A co-worker and I are arranging to produce a Spanish language version of an existing brochure. I copied the English text from the brochure and saved it as a Word file, and my co-worker then paid to get it translated. But — when preparing my Word file, I accidentally omitted a couple lines of text.
A slogan that goes under a logo:
Together We Can Save Lives
A bullet point:
Violation of a restraining order.
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It would make my life easier if someone could translate those two phrases for me.
The bullet point is part of a list of of crimes that includes:
Compra o posesión de alcohol por un menor.
Violación de libertad condicional o bajo palabra.
A bit harder as it tends to vary what you call that legal instrument depending on jurisdiction:
Violación de una orden de (protección/restricción); or;
Incumplimiento con una orden de (protección/restricción).
From your last example it seems to be derived from Puerto Rican Spanish legalese so I’d fall on the side of “orden de protección”.
Thank you much, JRDelirious. (Opinions from other are still very welcome.) The legalese is relevant to the State of Missouri, and no place else.
I suspect the translation job was purchased due to price and convenience (I haven’t discussed it with my co-worker). The translator’s punctuation seemed haphazard.
The other phrasing sounds like we may… or may not… depends… do I feel like it today, or am I feeling lazy?
Which option to choose will depend of course on what y’all want to emphasize: that it’s voluntary (include the podemos) or the positivity (don’t include it).
It’s one of those sentences which can be subject to grammar analysis and actually pass it but which scratch at the edges. I’d say what’s weird is the usage. Plus there’s the whole “half of us would say it’s se puede and half would say it’s se pueden” discussion (impersonal forms like se puede are slowly becoming personal despite the ongoing efforts of grammar teachers).
I’ll defer to you, as a native speaker of course, but wouldn’t that be more like “Together we save [are saving] lives”? As in, “Together we are [currently] saving lives” instead of the more forward looking “Together was can save lives”. To me, in the English version, it’s talking about something we are not quite doing at the moment, but we can do if we so choose.
That actually agrees with what I said. The “can” emphasizes the choice. If I was trying to urge people to fucking get out and do it I would emphasize that once they get off their asses, it works. They already know that if they stay on the sofa, all they’ll do is put a dent in it.
You’ll never see an ad from the blood banks saying juntos podemos salvar vidas unless it’s a direct translation from English. If the original is in Spanish, it says salvamos vidas, with or without the juntos (juntos is implied in the first person plural, having it explicit is emphatic).