Spanish Saying April 17, 2008

“Haber sido cocinero antes que fraile” literally translates as “To have been a cook before a friar”. The colloquial meaning is “To know what one is (doing) or “talking about)”; “to speak from experience”.

Spanish Saying April 10, 2008

“Shoemaker’s children got no shoes” has two equivalents in Spanish, both involving professions or trades: “En casa de carpintero, puerta de cuero” and “En casa de herrero, cuchillo do palo”. The literal translations are “In house of carpenter, door of leather” and “In house of blacksmith, knife of stick”.

Spanish Idiom January 16, 2008

In English, a pejorative term for an office worker is “pen pusher”. The Spanish equivalent is “ink sucker” as in “chupatintas”.

Spanish Idiom September 24, 2007

Let’s lok at a couple of pejorative terms for two professions. In English an incompetent or fraudulent doctor is known a s a “quack”. In Spanish, the term is “curandero”. A lawyer who engages in questionable or unethical professional behavior is a “shyster”. A lawyer who improperly looks for cases is an “ambulance chaser”. The closest equivalent in Spanish is a “picapleitos” from “picar” which means to “poke” or “stir” and “pleitos” which means “lawsuits”.

Idiom of the Day May 10, 2007

In English we describe making a lot of money as “Making money by the bucket” or “Making money hand over fist”. In Spanish there is a colloquial saying nearly identical to the first: “Ganar el dinero a espuertas” which translates to “To make (earn) money by baskets”. Another Spanish idiom is “Ganar mas que un torero” which means “To earn more than a bullfighter”.

Idiom of the Day April 12, 2007

English: “To chain-smoke”

Spanish: “Fumar como un carretero”, which literally means “To smoke like a cart driver” You’d think that swearing would be more identified with a cart driver.

It occurs to me that the last name “Carter” must mean the same  as cart driver. English has many surnames that are derived from professions: Miller, Cooper, Carpenter, Smith, Chandler, Shoemaker, Tanner, Farmer, Baker and others I’m forgetting. Spanish also has some surnames signifying a trade, but I do not believe there are nearly as many. One prominent one is Zapatero (Shoemaker), one of the surnames of the current Spanish prime minister. My Spanish brother-in-law tells me that a trade based surname suggests Jewish origin because when Jews in Spain converted in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was common practice to adopt a new surname.