every site has its own quirks. We need a W3Org standard for formatting in message boards.

Juan:
Mexico in English is pronounced as mek-si-koh. Even though it’s written the same way as in Spanish it’s pronounced differently. A different thing happens with Brazil. It’s written with a “z” in English but it’s written with an “s” in Portuguese. So, it’s pronounced the same way but it’s written in a different way. I’m not an expert in philology but I’m sure there’s a name for this kind of things.

Anyway, a big thank you for Lourdes Cahuichon. Anyone who works with video translations knows how much work this means.

(Hold the Alt key and type on the number pad on the right side, not the number strip above the letters)

Alt + ###:

160 = á
130 = é
161 = í
162 = ó
163 = ú
164 = ñ
165 = Ñ

Serenitiet: there’s no english text, I did the translation watching the videos over and over

Thank you Phil and all of you, for your kind words, you can agree with me that all the things posted in the BA blog are worthy to be shared, no matter the languaje spoken.

Saludos!!

Anyways, muchísimas gracias para Lourdes, que la verdad se le agradece.

Phil: If you want, you can change the title to this one: “Preguntas de astronomía… ahora en Español!”

I must assume that for a person with an english keyboard would be extremely complicated to put the accent marks and the Ñ.

I use to show the BA videos to mi 8 years old kid (who enjoys everything related to space and technology), and I have to translate them not so fast. This will be usefull for us.

Buena onda de Lourdes Cahuich.

And Mexico, which happens to be in NORTH America…

@ Juan: Perhaps there is more difference in the Spanish-es within México than within Spain’s (I’ve never been to México), but the problem in Spain is that there are several other languages apart from spanish (Catalán, Gallego, Vasco, and other regionalisms) and they greatly differ from each other.

Oh, and another, perhaps bigger, problem, is the one showed by Gib. There’s a great pride here in Spain, and there’s a general missconception of superiority among, especially, South America’s Spanish-es.

Going back to Astronomy: Keep on making friends and spreading science as far as possible. How about making a subtitled version of the whole thing? I think that’s way better than just translating I’ll look into it and see what I can do to subtitle them.

PS: No se olvide de visitar mi blog para encontrar algún que otro texto rebuscado, jejeje, (only recommended for fluent spanish speakers :’( )

Oh, btw, just something I always want to clear up about how English-speaking people pronounce México. The x sounds like a h. It would sound something like Me-hee-co and the accent works so you put an emphasis in the first syllable. It’s not Mek-see-co.

I hope I’m not being too annoying.

And having said that…

I found a translation error when I read the first part… ‘Carbon’ was translated using ‘carbón’ (coal) instead of ‘carbono’ (the chemical element). I left a comment there about this :S

Please don’t insult the people of Spain by assuming the two are the same.

Ah, the official spokesperson for the citizens of Spain! Welcome! I must ask: Why are the people of Spain so easily insulted?

And it’s called “Mexican Spanish” or, locally, just “Spanish” for short due to the low probability of it being confused with something generally spoken over 10,000 miles away.

The differences between Mexican Spanish and “Spain Spanish” are about the same as the differences between American English and British English.

The main language of Peru is also called “Spanish”. You going after them next? How about Nicaragua. Who told Spain to go all conquistador all over the place, huh?