My friend Lourdes Cahuich is a professor, educator, and all-around astronomy promoter. Concerned over the prevalence of astrology in the Hispanic community, she translated my entire astrology debunking into Spanish. That’s quite a feat, since as you’d expect I had a lot to say!
It was long enough to break into three parts:
Introducción
Continuacion
Conclusion
I’m always happy to see science and reality spread around, and since they are cross-culture, translating things like this may do some real good. Lourdes is indefatigable about such things, and may very well bring about cultural change in Mexico all on her own.
Gracias, Lourdes! And if any readers are Spanish speakers, please feel free to spread those links to your friends!
Related posts (involving Lourdes):
- A Chile SETI interview
- La ciencia es importante
- La ciencia es importante una vez mas
- Astronomy questions now in Spanish
June 27th, 2010 at 8:12 am
Bueno!!!
June 27th, 2010 at 8:39 am
Excelente!! Tremendo!!
June 27th, 2010 at 8:44 am
Mol bé i moltes gracias!
That saves me a lot of work when I have to debunk.
June 27th, 2010 at 8:48 am
I wish we had better translation software.
Whenever I use the the “translate” button I am alternately frustrated and amused.
June 27th, 2010 at 9:22 am
Phil, you may get a kick out of this.
Our local Science Station is a great proponent of teaching kids. They nearly had to shut down due to the big flood in 2008, but they are still going in some nice, temporary digs.
Lately, the staff have been wearing shirts based on the periodic table — each element is listed as the abbreviation for some scientific field or concept. I thought they were a great idea — until I noticed that “arsenic” (As) was tagged as “astrology” rather than “astronomy.”
I’m starting to wonder if this is a winnable battle in any language! (Rest of the shirt looked okay, though.)
Scott
June 27th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Semi-related: evidently the coach of the French national football team uses astrology to help plan his strategy. I guess that’s why they were so successful at this year’s World Cup.
June 27th, 2010 at 10:33 am
Muchas gracias!! Now lets translate the moon hoax debunk!! Please.
June 27th, 2010 at 10:40 am
“Astrology is the bull”?
June 27th, 2010 at 10:41 am
Yep, I live in Panama and astrology is a rampant phenomenon here. Thanks!
Time to redirect a couple of series of tubes and spread more internets in this small isthmus…
Romeo Vitelli: probably a mistranslation of “Astrology is bull(s***).”
June 27th, 2010 at 10:47 am
@ Romeo Vitelli
I think he just means “Astrology is bull”
June 27th, 2010 at 10:48 am
Nice article & good on her – muchos gracias senorita!
But I am the only one to find someone with name of Lourdes taking this positive step in the Fight against Woo raises a wry smile?
Not that her name is her fault or anything of course!
@4. kuhnigget :
Like the North Korean soccer side relying on their “invisible telephones” to get their strategy direct from Mr “I’m so ronely”* Dictator Kim Jong Il?
@ 5. Romeo Vitelli Says:
Taurus is the bull!
———–
* Team America movie ref. if anyone’s wondering.
June 27th, 2010 at 10:51 am
“Concerned over the prevalence of astrology in the Hispanic community”
That’s an understatement of Latin American culture, for sure. Nearly the entire culture is based on superstition and the supernatural. You encounter it on a minute to minute basis. Good on her and everything, but it’s like curing the Gulf by removing one drop of oil.
June 27th, 2010 at 11:23 am
Good work professor Cahuich! Excellent!
One hopes that such efforts will as well assist in steadily eroding the thrall of religious indoctrination in Latin American countries.
Superstition of any stripe removes freedom from people. The con artists – from cheap operators to religious and political opportunists of considerable power and wealth – have every reason to preserve and cultivate it in the population and exploit it for their own interests.
I applaud and support your courageous stand and hope that you will not excessively suffer the indignation of ignoramuses. If the worst transpires, know that you have friends who can help.
June 27th, 2010 at 11:24 am
I always regret the fact that there’s no equivalent to the word bullsh** in Spanish. There’s patrañas but that sounds like a children’s comic book silly word. I’m pretty sure I used to hear it a lot in stuff like children’s cartoons.
That’s why I’m trying to get people to use “mierda de toro”, which sounds pretty funny too.
June 27th, 2010 at 11:43 am
This is perfect! Though for a different reason than other commenters have mentioned…
Recently, I’ve been trying to improve upon my high school Spanish, and I’ve been looking for Spanish-language reading material that actually interests me. This is what I’ve been looking for! Especially having a link to the original English version.
Thanks!
June 27th, 2010 at 11:55 am
Lol at the english to spanish pun in the title.
@andyo
Bullsh** is more akin to “tonterias” so I don’t know if “mierda de toro” will get the right meaning across.
June 27th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Thanks Lourdes!
@andyo
There are ways of translating “astrology is bullsh**” into Spanish, like “la astrología son ch****deras” or “la astrología es una gi****llez”.
June 27th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
andyo: have you tried a translation of “horses**t” or something like “cow dung”?
I can think up dozens more if it weren’t for my sense of propriety.
Wouldn’t any of those alternative phrases in Spanish conjur up a response more potent to that which “Bulls**t now so impotently caresses the US ear?
Use your imagination. You can recruit the droppings of everything from worms to swine. Or, if you must stick with bulls, you can suggest some other unsavoury issue…
June 27th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Gracias, Phil!
Porsupuesto!
June 27th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
“La astrología es una gilipollez” would perhaps be the more accurate translation, at least to Castilian Spanish.
June 27th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
I wish you had mentioned your book so I could beat IVAN3MAN to saying:
“ESCRIBISTE UN LIBRO?”
June 27th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
I just think “mierda de toro” sounds funny somehow to me, probably cause some direct translations sound so absurd in other languages, and I use it kind of jokingly, and most people know what I mean especially if they know some English (which is many people), but “tonterías” is too mild, just like “foolish” is in English. “Gilipollas” as far as I know is only used in Spain, but in Latin America I think we all understand it.
June 27th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Too bad nobody is translating it into the hundreds of languages of Africa and India, where witchcraft is still big business, and believed in even by the levers of power. Fundamentalist churches are there, though, telling everyone that witches are real. Oh, the greatness of Western civilization!
June 27th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
@andyo
I also think tonterias is too mild, but I can’t think of any Spanish word that is equivalent to bullsh**. I was raised in Venezuela, so yeah, I don’t know “gilipollas”. And yeah, I do think “mierda de torro” is funny. Lots of direct translations are funny if you think about it. ^_^
June 27th, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Off topic but nice read. Phil is mentioned too.
http://scienceblogs.com/neurotopia/2010/06/a_simple_way_to_get_the_antisc.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Neurotopia+%28Neurotopia%29
June 27th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
Y’all don’t have to be able to speak Spanish for the translation to be useful, just read it… like Mr. Lear.
June 28th, 2010 at 3:24 am
Another blog of interest to those of you wanting astronomy and skepticism in Spanish is that of Javier Armentia (who had a moment of international fame last year thanks and no thanks to a Catholic radio station).
June 28th, 2010 at 5:08 am
This would be useful translated to Arabic, too. Most Arab newspapers I’ve read dedicate an entire page to astrology.
June 28th, 2010 at 7:37 am
It always amuses me that no matter how deep you are in the Bible belt the local paper ALWAYS has an astrology section. Woo=woo?
June 28th, 2010 at 7:55 am
For those searching for a translation of bull****… you *are* remembering that the point of “astrology is bull” is a pun on the sign of Taurus, right…? Hence Dr P’s non-idiomatic translation. Take that away, and you can come up with whatever derogatory description you want in Spanish — the joke is gone anyway.
June 28th, 2010 at 8:07 am
Hah! Fun sociology experiment of the day: run Lourdes’s page through babelfish. There’s some moments of Spanglish, certainly, but mostly it is quite understandable…. then read the comments. Classic babelfish-ish. Does this tell us what we could have guessed: that a professor’s writing is cleaner and simpler to translate than a random intert00b commenter’s?
June 28th, 2010 at 9:48 am
Well… actually the true meaning of “Astrology is Bull” as I understand it from Phil… can´t be literally translated into Spanish and publish it… u know… the droppings from the Bull…
So Lourdes used another more explicative (and polite) title.
Lourdes and the guys at SETI.cl are doing a great job translating scientific material mostly available in English to Spanish.
Also at the SETI.cl site, they have a great variety of Spanish-native articles written by members of our scientific comunity.
Thanks to Lourdes for this terrific (and extenuating) job!
June 28th, 2010 at 11:01 am
Keep up the good work. One more thing most hispinacs are Catholic and the Catholic Church has always said belefe in Astrolgy is a sin .She might use this. I think we also need to translate “Astrology is Bull into Kligon for that I have a copy of the Kligon dictionary Ill have to dig it out .Just KIdding by the way Ive put the Bad Astronomy site on my cell phone now I can access this site any time,any place,anywhere.
June 28th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
“Your superstition is bad because your other superstition says so” is not a very thorough argument.
June 28th, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Sorry to say this, but in Spanish there is an opening interrogation and exclamation mark. So it is “¡Gracias! ¡Tremendo! ¡Excelente!”. And I agree with Lektu with the better translation. Mexicans would say “La astrología es un pendejada” (well, those who agree with the assertion)… And it certainly is.
June 30th, 2010 at 4:04 am
What if Astrology is a part of Hispanic culture?
That would make this post fairly racist.
June 30th, 2010 at 5:33 am
So nothing about any culture can be criticized without being “fairly racist”? I wonder how you feel about bullfighting, or female genital mutilation.
BTW, I belong to that culture. It has its share of superstitions, as any other, but astrology I don’t think is particularly endemic to the hispanic culture, in fact most cultures had forms of it. An example of a deeply ingrained cultural tradition though, is the despicable, disgusting spectacle of bullfighting. Guess what? Its supporters’ main defense is that it’s a “cultural tradition”.
June 30th, 2010 at 10:01 am
Damon, astrology is a part of Hispanic culture in the same way (and for the same reason) it is a part of Anglo culture. It comes from our common cultural roots.
I have a small bull (heh heh) with Phil’s post: There’s way more than just Mexico in Latin America, and it’s particularly important here, seeing as how the translations are hosted in a *Chilean* site. Yes, the author is Mexican and probably focus her efforts there, but still …
(And, BTW, I’m Mexican too, so this is not wounded national pride
)