ESI Professional and the Split Function - Part I
Both English and Spanish are languages which are extremely rich in popular sayings, colloquial expressions and idioms of all kinds. Many a time, an idiom in English will not correspond word for word to its equivalent in Spanish. The idea is expressed in totally different words in both languages.
Since we create our own dictionaries, this is not a problem for us. We create them and edit them any way we want. While doing so, Word Magic Software tries at all times to preserve the idea or concept behind such expressions and thus, the translation will always come out in totally different words but conveying the same concept in the opposite language.
Take a very simple and common English expression such as:
It’s a piece of cake!
The idea conveyed by this idiom is further clarified by Word Magic’s own set of synonyms available in the Dictionary: “be a snap, be a walk in the park, be plain sailing, be a duck soup, be a pushover”, and, finally by its plain meaning: “be a very easy thing to do”
This is translated into Spanish by ESI as:
It’s a piece of cake! = ¡Es pan comido!
If you take a look at the translation options given by ESI Professional’s Interactive Window you will notice that you can say this same thing in Spanish in four different ways, all conveying the same idea. The explanation is found there also: “Es una cosa facilísima”
However, what do you do if you literally mean an actual piece of cake? Then the translation would have to be put in totally different words! What can you do? Does ESI give you any options?
ESI Professional offers you two different ways with which you can translate this idiom literally: One of them is the “SPLIT” function, which you can access by clicking on the corresponding icon in the lower toolbar of the Modifiers window.
Simply select the idiom “is a piece of cake” by clicking over it in the Interactive box and next click on the Split button.
You will see the output immediately changing to “¡Es un pedazo de queque!” |
