Valen Iricibar 
Another week, another interesting mixture of terms with deeper meanings and history that aren’t captured by their direct translations — that’s what these “translation troubles” are for.
“La tenés adentro”
It’s not all rainbows and mates when conveying Argentine culture in English. With the arrival of our new sports guy, Fernando, we’ve had to dip our toes into the hurtful and offensive language that often peppers Argentine football.
This week, editor Juan explained that the infamous phrase “la tenés adentro” was injected into the mainstream by football legend Diego Maradona in 2009. It literally means “you have it inside you” — basically insinuating that the target is being penetrated, a violently homophobic way of equalling certain sex acts to “dominating” a man and placing the receiver in a “submissive” position.
Maradona directed the insult at a journalist, incidentally, at a press conference — the phrase was shortened to #LTA and slipped into everyday parlance. Unfortunately, it’s now made it to the United States where Inter Miami fans used it on social media after rival fans vandalized a mural featuring new star player Lionel Messi.
“La venían pifiando feo”
The Central Bank announced that it would postpone the publication of a key inflation report until after the primary elections. Amid speculation about why this was the case, one government source told the Herald that consulting firms “had been screwing up badly” — la venían pifiando feo.
An apt translation but it led us, as usual, down a rabbit hole of etymological exploration — where does pifiar come from? Apparently, we have the German pfeifen to thank, meaning to “whistle.” What’s less clear is whether it comes from disapproving whistles from a disgruntled audience or the piercingly egregious whistle that comes from a flute being played wrong. Add feo or “ugly” for emphasis and you have quite the descriptor.
Whatever its origin, ugly whistling is not something you want to hear about numbers as sensitive as Argentina’s projected inflation index.
Perejil
This one came up in conversation in the newsroom — using the term perejil for an innocent person who is deliberately blamed for a crime in order to cover up for the real perpetrator. The alternatives we came up with were “fall guy” or “scapegoat” but perejil has the added implication of someone being unimportant.
According to the Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero, the original lunfardo term referred to someone on the lower rungs of an organization. It apparently changed during the last military dictatorship to include the risk of being wrongfully detained due to that lack of hierarchy.
There’s also the fun proximity to gil, another lunfardo word that means “idiot” — given how parsley’s reputation has been dragged through the mud, I should clarify that their origins are different and a perejil doesn’t necessarily lack intelligence.
Perrear
Another one that came up in conversation: this time we were talking about Tini Stoessel’s breakup (one of her songs has perreando in the title). The term is intimately tied to reggaetón and Puerto Rico, meaning to move your hips and drop to a squatting position with the music, usually in a sexy way.
One reporter suggested “twerking,” and indeed Wikipedia seems to agree: they’re pretty similar but it doesn’t quite fit. For one thing, perrear often means dancing pressed close to a partner and rubbing against each other, which in English would be “grinding.” For another, twerking feels too specific both culturally and mechanically to use as a direct equivalent. If we wanted to talk about twerking, we would just say the English word “twerking.”
So twerking can be part of your perreo repertoire but if, like me, your body absolutely cannot handle the art form, fear not. In Argentina, you can shake your thing and perrear without it — it’s about feeling yourself and the moment. Just please don’t refer to it as “dogging.”
