The English School, Barcelona struggles with English

I liked this bit about the school spelling competition:

Obviously, spelling in our three languages causes problems, but these are gradually overcomed with a high standard being obtained.

The site is full of simple errors, so that the school’s claim to offer “a high quality academical, linguistic and cultural education” seems dubious in at least one respect.

(Thanks JD)

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Published
Last updated 03/07/2018

This post pre-dates my organ-grinding days, and may be imported from elsewhere.

Barcelona (1399):

Catalonia (1155):

English language (462):

Föcked Translation (414): I posted to a light-hearted blog called Fucked Translation over on Blogger from 2007 to 2016, when I was often in Barcelona. Its original subtitle was "What happens when Spanish institutions and businesses give translation contracts to relatives or to some guy in a bar who once went to London and only charges 0.05€/word." I never actually did much Spanish-English translation (most of my work is from Dutch, French and German) but I was intrigued and amused by the hubristic Spanish belief, then common, that nepotism and quality went hand in hand, and by the nemeses that inevitably followed.

Spain (1881):

Spanish language (504):

The English School (1): The English School may refer to: The English School, Nicosia, a school in Nicosia, Cyprus The English School, Kuwait, a school in Kuwait The English School, a school in Bogotá, Colombia English School attached to Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, a school in Guangzhou, China English school of international relations theory English School of Painting, a dominant school of painting in England, active in 1750–1850.

Translation (788):


Comments

  1. Hell, I think I have seen that quite some time ago. It's hilarious!

    Mind that the Catalan version is not much better: "Quan l´alumne aconsegueix la conscienciació, la motivació resulta més fàcil. Per tant, la treballem de que l´alumne és molt petit com a elements motivadors hi són principalment la lectura(individual i col.lectiva,dins l´aula, a labiblioteca, a casa…), o d´altres com ara el concurs d´ortografia( sempre trilíngüe), etc…"

    What is the English word for chapuza?

    Bravo for checking them out and calling them on!

  2. In all fairness it should perhaps be said that both the Deutsche Schule and the Lycée Français are aided by their respective states, while Spanish-language schools passing themselves off as English-language schools can afaik count on funding from neither government.

  3. Sorry, the misunderstanding is because of my lack of clarity: I called the other schools smarter because they don't even put the Catalan flaglet on their web's to indicate texts in that language. They're in French or German plus only Spanish.

  4. Hahaha, that's the mental image of you I actually didn't want to have.

    (PS: I swear I haven't been to Barcelona since last summer, and you'll be the first to know once I can *finally* make the trip.)

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