WebProNews

Tag: Spanish

  • Jeb Bush Says ‘I Apologize’ To Donald Trump For Campaigning In Spanish

    Jeb Bush has released a campaign video in observance of Hispanic Heritage Month. The video, “Todos Somos Americanos” or “We are all Americans,” features Bush speaking in Spanish and his Mexican-American wife, Columba Bush, speaking in English.

    Jeb says in Spanish: “The United States of America is a great country. Thanks to the people that come from all over the world, contributing to our economy and community. To me, Hispanic culture is very important and positive.”

    He also said he is proud that his children and grandchildren are Hispanic. Columba, who is rarely seen in Jeb’s campaign activities said in English: “I have lived over half my life here. We all have the same interests, the same feelings.”

    Jeb’s campaign advisers are positive that his family’s ties with the Latino community will contribute a lot to his campaign.

    Jeb highlights the importance of Hispanics in nation building and that they are part of the “American dream.” He then urged the people to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, a month-long celebration which marks the independence days of many Central American and South American countries.

    The video is released despite rival, Donald Trump’s remarks on Jeb’s inclination to speak Spanish in his speeches, when addressing Spanish-language media and when answering questions from the Latino community.

    Trump previously said Jeb should speak English while in the U.S. which Jeb finds disrespectful.

    The former Florida governor, has a sarcastic response to Trump’s criticisms: “I’m going to campaign in the Latino communities and yes, Mr. Trump if I’m asked a question in Spanish, I might answer in Spanish,” Jeb said, then adds “I apologize.”

    Jeb and Trump will face each other again on stage at the CNN Republican presidential debate that will be held on Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

  • Spanish Teacher Fired for Using the Word ‘Negro’

    Talk about getting lost in translation.

    A Bronx teacher claims that she was fired for using the word “negro” in reference to a student. I must admit, it sounds reasonable at first – except for the fact that the teacher in question was teaching a lesson in Spanish.

    65-year-old Petrona Smith, formerly a teacher at bilingual PS 211, says that she was instructing her students on how to say colors in Spanish. “Negro,” of course, is Spanish for “black.” She claims that she was fired after a seventh-grader reported the incident. Smith is black, and a West Indies native. She has filed a lawsuit over the firing.

    “They haven’t even accounted for how absurd it is for someone who’s black to be using a racial slur to a student,” Shaun Reid, Smith’s attorney, told the NY Post. “Talk about context! There’s a lot of things wrong here.”

    Smith even claims that she differentiated between “negro” (black) and the Spanish word for black person, “moreno.”

    According to court documents, Smith was also accused of calling some students “failures,” but she says that this is also untrue. Apparently, she asked students who had failed a test to move to the back of the classroom.

    In fact, Smith claims that the slurs were coming in the other direction. The Post notes that she reports being called a “f*cking monkey” and a “n*gger.”

    As of now, facts in the case are pretty one-sided. A spokesperson from the city told The Post that they will review the papers – but that’s all they had to say.

  • Google Adds Latin American Spanish Option to Calendar

    Google has just announced that they are making Google Calendar much more friendly to Latin American Spanish speakers.

    Starting today, Google Calendar has a new Español (Latinoamérica) option. Spanish is spoken is much of the world, but the Spanish isn’t the same in every location. Google knows this, and has made a Spanish variant that better suits their Latin American users.

    Of course, it isn’t easy to find a variation of Spanish that works for someone living in say, South America, but also feels natural to a Spanish speaker in the United States or Caribbean for example. The Spanish spoken in these regions differs greatly from one country to the next due to geography, separate cultures, customs, and histories. To give all of our Latin American Spanish speakers an option that looks, feels, and sounds right, Google Localization constructed a Spanish variant that combines the most common elements from the different dialects. So whether you speak Spanish or any one of Calendar’s 42 languages, it’s now even easier to keep up with your busy schedule!” says Google.

    Google has already offered Gmail in Latin American Spanish since last year, and if you’re new to Calendar but have been using this option inside Gmail, you should be ready to go in Español (Latinoamérica) automatically. Otherwise, simply go to your Calendar settings and click the gear icon and change languages.

  • Etsy Launches In Spanish With Help From Former Craigslist/Yahoo Engineer

    Etsy Launches In Spanish With Help From Former Craigslist/Yahoo Engineer

    Etsy announced today that the site is launching in Spanish, which has been a long time coming from the sound of it. The company says it has had a high number of sellers who opened their shops from Spanish-speaking countries, though does not provide any specific numbers.

    Etsy also says there has been a steady increase in shipments to Spain and Latin America, suggesting that a significant amount of Etsy customers are also coming from Spanish-speaking countries.

    The company announced back in October that it was working on translation into more languages, and there was “high interest” from the community for a Spanish language version of the site.

    “Releasing Etsy in such a widespread language as Spanish is not just a win for our members who prefer to express themselves in the language of Cervantes,” says Juan Pablo, who joined Etsy after working on the international effort by Craigslist (and Yahoo Search before that). “Etsy is a distinctly global marketplace, and these changes benefit us all: no matter where we are, what language we speak, or which currency we use, our buyers will now be able to access more one-of-a-kind goods in Spanish-speaking countries, and our sellers will see an influx in a vibrant community of Spanish-speaking buyers.”

    “Opening Etsy to a new market is not a trivial task,” adds Pablo. “And while I am joining the efforts on the engineering front, the first step along the way was to translate our site. We have taken the most Etsy approach we know: reaching out to our community of members to translate, adapt and help us understand the needs of their regions.”

    Etsy has a page dedicated to the Etsy habla Español team, which has been dedicated to “teaching Etsy Spanish”.

    Other languages that Etsy is available in so far, include: English, Dutch, French, German and British English. More are sure to come.

  • YouTube Says ‘Bienvenidos’ to Spanish Captions

    It’s been three years since YouTube started providing captions for its video content, starting with English and eventually including Japanese and Korean. Today, the web’s top video site announced that it’s adding the first romance language to its collection of captioned languages: Spanish.

    Whenever you come across a video that is clearly in Spanish – and the software is smart enough to pick up on many different dialects – you can click on the red button labeled “CC” in the toolbar and select “Transcribe Audio” in order to see the transcribed Spanish text.

    YouTube Spanish Captions

    Once you’ve enabled the captions for the audio, you’ll then have the option select “Translate Captions” into one of more than 50 available languages.

    YouTube Spanish Captions

    The caption feature actually uses the same voice recognition algorithms as Google Voice, so if the sometimes strange transcriptions I used to receive when I was using that service is any indication, the captions may not be perfect.

    YouTube says that it currently offers captions for over 157 million videos and with more added each day. As you may imagine, there are relatively few videos in Spanish that have the caption feature but here’s one of the few that has gotten the update.

    While I appreciate YouTube for finally offering this service for speakers de español, I’m a little puzzled that it took the website this long to finally offer captions for the second most widely spoken first language in the world (Chinese is #1). But whatever, better late than never.

  • Go Daddy Launches Spanish Version Of Its Site

    Go Daddy Launches Spanish Version Of Its Site

    Go Daddy ya está disponible en español!

    You may not have understood that, but there’s a lot of internet users in the world that will. If you fell into the former category, here’s the sentiment: GoDaddy.com, the world’s largest provider of domain names, will now be available in Spanish. Located at es.GoDaddy.com, the español version of the site is aimed at helping Spanish speakers build their online businesses as well as their personal websites. Go Daddy hopes to provide the same quality of customer support to its Spanish-speaking customers as it has with the English-speakers, saying it supports more than 10,000 Spanish calls per month from Mexico to Argentina and all parts in-between.

    “Go Daddy is committed to helping small businesses grow in countries all around the world,” said Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman in a statement. “We created es.GoDaddy.com to better serve our Spanish speaking customers who want to leverage our easy-to-use products in their native language online.”

    Go Daddy’s decision to make the entirety of its site-hosting services available to the Spanish-speaking community may turn out to be a prescient move as recent studies show that Latin America’s booming online culture is becoming a fertile ground for digital marketing. Additionally, Go Daddy’s putting a familiar face to their sitio español as they’ve named Natalia Velez, star of the company’s 2012 Super Bowl commercial campaign and native Spanish-speaker, an official Go Daddy spokeswoman.

  • Spanish Kindle Store Launches with 22,000+ Titles

    Amazon has just launched their Spanish language Kindle Store today, and it’s starting with over 22,000 titles. Over 1,000 of these titles are free e-books, as they are part of the public domain.

    The Spanish Kindle Store contains most of the bestsellers from Spain – both fiction and non-fiction. Amazon also boasts that the store has the most complete selection of Catalan, Basque, and Galician titles around.

    “We are excited to introduce the new Spanish Kindle Store which features the most best sellers in Spain, the leading selection of titles in Catalan, Basque and Galician and also includes unique and exclusive titles from Rosa Montero,” said Gordon Willoughby, Director, EU Kindle. “Kindle is already the best-selling e-reader in the world. It comes with an electronic ink display that reads like real paper, with no glare, even in bright daylight and it offers the convenience of downloading books in less than 60 seconds. Kindle is so small and light that it disappears in your hands, which is just what you want when you are reading a great story like ‘El puente de los asesinos,’ by Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

    “El Puente de los asesinos,” one of Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s Captain Alatriste novels, will run readers 9.49 Euros or about $13.

    The Spanish Kindle Store’s vast selection of content in a wide range of categories includes popular titles from best-selling authors such as Mario Vargas Llosa, Julia Navarro and Carlos Ruiz Zafón, as well as short form content from El País and La Vanguardia, uniquely available on Kindle. In addition, the store will launch with three exclusive self-published books from award-winning author and journalist Rosa Montero, using Kindle Direct Publishing.

    Amazon also unveiled the first Spanish language Kindle, which is available for 99EUR (about $133).

    ¡Lee!

  • YouTube Launches its Univision Channel

    YouTube Launches its Univision Channel

    In November, YouTube announced that it had struck a partnership with one of the top Spanish-language broadcast networks in America, Univision. The partnership would see YouTube providing both short clips and full shows from the network. YouTube has now announced the official launch of the Univision channel.

    The channel contains content from Univision’s three major networks: Univision, TeleFutura and Galavisión.

    YouTube - Univision

    "Some of the most popular shows on the channel include Univision’s morning show Despierta América (Wake-Up America); TeleFutura’s entertainment show Escándalo TV (ShowBiz TV), and Galavisión’s home decorating series Decorando Contigo (Decorating with You), among many others. The Univision channel on YouTube will also premiere weekly show recaps made just for YouTube viewers," says Shanna Preve, Strategic Partnerships at YouTube. "These videos will feature top Univision talent summarizing the best moments from Univision shows in the last week."

    "The partnership provides more premium, current, monetizeable content for our advertisers interested in reaching the growing online Hispanic demographic; Kraft Foods is the channel’s exclusive launch sponsor," adds Preve.

    The Univision YouTube channel represents the first time Univision programming has been made available on the Internet outside of the network’s own properties (at least legally).
     

    Related Articles:

    > YouTube, Univision Announce Partnership

    > YouTube Getting Serious About This Video Rental Thing

    > YouTube Makes Changes to Where Users Spend Most Time