MercyCorps is an humanitarian organisation founded in 1979 to help people struggling to get a better life. This text deals with an unfortunately current event such as the situation of Syrian refugees. Being a sensitive issue, and given that this is addressed to any potential person interested in helping, it is important to be careful with the language used, in order to present the ongoing facts and the urgent character of the help needed. Along the text we can find several words describing the hardships the refugees are going through. Therefore, the rendering in the target language should be direct and straightforward, yet formal. That is why I decided to use “Tú” instead of “Usted” or even “Vosotros”; that way, there is not a distance between the author of the text and the adressee. The subject in this type of sentences is usually omitted in Spanish, however, the emphatic use of the pronoun can reinforce the idea that the readers, as individuals, can contribute. Reiteration in English is more common than it is in Spanish. Although the repeating of "help" is probably a strategy to stress it, in the Spanish version it has been translated as "ayudar", "cooperar" and
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According to the U.N., it will take $7.7 billion to meet the urgent needs of the most vulnerable Syrians in 2016. In British English, a billion is the same as a Spanish “billón”, a million million, whereas in American English a billion equates to a thousand million. MercyCorps seems to have a multicultural staff from several countries, and the use of the word “neighbouring”, as opposed to the American spelling “neighboring”, may lead us to think in British English terms. However, since they mention they are dollars and they address the petition to the (American, I assume) Congress, it has been translated as “7,7 miles de millones de dólares”. Also, the point used as decimal mark in the original text has been replaced by a comma in the Spanish translation, according to the
According to the U.N., it will take $7.7 billion to meet the urgent needs of the most vulnerable Syrians in 2016. In British English, a billion is the same as a Spanish “billón”, a million million, whereas in American English a billion equates to a thousand million. MercyCorps seems to have a multicultural staff from several countries, and the use of the word “neighbouring”, as opposed to the American spelling “neighboring”, may lead us to think in British English terms. However, since they mention they are dollars and they address the petition to the (American, I assume) Congress, it has been translated as “7,7 miles de millones de dólares”. Also, the point used as decimal mark in the original text has been replaced by a comma in the Spanish translation, according to the