Do I call it Latino Division or Spanish Div?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

If I were to add a division to a web community (in my case it’s a gaming clan) that started off based in the US but is growing outward to encompass other nationalities, I’d like to get the wording correct on how we make our league divisions.

I have a few players from Mexico, and a couple from Peru. What is the appropriate title encompassing Spanish speaking people? Would Spanish Division be appropriate? Latino Division doesnt sound right. I think Spanish Division sounds right but I dont want to “offend anyone” because of my lack of worldly knowledge.

I also have a couple guys from Poland, one from Finland, two in England. Is it appropriate to just lump them all in under European Division?

What would be appropriate Division labels?

(sorry in advance if this is in the wrong forum category, it’s not a specific gaming question and trivial enough not to put in GQ)

2

I’d use hispanic over either of those. Not that any of them are offensive.

3

You’d might be surprised. Trying to figure out whether someone likes Latino, Hispanic or some other designation can be a sticky wicket at times. That said, I’d go with Hispanic if you’re designing it for Spanish speakers in general.

4

How about the Spanish equivalent of “The Spanish-Speaking Division”? If the distinction you are making is what language they speak, there’s no reason to drag in ethnicity.

5

I prefer the term Hispanic to Latino, and the OP wants an inclusive term for all Spanish speaking people. Some Mexicans, in my experience, do not like to be called Spanish, and Mexico still has Indigenous language speakers to consider, but many of them speak Spanish as well.

6

It’s pretty safe to say that very few Mexicans would like to be called Spanish; that woould be like calling someone from the U.S. English. :slight_smile:

If you’re going for the language distinction, then Spanish-language division or Spanish-speaking division should work (hispanoparlante or hispanohablante). Nava is Spanish, a translator, and a gamer, so maybe she’ll stop by with a suggestion.

7

What’s wrong with asking the people who would be in the division what they’d like it to be called?

8

Unfortunately that is not always the case. I am Mexican, and I have met my share of Mexicans who call themselves Spanish. But since we mostly all speak Spanish…they can call themselves whatever they want. Mexican people from south side of the border often do not like the term Chicano, which has always been my favorite term.

9

If it’s just Latin Americans, I would definitely go with Latino rather than Hispanic. In my experience Latin Americans in general are not going to be offended by being referred to as a latino (well, maybe some Argentinians, but don’t worry about them if you don’t have any ;)). And I think Latino would be much more common than Hispanic.

It gets more complicated if you need to include Spaniards.

But I would just poll the players from Latin countries as to their preference and call it that.

10

Shrug, I’d ask the clannies. If someone else joins later and doesn’t like what they chose, tough titty.

Sites with a Spanish-language version normally indicate it in the language choice as ES (Area), where Area can be ES, or EU, or LA, or a specific country.

ES(ES) means “Here be Spanish-speaking people, no specific location”. Different pages within the site may have been translated into different dialects, but with similar registers. If it’s a “high” register the dialectal differences will be a lot less evident than if they were aiming for “the way you’d chat with your pals”.
ES(EU) means “Here be Spanish-speaking people who play on European servers”.
ES(LA) means “Here be Spanish-speaking people who play on American servers”. It’s likely to be a worse mishmash of dialects than an ES(ES), because the people ordering the translations think that everybody on that side of the pond speaks the same dialect. There may be pages which were translated by a Mexican, then got updated and the update alone was sent to an Argentinian, so the end result is in Poblano with a paragraph in Bonaerense…
ES(country) is more common in company websites; they may have made an attempt to use a dialect specific to that country, any contact info will be for that country, etc.

11

I agree.I’m brazilian and i think that latino would also include other people from latin america that don’t speak spanish.Now, if the community is only for people that speak spanish, i think that you would better of using Hispanic.

12

Thank you everyone, because there are many right answers here I have decided the solution is to stay away from dividing the clan into geographical or language divisions.

After asking my right hand guy who’s multilingual to get the scoop on this privately from some of our members (per the advice from some of you here), the feedback is amusing.

Archie Bunker is just not a white middle aged man at 704 Hauser Street. He’s a handful of brown teenage Peruvians, two 30 Somethings in Mexico, and a 28 year old woman who’s parents were from both places but lives in Rhode Island. They’re just as half-heartedly prejudicial as your typical isolated unworldly American. :smack: Im not entirely naive and know prejudice is universal but sort of was under the impression the rest of the world was super PC and Americans are just trying to catch up to be proper. This small sampling shows the opposite. :smiley:

Fortunately, first person shootem ups (in this case it is Half Life, CounterStrike, Left4Dead, and COD) are more important to them than digging on each other too much about their differences (which reminds me of a recent Cecil article on why video games are good for us).

So, in the end, Ive* quietly assigned* multilingual team leaders to keep everyone on the same page regarding practices, matches, etc - but not segregate everyone into groups based on those things. It’s going to be fun to see the Polish guy teamed with the Mexican fighting the Peruvian and Canadian.

Without labels and divisions I think it will force everyone to learn each other’s time zones and language a little better. And I really want to know what they’re saying in game without copying and pasting it later for translation.

I appreciate all the insight Dopers bring to things like this, and thank you. (I couldnt just rely on answers from partially anonymous gamers on the internet - without first asking for advice from partially anonymous think-tankers on the internet. :D)

*As an aside, some of you may be surprised to learn how much respect and “awe” that many younger foreigners have for our Marines. My clan was founded by a US Marine over a decade ago and has quite a few US miltitary servicemen from different branches involved (all people are welcome, military service isnt a requirement). This grew outward over time so we have servicemen from the UK and Canada (who knew that Canada had such a thing?) and our clan handle is a close approximation but universal variation on the Corp’s acronym. It’s just very cool to witness over my 8 years as an admin the dozens and dozens of non-US players who want to check us out first because of our American based military roots, and respect for US Marines. It’s even more notable to witness people’s private prejudices and quirks get kicked to the side when they play together (except for the occasional in-game taunts) and take real interest in each other’s life experiences. Gaming is indeed good for us. *

13

I’ve known a couple of MMO clans which had the figure of the “raid explainer”, as well as encountering that figure in some PUGs: the person who knew every damn single detail din espik Inglish so gud, yes, so someone else who could answer questions in the raid’s most common languages got to handle the explanations.

It can be a bit slower than monolingual groups, but I like it.