Hablando mal y pronto

I was left baffled when I said hablando mal y pronto in the newsroom and asked how I would say that in English. Completely derailed my train of thought, but crossed bilingual wires are my favorite.

Hablando mal y pronto means “speaking badly and soon.” It’s basically a little warning that you’re just blurting something out. Hablando mal y pronto is saying something prematurely, or with a high chance of being wrong, or literally saying the wrong words (perhaps with some swearing in there), or a combination of the three. Kind of like speaking off the top of your head — I think that’s the closest translation — but worse. Or, in my opinion, better: it makes for a superior disclaimer when I’m not 100% sure or just throwing ideas out there.

Fierros

Iron is apparently some form of linguistic kryptonite in this newsroom, the possible meanings as wideranging as the metal itself. From making the iron, we come to “irons” or fierros. The article in question was the translation of an investigative piece looking into a far-right digital militia with links to the government. The trolls in question were described as a force that handles los fierros del Estado, the “irons of the state.”

Possible lunfardo translations would be a gun, like a revolver, or a knife. Dar fierro, to “give iron,” is to physically punish someone, as is meter fierro, to “put in some iron.” But if someone is referred to as being de fierro, made of iron, they’re fiercely loyal. Someone pointed out it could refer to a car, which I’d never heard before. And just to prove my prior point, it can also be sexual: hecho un fierro as in “having become an iron” or “being all of an iron” (this sounds so bizarre) is like. You’re a stud? If lunfardo had been a thing during Martín Fierro’s time, I wonder what jokes his last name might have engendered.

Anyway. Fierros del estado. The literal translation is “guns of the state,” but it should be noted that the context wasn’t that a bunch of far-right trolls are being handed revolvers to aid in their doxxing and harassment of opposition to the government. It’s that they have access to state structures, including any tools of coercion it could employ — literal fierros or not.

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