infundibulum

Here in Montgomery County, Maryland, there’s a paper called “El Tiempo Latino.” Which I read because it’s *cough* free. The paper is published by the Washington Post. (Not sure, actually, if it started off that way or was bought…)

A couple days ago, this article caught my attention:

Enseñanza multilingüe: Frente a un pedido oficial, escuelas del área inician clases de español, y otros idiomas, desde la guardería (Multilingual education: In accord with an official requirement, area schools initiate classes in Spanish and other languages, beginning in preschool)

Well anyway, that’s my own translation of the headline and blurb. Since it’s an interesting article in its own right, I figured I’d look it up on the web and translate the key bits. So I googled the author, and lo and behold, the original was in English, at the Washington Post:

Schools Try Elementary Approach To Teaching Foreign Languages

Interestingly, as far as I can tell, there’s no formal indication at all that translation was involved. The English version is probably the original, since it’s much longer (1400 words vs. 400 in Spanish), but no translator’s name is mentioned.

One often comes across newspaper pieces that carry taglines at the end, along the lines of “So-and-so contributed to this article…” Why shouldn’t the translator get any such credit?