Reading in Translation

It has been a week of getting back into the groove of regular activities after being away for three weeks. The two important social engagements I had on my mind (after an appointment at the hairdresser) were my Spanish class and my English-language book group, which meets this coming Wednesday.

I had a lot of preparation for book group because it is my turn to write the questions and lead the discussion--and I still had a few chapters to read in the book that I had lugged half a world away to read. It is The Time in Between, also called The Seamstress, by Maria Dueñas. Reading it while on vacation kept me thinking at selected times about Spain during its Civil War and the early Franco era, the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco, and Portugal. It did not keep me thinking in Spanish, as I am reading it in English.

I have felt a little guilty about reading a novel originally published in Spanish, and written by an academic at a university less than an hour from where I live, in English. However, this book is 600 pages long, and given the time I had and the other activities I was devoting attention to, I'm lucky to have made it through in English in a month. And the native language of all the book group members is English (of varying sorts) and the discussion was to be in English. And I had previously read one of the book club books, originally in English, in a Spanish translation and had an opinion about the book that was markedly different from those of my colleagues--the Spanish was better. So I stuck with an American English edition of The Time in Between, though I intend to find a Spanish copy and look up some passages to compare, because some of the dialogue I read in English just did not ring true. I've asked my fellow members their opinion of their translations, and I'm looking forward to hearing what they say.


I don't need to feel guilty about reading a Spanish book in English, I decided, when I realized, as I got ready for my Spanish class, that I was reading an English book in Spanish translation. Muerte en el Seminario (literally Death in the Seminary but the published title is Death in Holy Orders) is the first book by P.D. James that I have ever read. I have heard about James, of course, with her renowned writing style and riveting mystery novels. It's really sort of crazy to approach her through a translation, but it's an excellent and entertaining way to learn Spanish. My Spanish teacher and I have wonderful talks--though halting as I search for words--discussing Dalgliesh and the various characters in and around St. Anselm's in East Anglia. It's going to take us a long time to get through this one though. We can only do about 25 pages each week, and my copy runs to 494 pages. We are approaching page 200 for class tomorrow.

Common Sense

We were shocked this week to hear that an English charity is under attack by the Spanish tax authorities.  Paul Cunningham Nurses is a registered charity in Spain; it was founded years ago by Jennifer Cunningham in honor of her son, Paul, who died of cancer at an early age. Paul Cunningham Nurses (PCN) provides free nursing and care to terminally ill patients and their families. It gets much of its funding through sales in several shops of donated clothing, DVDs, and household articles. We have taken several cast-off items to the shops to donate, and we have also made many purchases. I particularly like to stop in before I take a little vacation to northern climates, because I can usually find a couple pieces of warmer clothing in good condition there, that I can't find in regular stores here in southern Spain.

We first heard of the Paul Cunningham problem from friends who had read it in one of the free weekly newspapers. When we went out the next morning to do errands, we looked, unsuccessfully, for the newspaper, and we also stopped in one of the PCN shops to ask about the situation. The attendant gave us some information about the problem, but not in detail, and I was a little hesitant to sign a petition in support of the charity with so little knowledge, but I did. Since then I have found two written articles which generally say the same thing, so I'm taking them as a fairly accurate statement of the facts.

A year ago, one of the PCN shops was approached by a Spanish official from Social Security (Seguridad Social), who asked the two volunteer workers to show her their national identification and Social Security papers. Social Security is the system in Spain that provides national healthcare: either your employer pays your social security premium, or you as an independent contractor/freelance worker pay your own (and it starts at a minimum of 320 euros per month, I have heard from various sources).

The volunteer shopkeepers, older English women, did not understand the detailed Spanish and contacted the PCN accountant, who explained, in Spanish, to the Social Security representative that PCN was a registered charity, as indicated by a G above the door of the shop, and that the "workers" were volunteers and thus should not pay Social Security. The officer, however, levied a fine of 6,000 euros and demanded that the charity present all relevant paperwork to an authority in Alicante city--and accused PCN of violating the human rights of the volunteers by not paying salaries.

In due time the charity's official papers were taken to Alicante, the papers were accepted, and the fine was withdrawn. However, another fine was levied: 10,000 euros--for obstructing an officer in the carrying out of her duty.

PCN appealed the new fine twice, then heard nothing until recently, when a registered letter arrived saying that if the 10,000 euro fine--plus 2,000 euros in interest--is not paid within 21 days, the bank account of the charity will be embargoed and money withdrawn to pay the fine and interest until it is paid in full.

PCN is continuing its appeals, to the European Court, it says, if necessary. For the time being, as far as I know, PCN shops are still open and accepting donations, people are still buying--and signing petitions, and nurses are still attending to end-of-life needs of any resident of Spain--not just English or foreigners--who asks for help.

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When I first heard about this absurdity I thought, "It's because the Spanish system does not understand volunteer activities and charities." And it is true that the extraordinary system of grassroots fundraising by charity shops, lotteries and raffles, entertainment benefits, quiz and game nights, and all sorts of activities routinely offered by the British population here has no equal of which I am aware. But I have checked, and my English-Spanish dictionaries do show Spanish words on this topic. A charity organization is an institución benéfica or an organización benéfica. A charity shop is la tienda de una organización benéfica. A charity sale is una venta benéfica. A volunteer is un voluntario or una voluntaria, as in a volunteer army or to volunteer information. But the verb for volunteer is ofrecerse, to offer oneself, which does have the aura of self-sacrifice about it. And I didn't see anything at all about volunteer workers.

All of which does reinforce my feeling that the concepts of volunteering and charity are not something that Spaniards have in common with the Anglo world as I know it. But I do hope that common sense will prevail in this case, sooner rather than later.

The New Look

Sharp-eyed readers may notice a new look for Sundays in Spain this week. I would like to say that this redesign is the result of considerable introspection and planning, but in fact it comes after I managed to destroy the old look while trying to refresh my memory about how to create a blog. I am setting up another blog to archive some professional writing I have done over the years, and I was playing around with the different templates that Blogger offers when suddenly I realized that I couldn't get back to the original one.

Fortunately all was not lost. I have been writing Sundays since October 2008 and I can see now by my statistics that as of today I have published 245 posts. There is nothing earth-shattering in these web pages but nevertheless I would have hated to lose the content, as it constitutes the best record I have of the last four and a half years of my life. I have also begun to use my writing as a reference, so, for example, I can search it to find out when the next tapas festival can be expected to take place, or what was the name of the town where we took that interesting bus trip to the winery. So I was glad that all posts survived the mishap, and I spent enough time investigating the software, which has changed in the last few years, to see that I can download the content into a backup file on my computer, and I did that. One can also back up the template, I read, but too late.

While catching up with new features, I found two to incorporate in my impromptu redesign. The one of broadest use is the list of Labels on the right column, below the Blog Archive of dates of previous posts. Although I usually assign two or three tags, or subject terms, to each blog post, I have not been terribly rigorous about keeping the subject listing orderly. I've pruned some subjects, so it's only the top 40 or so that appear here. They correspond to my major themes and concerns (bureaucracy, celebrations, economy, and Spanish language, among others; they also list a number of places: Alicante, Barcelona, Madrid, and Montebello. Clicking on any of the labels brings up the posts where that label is assigned, thus providing another way to search my written memory in addition to the long keyword search bar at the top of the page just below the banner. I hope to re-think the labels and go back through the postings to reclassify them at some point in the future--in my old librarian days we called this a "recon project"--retrospective conversion--but no one calls it that anymore and not many do it, either.

The second feature is perhaps the most immediately noticeable. It is the Translate dropdown menu near the top of the right-hand column that says Select Language. You can pull that down and choose Danish, or Spanish, or Azerbaijani or just about anything else you care to, and almost instantaneously the blogpost will be translated by Google into that language. I've been watching Google Translate for several years now, and it's not perfect but it's getting better. I've had fun browsing the translations, though I haven't yet read anything closely enough to take them up on their offer to provide better words.

As I said in another post way back in October 2008, I started this blog for discipline and to force myself to learn something about blog and image software. I'm still learning! But the primary reason is to keep my family and friends informed about my life here, should they care to check in now and then. So I am especially delighted and flattered that the Google Translate gadget has already brought me a new regular reader from among my family in Argentina.

The Train to Madrid

It's been a long time since we drove to Madrid. Taking the train is so much more relaxed. The train from Alicante to Atocha Renfe station in the center of Madrid takes only 3 hours and 15 minutes, and there are several to choose from throughout the day. You buy a reserved seat, and you travel in comfort, with plenty of leg room and  free auriculares (earphones) to listen to music or watch a movie. Granted, it is invariably a movie in Spanish, also with Spanish subtitulos, and the subtitles are small enough unless you are sitting in the row immediately in front of the screen that they neither help nor hinder. I was sitting halfway back in Coche 4 and together with the distance and the glare from sun pouring in through the window next to my seat, I couldn't see all that well anyway. Still, I take the opportunity to view a dubbed-in-Spanish movie for free as the opportunity to have a Spanish lesson for free, so I followed along in between looking out the window at the passing scenery at beautiful, rolling hills, sometimes revealing freshly plowed terrain.

It's always interesting to guess what the name of the movie is and where it is from. When the language of a movie changes from its original, the title changes, too, and it usually isn't just a direct translation of the original. I had missed the opening credits, too--just looked up from the book I had been reading for my real Spanish class on Monday and noticed that the screen had switched from black with a DVD logo on it to live action, so I switched the dial from the pleasant American jazz I had been listening to in the background. This movie was about baseball, so I suspected it was originally an American movie. I became more sure when I thought I heard some talk about Carolina del Sur, but I don't know of any baseball team in South Carolina. However, at one point I heard the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner, so there was no doubt. I followed the story loosely about a lawyer daughter of an aging man who had been, I gathered, a baseball star earlier in his life, but now was just getting old.

This turned out to be a rather long movie, and we were soon to roll into the end station when the action concluded, without any crescendo, I must say, and the title appeared on the screen: Curvas de la Vida. Now I'm home and I've taken the trouble to use the Internet to find out what it was I saw. To begin with, I hadn't realized that the old thin man I saw in the distance was Clint Eastwood. The movie, in English, is Trouble with the Curve, surprisingly a very recent (2012) film.This review from a Charleston newspaper makes me realize that I missed what was probably the funniest scene in the picture by not seeing the very beginning.

Oh well. I enjoyed practicing my listening skills, and I excuse myself for not recognizing the aging Clint Eastwood from a distance by virtue of the fact that I didn't ever hear his voice--amazing how important the voice is to one's persona, I now think. I also enjoyed the scenery outside the gently rolling train as we made our way through the countryside going toward Madrid, and the sky really was as blue as it shows in the picture above. Next month a high-speed train is supposed to open between Alicante and Madrid--we've seen workers laying tracks and renovating the station for months. It should cut an hour off the trip, and I suppose we will take it once to see what it's like, but I doubt that I will be tempted to pay the assuredly higher price too often. Why do that if it will interfere with my language and film education?

Spanish Street Names

It has been twenty years since I opened a paper that I was presenting to an international conference by speaking in Esperanto. I don't quite remember the exact point I was making, or the quotation that I had gotten translated into Esperanto (through a call for help to a forum on CompuServe, a pre-Internet online service) but it had something to do with electronic networking and standards, and the fact that even if standards are developed, it doesn't do much good unless everyone accepts them more than in name only--they must learn them. Aside from the point of my conference paper, I believe in the value of a language that can be used as a second language by native speakers of any language of the world to overcome communication barriers. Rather than Esperanto, though, I have come to believe in a type of international or global English. But this is a topic for another post.

When I came across this street sign on one side of the main plaza in Callosa del Segura this week, I was overjoyed. Calle del Idioma Esperanto means "Street of the Esperanto Language." The made-up, idealistic language of Esperanto lives, at least by being honored with a street name in a small city in Alicante province in Spain.

Spain honors so many people, ideas, and causes in its street names that it can be a joyful learning experience just to drive through various neighborhoods and see the street signs. (It would be a good idea to have a 3G device with you to Google the names, though, as it is not likely that you will know them all off the top of your head).

Before we moved to where we live now, we seriously considered buying in a section bordered by the Avenida de la Opera. There we could have had our choice of living on Calle Enrico Caruso or Calle Maria Callas or the streets of other opera stars. I have a friend who lives proudly on Emmeline Pankhurst street, surrounded by streets with the names of other important female political figures. There are numerous Dr. so-and-so streets in the business section of Ciudad Quesada where I often look for parking places when I go to the post office, but since these are Spanish-surnamed doctors and the screen on my phone is too small to access the Internet, I have yet to find out who these doctors are.

A few evenings ago I noticed that the main street of one of the major residential areas through which we drive when going to the hospital is the Avenida Asociacion Victimas del Terrorismo. I am all for honoring the victims of terrorism, but I really don't think I want to be reminded of terrorism and its victims every time I give my street address, or every time I come out of my house. So I am glad that I live in a development where the street names were chosen to honor the nature that surrounds us. We have Olive Street, Jasmine Street, Mimosa Street, Eucalyptus Street, Oranges Street (inexplicably the street farthest away from the orange grove), Geranium Street, Mint Street, Lavender Street, Carob Tree Street, and another street called Galan de Noche, a plant I can't find in any Spanish-English dictionary. But they all sound more exotic in Spanish anyway. And we have two avenidas: Avenida del Romero (Rosemary Avenue) and Avenida del Tomillo (Thyme Avenue). Perhaps if we expand we can add some Parsley and Sage.