jarango

Blogging in English and Spanish

José Luis Orihuela has published a list of native Spanish speakers who write blogs in English. (I’m happy to see jarango.com on the list.) José Luis proposes to use these sites as the basis for an aggregator, to help increase the cross-pollination of memes between the English and Spanish blogospheres.

jarango.com is published in English and Spanish, although not simultaneously or symmetrically. I decided early on that it would be too time consuming to translate every post into both languages and that articles that would be appropriate for one audience may not be relevant for the other. The content forked early on, and these days I rarely post in both languages.

Most of my writing (for this site, at least) happens in English first. I was educated primarily in English, and I’ve lived in English-speaking countries a third of my life. Most of my reading is in English, and I feel much more comfortable reading and writing in English than I do in Spanish. In addition, my Spanish vocabulary is not large enough for my writing to be precise or elegant. (I believe Spanish is a richer language—but your vocabulary must be very well developed for this richness to come through in your writing.)

There are things I prefer about English as a language. I love English’s flexibility; neologisms are easily created and rapidly accepted. (For example, I won’t be able to translate to Spanish the word “memes”, much less a new meme like “podcasting”.) Most of the technologies and methodologies I need to describe as part of my professional life were created and named by English speakers; I still suffer every time I have to explain the concept of usabilidad to my Spanish-speaking customers. Most importantly, writing in English makes my ideas available to a much wider audience.

So is this a “hispano” blog in English, as José Luis suggests? My everyday experience is certainly that of a hispano. I was raised in a hispano culture, and live and work in a hispanic society. Most of my daily interactions with other folks—both on and offline—happen in Spanish. I am proud of my heritage, and relish the experience of living where I do. However, I don’t believe that the most of the writing I do in this site conveys a particularly hispanic point of view. (As a matter of fact, I’m not even sure I know what this means.) I prefer to think of this site as presenting universally applicable themes. In English. And Spanish.

Some thoughts on writing a blog in English and Spanish, prompted by José Luis Orihuela’s idea of building an aggregator to help cross-pollinate memes between the English and Spanish blogospheres.

September 26, 2004 | Archived in Random Notes