English to Spanish Translation

Avoid literal translation

Despite certain similarities between the English and Spanish languages, you should avoid literal translation when you translate English to Spanish as much as possible, whether you translate documents, articles, works of fiction, or any other types of text.

There are several reasons for that. Firstly, there are the so-called ‘false friends’ – words that look similar but have very different meanings, like ‘embarrassed’ and ‘embarazada’. Then there are English idols that simply do not have a word-for-word translation in Spanish. When you do English to Spanish translation, you have to look for Spanish equivalents to such idioms or other ways to communicate their meaning. Thirdly, there are significant cultural differences between English- and Spanish-speaking countries that can influence English to Spanish translation as well.

The professionals working for our translation company in Singapore know how to deal with these aspects to translate English to Spanish with high-quality results.

Account for the different text length

The English language tends to be more grammatically dense than Spanish: the same meaning can usually be contained in fewer symbols. The exact numbers depend on each particular text. In general, a Spanish translation tends to be about 25%-30% longer than its English original.

This needs to be taken into account in English to Spanish translations when you translate documents that are highly sensitive to formatting and the number of symbols: presentations, texts for mobile apps, advertisement, and others.

Which Spanish?

Similar to English, the Spanish language has many varieties. It is common to distinguish between European Spanish and Latin American Spanish. However, there are local dialects within European Spanish, and a different variety of Spanish is spoken in each country in Latin America, which can also be further subdivided into local dialects.

When you translate English to Spanish, you must be aware of the Spanish variety your document needs to be translated into.

English has fewer native speakers than Spanish

At the moment, with over a billion speakers, English is the most widely spoken language of the world. It is used by international organizations and the world’s top companies. It is the most popular language among foreign language learners. However, English is not the language with the most native speakers in the world.  

If we rank languages by the number of native speakers, English takes third place with around 380 million. Number one is Chinese with almost a billion native speakers, and number two is Spanish with around 480 million.

English and Spanish are among the most wide-spread languages in the world, which results in high demand for high-quality English to Spanish translation.

The largest vocabulary in the world

It is hard to count the exact number of words in a language, and estimates of how many words the English language has differ. However, with over one billion words, English is considered to be the language with the largest vocabulary in the world.

It is partly the result of the colonial history of the English language. ‘Traveling’ around the globe and interacted with various languages, English borrowed from them, sometimes quite heavily. Foreign words remained in use along with the English ones, creating multiple synonyms and near-synonyms.

Not all of these billion words are used in daily interaction, oral or written, but it is still important to keep this in mind when you translate English to Spanish as it is often important to translate subtle shades of meaning expressed by the synonyms accurately.