Help With Spanish Please

[FreeThinker]

I have some dialogue I am writing that I would like translated into Spanish and to suggest perhaps a better way to phrase it. I don't trust Google Translate or Babelfish. It's just a few lines in my new story, nothing important, but it adds to the atmosphere in this particular scene. Thank you. For some reason I can't remember, I took Russian in High School forty years ago instead of a more practical language, such as Spanish!

[DesDownunder]

I have some dialogue I am writing that I would like translated into Spanish and to suggest perhaps a better way to phrase it. I don't trust Google Translate or Babelfish. It's just a few lines in my new story, nothing important, but it adds to the atmosphere in this particular scene. Thank you. For some reason I can't remember, I took Russian in High School forty years ago instead of a more practical language, such as Spanish!

Forty years ago the Russians were more likely to attack us than the Spanish. So maybe that is why you learned Russian. At least you'd know what they were saying when they knocked on the door as the excerpt from this 1966 movie warns:

Evidently, under Putins new laws, the Russians are no longer coming.

[Merkin]

I thought Klingon was the In language forty years ago.

[Cole Parker]

I thought Klingon was the In language forty years ago.

Wasn't he a character in M*A*S*H?

[Lugnutz]

Wasn't he a character in M*A*S*H?

That would be Klinger. Maxwel Q.

[The Pecman]

My high school Spanish was confined to the "donde esta, casa de Pepe" kind of Spanish. Not too useful. I can barely understand a little Espanol if they speak very slowly, but the Spanish spoken in Cuba, Spain, and Mexico are all pretty different, and they speak very fast in Spain, plus there's more of a lithp with Castillian Spanish.

[FreeThinker]

Arrgh. Rafael would speak Castillian, since his father was from Spain, but the friend he's speaking to would be from Cuba, Oh, well. I will give up on the added atmosphere to the scene.

[DesDownunder]

Arrgh. Rafael would speak Castillian, since his father was from Spain, but the friend he's speaking to would be from Cuba, Oh, well. I will give up on the added atmosphere to the scene.

Do what Hollywood does, fake it.

[Merkin]

Arrgh. Rafael would speak Castillian, since his father was from Spain, but the friend he's speaking to would be from Cuba, Oh, well. I will give up on the added atmosphere to the scene.

Yeah, but, even if you ditch the Spanish itself, the dialect each character is speaking provides a wonderful opportunity to introduce a nuance to the story where the language as spoken can remind them of their differences.

[Cole Parker]

And Spanish speakers do understand the other dialects. The two would understand each other.

C

[Mihangel]

FT, why not ask Frederic for help? He says on his author's page that he's bilingual.

[The Pecman]

Arrgh. Rafael would speak Castillian, since his father was from Spain, but the friend he's speaking to would be from Cuba, Oh, well. I will give up on the added atmosphere to the scene.

Actually, Cuban Spanish and Castilian Spanish are very similar except for idioms and curse words. My favorite Cuban curse word (which my father used to bellow during family barbecues) was "CONJO!" [it was funny in the 1960s. Watch for this in DePalma's Scarface, also about Cubans in Florida.]

Mexican Spanish is different, and what we were taught in Spanish class was that Spaniards look down upon the Mexican people's language because they feel they've bastardized it and made it "lazy" and low-class. (The teacher's words, not mine.) One could compare an upper-crust Boston accent to a white-trash Alabama accent and come to similar conclusions about English, or even an educated British accent vs. a Brooklyn accent.

FT, why not ask Frederic for help? He says on his author's page that he's bilingual.

I think under the right circumstances, we're all billingual.

What was the question again?