In
my ever-constant pursuit of Spanish fluency, I have come to notice like any
struggling student the advantages and the pit-falls of the written versus the
spoken word. There are certain things you can easily “get away with” saying to
someone in a grammatically incorrect way,
that unfortunately stand out as glaringly wrong in written form. For
example, when I’m speaking with my patients in Spanish, sometimes I’ll say
something that, the split second I say it I know I should probably be using a
verb conjugated in the subjunctive. But, I’ll get unsure of myself and nervous
about changing a “puedo” to a “pueda” or a “va” to a “vaya” and instead I’ll
just gloss over it, using the present indicative, and hoping the listener
didn’t catch my mistake. And, it’s very possible they didn’t catch my mistake,
if I say it fast enough or with a lilt of an accent. But when I’m writing something in Spanish, well, I
can’t evade grammatical errors so easily. It’s right there, smack in front of
the reader. In black and white. Yikes!
Throughout
my med school and residency years, and now especially while in private
practice, I have always done mini-translations from English to Spanish. These
included simple explanations of eye diseases, instructions to patients on how
to use their eye drops and consent forms for various procedures. While I feel
I’ve done fairly well with these translations, I’ve never had any formal
guidance as to whether or not I’m actually doing them correctly. I want my
grammar to be correct. I want the end-product to look professional. So, I
finally decided to enroll in a translation course to gauge just what I’ve been
doing, and how to improve upon it.
The
truth is, when something is written in a sloppy way, with many grammar and
punctuation errors, it doesn’t give the reader much confidence in what he is
reading. Now imagine a doctor’s office and a consent form for cataract surgery.
If poorly written, with incorrect word choices and mistakes, it really will
make the patient doubt the skills of his surgeon. After all, if the surgeon doesn’t take the
time to make sure his descriptions of the surgery are pristine, maybe he
doesn’t take the time to focus on all the fine details of his surgery, as well?
It may seem like I’m reaching too far with this analogy, but truly, the manner
in which we present ourselves dictates our attention to detail, care, skill (or
complete lack thereof).
My
first item of business is to try and tackle the idea of the subjunctive. I’ve
been looking for some online resources and found an interesting article from
the language blog FluentU. Nick, author
of “How to Survive the Spanish Subjunctive”, describes subjunctive as, “... a
mood. It is not a tense because it has nothing to do with time, rather it
conveys a sense of uncertainty or conditionality.”He continues on to give word
“triggers” that serve as little warning signs that the subjunctive conjugation
should follow. For example:
Yo
quiero que tú vayas al cine conmigo. * I
want you to go to the movies with me.
Ella
espera que él tenga un buen viaje. * She
hopes/wishes he has a good trip.
Dudo
que ella esté aquí. * I doubt that she is here.
No
es cierto que hagamos el trabajo hoy. * It
isn’t certain that we’re doing the job today.
Essentially,
any sentence that starts off with words indicating uncertainty or a desire
propels the rest of the sentence into the subjunctive. In Spanish, many times
these phrases will use “que” or “that”
as in,
I
hope that she is coming to the party. * Espero que
ella venga a la fiesta.
The
confusing part is, we don’t always use the word ‘that’ in English, but it is
still subjunctive nevertheless:
I
hope she’s coming to the party. -- No
‘that’ in this sentence, but still a subjunctive clause.
The
blog article concludes by saying that even if you neglect to use subjunctive in
your speech, chances are “...Spanish speakers will understand what you’re
trying to say.” This is true. If you make mistakes when conversing, you
probably can get away with it.
But
as for my Spanish languages goals, I want to do more than simply gloss over my
mistakes. I want to speak and write in a polished way. I want my patients to have confidence in what
they are hearing and reading. I am hoping that this translation course helps me
to reach these goals. I suppose then the
only ‘cure’ for my subjunctivitis is continued work and perseverance--a
willingness to try and learn from my mistakes.
References
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