This – the second guest posting on our company blog – comes from Spanish translator Carlos Montilla. Unsurprisingly, given the subject of his post, tourism is one of his specialisms but here he recounts a tale from his recent trip to Peru in near native English: cheers Carlos!
Spanish from Peru
Puno is a city in south Peru located on the shore of Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest navigable lake. Puno’s access to the lake is surrounded by some 40 man-made floating islands inhabited by the Uros people. The Uros people live on these islands and depend on the lake and tourism for their survival. We took a boat with members of a Chivay Cultural Association and their families and disembarked at one of the islands, where part of the Uros community welcomed us.
We were seated in front of a picture of the islands and a member of the community told us all about it: the building of the islands, the diet of the Uros people… Members of the Chivay Cultural Association asked some questions which were properly answered. At one point, the man who had given all the explanations turned to me and asked me, in English, where was I from. I told him I was from Barcelona, in Spain. “Welcome to Lake Titicaca,” he said, still in English. “You can speak in Spanish”, I told him. With the greatest of smiles on his face, he replied: “Oh, how nice, you’ve learned our language!”
2 June 2009 16:51