to theoretical and tourism professional, there is a false friend that has leaked in texts of all kinds: facilities for facilities.
This case is generalized to the point of being in Translations neglected by prestigious publishing houses (I know at least one case a Mexican publisher whose name I will not mention) and all sorts of information materials such as posters, leaflets and web pages.
For example, in a poster in a national park in Costa Rica, you can read the following headline: "Services and facilities." Under this item it is broken, among others, the following points: "Nine different trails, suspension bridge, walking tours, with hostel facilities to accommodate 47 people." The same poster is the English translation of this information, hence, the title is "Services and facilities."
This is a clear example of false friend where facilities can not be translated by facilities. We will now see why.
Facility (in English) has at least three major semantic fields (which can be seen in its various meanings). The first largely coincides with the definition of the word in English: "the quality of anything to be done easily," or, as the DRAE, "willingness to do something without much work." Another semantic field is ability or power to do something, but in these cases the best translation is, in effect, ability , power or ability to . In the only example where it is more or less equivalent to the term English is easy word, but can not be used in other contexts as well as could be "the facility for languages" which translates as "skill for languages ".
The false cognate on here are calling attention occurs in the other meaning in English: facility also means "something (as a hospital) that is constructed, installed or established to serve a particular purpose '(translated Dictionary Merriam-Webster ). It is also defined as "space or equipment needed to do something. Examples: cooking facilities; facilities for picnicking, camping, and hiking ; facilities include two swimming pools .
In English (just look at the DRAE or María Moliner dictionary) none of the meanings includes that meaning. Instead, it could use the words facilities and services to refer to this type facilities, as is being said in each case. Therefore, in the example we provide at the beginning of the article, the right thing would have been to write "Services and facilities. "
If we are publishers of books in the field of tourism, we have a responsibility to use correctly the word and correct our authors when internalized this false friend and write without ceasing facilities with a sense of facilities and services . A general translation error is no excuse to support the use of a false friend when viable alternatives are correct and in our language. Related Articles
What are the false friends?
0 comments:
Post a Comment