Gas Station Robbery report. Notice the use of words.

Aug 6, 2006
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Here is the tale of an attempted gas station robbery in Barahona. What I find amusing is the author's use of words.

El desconocido penetr? al interior de la bomba y amenaz? al administrador Welington Pe?a con un arma de fabricaci?n casera (Chilena) de que le entregara el dinero de la venta o de lo contrario lo asesinar?a de un balazo.

Luego de que el administrador se percatara de que se trataba de un asalto le fuera encima al sujeto frustrando la acci?n vand?lica tras despojarlo del arma, aunque se inform? que el desconocido logr? escapar.

Se supo que el administrador tuvo que ser referido a un centro de salud tras sufrir laceraciones luego de un forcejeo escenificado en el lugar, mientras miembros de Investigaciones Criminales de la Polic?a Nacional se movilizaron a fin de investigar el caso.

"The unidentified suspect entered the station and threatened Manager Welington Pe?a with a homemade pistol Chiliena), demanding that he hand over the money in the register or he would shoot him.
As soon as the manager realized that he was being robbed, he flung himself on the thief after disarming him, although it was learned that the unidentified thief managed to escape.
It was revealed that the Manager had to go to a clinic to have some injuries attended to, while members of the National Police began to investigate the attempted robbery."

That is how I would translated it, anyway.

But the literal translation is more amusing. "The unknown penetrated the inside of the pump and threatened Manager WP with an arm of home manufacture (Chilean) that he deliver the money of the sale or on the contrary he would assassinate him with a bullet."
As soon as the manager perceived that it was a matter of an assault, he went on top of the subject, frustrating the action of vandalism after divesting him of the arm, although it was informed that the unknown succeeded in escaping.
It was known that the manager had to be referred to a center of health after suffering lacerations of a forced scene in the place, while members of the National Police mobilized themselves to the end of investigating the case."

Dominican newspapers tend to use a rather stilted prose and unusual words more than newspapers in Mexico, Argentina and Spain.

I think what is called a Chilena here is called a zip gun in the US.
It has been decades since I have heard of a zip gun used in a robbery in the States. We are crawling in real pistols.
 
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xstew

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Jul 4, 2012
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I like how they describe the car used in the robberys. Takes up half a page Color , year, tinted windows, two door Air conditioned,new tires, and coustom seat covers. The Dominican news loves cars!
 

popeye

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Jan 22, 2016
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zip guns are homemade weapons, really not guns or firearms per se. Now people may have changed the name out of a certain type of gun to be cool. However zip guns were made out of door latches mounted to small piece of wood. with the bolt filed down to a point. a smaller id piece of tubing was attached to insert 22 rim fire cartridge. coil spring was added to latch. you puled the latch, stuck it to victims head point blank and flipped the latch. that's a zip gun. most were made in prison
 

Marianopolita

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Dec 26, 2003
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Xavier, can you please post or reveal the source of the article. What Dominican newspaper is it?


I hardly read Dominican newspapers. I have to remind myself to do so every now and then and if I do it's List?n Diario. I find the syntax is brutal in many articles but of course it depends on the journalist and the meanderings in the story just make me hope to get to the end fast.


I agree with your statement here in your post:

Dominican newspapers tend to use a rather stilted prose and unusual words more than newspapers in Mexico, Argentina and Spain.

I read Spanish newspapers daily and tend to read a group for a few months and then look for another group for a few months and so on. However, newspapers from Spain and South America tend to appeal to me the most. Right now the newspapers I read are from Spain (always, I never leave out Spain), Uruguay, Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia.


-MP.
 

Virgo

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Oct 26, 2013
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Dominican newspapers tend to use a rather stilted prose and unusual words more than newspapers in Mexico, Argentina and Spain.

Unusual may be in the ears of the listener. I didn't find the description unusual. But a person from Mexico, Argentina, or Spain may have. Considering that several hundred million people over 4 continents are native Spanish speakers, I find Spanish (as spoken/written by reasonably educated people) to be fairly regular across countries.
 

Mauricio

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Nov 18, 2002
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I find the 'literal translation' a bit funny indeed, but it's not the literal translation of the original version, which was nothing extraordinary.

For example: balazo = shot, not bullet. Arma = weapon, not arm, to name two.
 

Virgo

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Oct 26, 2013
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I find the 'literal translation' a bit funny indeed, but it's not the literal translation of the original version, which was nothing extraordinary.

For example: balazo = shot, not bullet. Arma = weapon, not arm, to name two.
In English "arm" may also mean "weapon" (firearm, arms race, to arm, etc). But I agree that in this context weapon would seem a more natural translation.
 

Mauricio

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Nov 18, 2002
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In English "arm" may also mean "weapon" (firearm, arms race, to arm, etc). But I agree that in this context weapon would seem a more natural translation.

agreed, but in plural, or in compound words. I've never seen it as a singular word, probably to avoid confusion with the other meaning of arm.
 

Virgo

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Oct 26, 2013
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agreed, but in plural, or in compound words. I've never seen it as a singular word, probably to avoid confusion with the other meaning of arm.
Per Webster's, definition 3.1a of arm is "a means (as a weapon) of offense or defense; especially : firearm". It is obviously not the main use but it exists.
 

Derfish

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Jan 7, 2016
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Per Webster's, definition 3.1a of arm is "a means (as a weapon) of offense or defense; especially : firearm". It is obviously not the main use but it exists.

When I had to fill out a police report in Panama I reported the man had a knife and it was written down as arma blanca. I asked locally and that is how knife is translated when used as a weapon there.
Der Fish
 

Virgo

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Oct 26, 2013
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When I had to fill out a police report in Panama I reported the man had a knife and it was written down as arma blanca. I asked locally and that is how knife is translated when used as a weapon there.
Der Fish

"Arma blanca" is standard Spanish (mostly used in formal matters and news reports). It covers all sort of sword/knife-type weapons that depend on a metal blade, as opposed to gunpowder, as firearms = "armas de fuego".
 

dv8

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Sep 27, 2006
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Xavier, can you please post or reveal the source of the article. What Dominican newspaper is it?

I hardly read Dominican newspapers. I have to remind myself to do so every now and then and if I do it's List?n Diario. I find the syntax is brutal in many articles but of course it depends on the journalist and the meanderings in the story just make me hope to get to the end fast.

this is the article: http://www.ecosdelsur.net/2016/02/barahona-desconocido-intenta-asaltar.html#.VrikSfkrLcc
not a newspaper as such, just news site, one of many.

i also find syntax quite... laborious... in some articles here. it's either a lack of narrative skill (when texts seems like spoken word) or a certain tendency to over intellectualize something (most obvious in "opinions" section). sometimes i need to read a paragraph few times to understand what it means. sometimes miesposo needs to read it twice and he is a well educated native speaker.

lately my favourite newspaper is el caribe: simple, to the point and very tabloid like in the range of subjects. listin diario is always good quality. diario libre is at times rather pathetic and full of mistakes. hoy and el nacional are both decent.
 

Chirimoya

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Dec 9, 2002
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Articles rarely meet the minimum journalistic standard of addressing the five Ws - Who, What, When, Where, Why. It makes it very difficult when compiling the news stories for DR1. We always end up having to do detective work to fill in all sorts of gaps.

They often contain typos, and as has been frequently pointed out, foreign names are usually misspelled.

Writing large numbers using a combination of words and numbers is a strange convention - "18 mil 200" and the redundant commas after the first clause in the sentence makes no sense whatsoever.

For example, here is a correctly structured sentence:
Cristiano Ronaldo, delantero portugu?s del Real Madrid, se mostr? ambiguo respecto a su continuidad en el conjunto blanco a partir de 2018 al declarar que le quedan "un par de a?os" de contrato y despu?s "el futuro ya se ver?".

The comma after Ronaldo is valid because it is followed by a descriptive clause.

However, I often see sentences structured in this way:

Cristiano Ronaldo, se mostr? ambiguo respecto a su continuidad en el conjunto blanco a partir de 2018 al declarar que le quedan "un par de a?os" de contrato y despu?s "el futuro ya se ver?".

No need whatsoever for that comma after Ronaldo.
 

dv8

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Sep 27, 2006
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i have bad time with numbers. 1,000,000,000. in polish it's miliard. in DR it's mil millones. in english it's usually called billion. i'm perpetually confused.
 

Chirimoya

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Dec 9, 2002
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It is confusing. Un bill?n in Spanish still means a million million, which is a trillion in English (12 zeros).

In the UK one billion also used to mean a million million, but the US meaning has now taken over and it is one thousand million (9 zeros) in both countries.

Also, in Spanish the abbreviation "MM" means "millions" - which is easily misinterpreted by a non-Spanish speaker as "Mil Millones" or billions.
 
Aug 6, 2006
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This story was copied from Barahona's online newspaper/website Ecos del Sur.com.
Armas blancas are knives, swords, machetes, and all sorts of sharp and/or pointy bladed things. Armas negras/ armas de fuego are pistols, rifles and shotguns.
I agree that the English word ARMS is not an absolute equivalent of the Spanish las armas, and I suppose I could have translated this as "weapon". I tyhink everyone understands this. I note that sawed off shotguns, that resemble something a pirate might carry, are quite popular among the huachiman community.
There is a description on how to make several sorts of chilena on youtube, in both Spanish and English.

El Listin seems to me to be the most well written newspaper in the DR, though i confess I have not read them all and am therefore no expert. It seems to be the DR equivalent of the NYT or the Washington Post.

I used to translate English to Spanish and vice versa and get paid for it. The hardest things to translate are legal documents, because they seem to never use one word when three will do, and it is hard to translate legalese Spanish gibberish inot proper English gibberish.
Often I see words in Ecos del Sur that are not in any of the dictionaries that I have, and not even in the DRAE (Diccionario de la Real Academia de la Lengua Espa?ola) which is the absolute authority and has words for all sorts of minutiae.
I can usually figure out the meaning. There is always a less obscure word, I have found.
 

zoomzx11

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Jan 21, 2006
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Popeye knows his zip guns. These home made one shot zip guns are popular among gangs in DR due to very low cost. Lethal at short range. Good news is that if he misses the first shot you have plenty of time to bring out your high capacity 9mm which you should have at the ready. Wrestling with an armed robber is how you get killed.
 

Virgo

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Oct 26, 2013
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This story was copied from Barahona's online newspaper/website Ecos del Sur.com.
Armas blancas are knives, swords, machetes, and all sorts of sharp and/or pointy bladed things. Armas negras/ armas de fuego are pistols, rifles and shotguns.
Ecos del Sur would hardly qualify as a representative of Dominican newspapers. I doubt most Dominicans (not living in the immediate vicinity of where it's published) have heard of it.

I have never heard the term "armas negras" used to mean firearms. It's either "armas blancas" or "armas de fuego".