Lost in translation.

• Author: Rodriguez, Antonio
• Position: UPFRONT - Letter to the editor

I wasn't familiar with Americas until my cousin gave me several issues [in Spanish]. In the April 2008 issue, the title of a story on ginseng is Una perdurable panacea ["An Enduring Panacea"]. I wonder why it isn't called Una panacea perdurable. Your magazine constantly transposes nouns and adjectives. It's a shame that such interesting articles aren't better translated. It's bad enough to hear Spanish butchered on Spanish-language TV stations without further corrupting the culture and language with poor translations.

It's one thing to transpose the noun and adjective occasionally for lyrical effect, but quite another to make this a constant pattern. In the same issue, Machu Picchu is described as the grand prize at the end of un agotador peregrinaje instead of un peregrinaje agotador (a demanding pilgrimage). Reading articles in tiffs anglicized style is too demanding for me.

Antonio Rodriguez

[via e-mail]

Spanish editor's response: We appreciate your concern about the purity of the Spanish language, in terms of the placement of the adjective before or after the noun. It is certainly sad to see...