Sometimes one just has to bit the bullet and get on with it.
The revamp of the website in Spanish has at last started. A few months ago I restructured the salsa website in English; to reflect accurately its position relative to the local organisations, and to maintain its continued relevance worldwide. I'd been delaying doing the same for the Spanish version - www.salsa-merengue.net for just one reason; I'm not the one doing the translating.
That task's been taken up by the embarrasingly talented Ana Santiago Menendez: educator, singer-songwriter, dancer, bajista, and gold-panner extrordinaire (Yep, you read that bit right). I suspect she didn't know what she was volunteering for, otherwise it'd still be only a monolingual site. I wanted to make sure that the new structures were bedded down properly in the English version, so that there wouldn't be any extraneous work due to a lack of organisation on my part.
Having worked with Ana in songwriting for the band before, I can very much appreciate the vast amount of work needed to get the message right. We're still looking for accurate translations for "close hold" and "bugbear".
Perhaps there's a hint of cultural pride; it doesn't do to have a top salsa site in English and not in Spanish. That might nark one's sensibilities. Thank God cultural pride doesn't extend to my wanting to translate it into Chinese.
I wonder what "close hold" is in hokkien?
Loo Yen Yeo
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