Different Spanish Translations

When facing Spanish translations, it is of paramount importance to know which target country is the customer is addressing to so we can perform a translation which will sound natural to the target audience.

This is especially important with Spanish translations as it is recognized as an official language in 21 countries, each with their own regional variations.

1. Argentina
2. Bolivia
3. Chile
4. Colombia
5. Costa Rica
6. Cuba
7. Dominican Republic
8. Ecuador
9. El Salvador
10. Equatorial Guinea
11. Guatemala
12. Honduras
13. Mexico
14. Nicaragua
15. Panama
16. Paraguay
17. Peru
18. Puerto Rico
19. Spain
20. Uruguay
21. Venezuela

Translating European and Latin American Spanish

What is known in the industry as "European Spanish" does not cause much trouble really as it will mainly refer to the Spanish spoken in Spain (including the Canary Islands) and Andorra where no important differences are actually found.

But things get a bit more complex when we refer to what we call "Latin American Spanish", "US Spanish", "International Spanish" and "Neutral Spanish". We know no such languages exist. These are just names given by the translation industry to specify the location of the target audience and, in the case of "Neutral Spanish", for translators to select the terms which will best suit a multinational target audience.

Unfortunately, there is not a standard uniform language that will sound natural for all the 400 million Spanish speakers alike. So when facing what we call "Latin American Spanish" we will need to discuss the issue with the customer and ask the company to prioritize some target audience over others in order to make the translation costs financially viable for them.

Formal or informal Spanish tone

It is also important for the customer to specify how they would prefer to address their customers. The English form "You" is used both for formal and informal texts, but we need to be clear about the customer's intended tone when we face Spanish translation (and most other languages, as the same happens with German, French, Italian).

Most of the time the intended tone is perfectly clear and obvious, as text features and context will give us the answer, but sometimes it is not.

Nike, for example, requires us to translate Spanish in an informal tone but requires the same texts to be translated in a formal tone for French.

RIM requires us to translate some Marketing materials in an informal tone and some others in a formal one.

Spanish translation text expansion

As happens with many other language pairs, Spanish text typically expands by up to 20 - 25% in relation to an original text in English.

This is something customers should take into account when they produce texts for Spanish translation which will need to be published on a limited space including presentation slides, leaflets, brochures, software and websites.