Valen Iricibar Another year, another Herald vote on our favorite translation trouble! I asked the newsroom to decide which terms they thought best represented us, and the year we’ve just had. We got a tie for first place between a very Argentine political term and a sweet Spanglishism born of our unique communication style. Well, I reckon that sums us up perfectly.
Opereta
Ah, operetas. If only we were talking about light opera.
We also talked about carpetazos this year, the moment when you finally hit someone you’ve been spying on with receipts. Publicly. It’s often ugly. That’s part of an operación política, the murky chessboard of cut-throat political maneuvering and wielding the media as a weapon. The victim is “operated on” — me están operando. Think high-profile accusations, supposed “scoops” being fed to the press and sensitive information about a candidate surfacing at just the right moment to cause maximum damage.
Many high-profile Argentines cry opereta when news breaks of their alleged wrongdoings. Now, opereta can be used as a synonym for operación política. But the way I see it, operación can involve both disinformation and inconvenient truths maliciously publicized. However, opereta is used almost exclusively to denote that the “operation” is based on lies and deceit. That’s my intuition, at least. Opereta can also refer to the agent of disinformation or espionage.
Either way, we’re well used to assuming operaciones and looking around for possible enemies with motive when someone gets burned. As a newsroom, we saw many, many stories this year where terms like carpetazo and opereta/operación were sadly prevalent.
As a bonus, we also have “clamor operations” in Argentine politics.
Green beans
Constantly switching back and forth between two languages means there’s a lot of space for bilingual weirdness — see “falop” being our 2023 word of the year. A key element of the Herald’s lingo is purposeful mistranslation, and one of our favorites, coined by Judith, is “green beans.”
Perhaps some with similarly-wired brains already got it, but green beans in Spanish are chauchas. In Argentina, we say chau for goodbye (from the Italian ciao), which gives rise to many forms: chaucito, chauchau, chauchis, and of course, chauchas.
Since I jotted down this delightful “translation trouble” in January, we’ve even created a smiling little green bean emoji with jazz hands on Slack. It has more than earned the top spot.
You may also be interested in: These stories defined Argentina in 2024
We also had a tie for second place: a 20th-century scam and some fun food for thought.
Comprar un buzón
Agustín described those who bought tickets to the farcically disappointing Willy Wonka event that went viral in February as having “bought a mailbox” — compraron un buzón. There are several origin stories for this phrase, which means to be remarkably ripped off, and most come from Buenos Aires in the early 20th century. In his widely-cited 1988 anthology about porteño scams, Alberto Thaler claims that in 1928, con artists would stand by mailboxes and pose as their owners, ostensibly charging people for sending their letters — accomplices who were in on the sting.
After a few hours, a target would ask how they could get a mailbox of their own and immediately receive the magnanimous offer to buy that same one (often, the con artists lamented they had to sell it because they had to visit a sick family member elsewhere). The “mailbox seller” would disappear among the crowds and the new “mailbox owner” left with their ill-advised purchase — presumably getting a rude awakening from the next person dropping off their mail.
Voting on our favorite terms of the year 10 months later, I’m pretty sure we weren’t just talking about dispirited Scottish children.
La verdad de la milanesa
Why would you say something so prosaic as “the truth of the matter” when you could say “the truth of the milanesa”? We celebrate Milanesa Day in May here, an informal date to honor the quintessentially Argentine dish descended from the Italian cotoletta alla milanese which can be eaten in a myriad of ways: with mash, “on a horse,” or “Neapolitan style” (anathema to the Italian north/south divide, I know).
But what on earth is the verdad de la milanesa? Ironically, there doesn’t seem to be one true story as to why we say this. Theories range from international debates about the original recipe (the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, or indeed…Milan) to the fact that you can’t know the “truth” until you cut into it and reveal whether it’s meat, fish, soy, whatever the case may be.
Given how important they are to us, I’m not surprised that milanesas were chosen to represent irrefutable fact. Although if our intense newsroom discussions about our milanesa choices were any indication, we’re all out here living our own truths.
You may also be interested in: Five ways to enjoy milanesas, Argentina’s favorite dish
As a little extra to send us off, here are some runner-ups from other 2024 translation troubles:
Special mention to autoconvocades, a personal favorite, and berenjenal, because a lot about 2024 was a minefield, but we muddled through.
Green beans and feliz año nuevo, readers — see you in 2025!
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