Two worlds collide

I love to translate. I also love to crochet. There has been a surprisingly large overlap in these two areas in my life ever since I started my Spanish-language crocheting blog.

All my blogs are a labor of love. With this blog, my main goals were to give my translation work a little exposure, and to talk about issues in the translation industry to an audience interested in reading about such issues (as opposed to alienating friends and family by droning about code placement in Déjá Vu X or babbling about translation memory maintenance). Similarly, I use my crocheting blog to display projects I am working on. Granted, there are no worries about breaching confidentiality agreements.

As much fun as the crocheting blog is, I do wonder why did I decide to make it a Spanish-language enterprise. True, Web resources in languages other than English are considerably fewer. And my blog is mostly photos and captions. But acquiring the Spanish terminology for crocheting has presented challenge. I learned to crochet from a book in English. All of my crocheting patterns are in English. All the crocheting/knitting sites I visit? English. Sites where I buy yarn and supplies? English.

I was reading the "Learn how to Crochet" instructions in Spanish at the Lion Brand page. It was a rather humbling experience. I know what a cadeneta (chain stitch) is, of course. Other basic stitches? Looking at the titles for the lessons, I had a little trouble figuring one which one was for a double stitch (vareta simple), a half double (media vareta doble), or a triple (vareta triple). It doesn't help that these stitches appear under more than one name in English.

I am going to learn the terminology; it will help my blog and might also lead to jobs in this subject. One thing's for sure; Lion Brand needs to proofread the Spanish knitting instructions. I mean, "Aprenda Tejer" (literally, "learn knit")? Are you kidding me?