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Explaining the Financial Crisis in Spanish

In the last several weeks, our Spanish has improved dramatically. We can perform most of the day-to-day tasks (ordering in a restaurant, taking a cab, running errands etc). However, I still find it difficult to explain complex concepts.

For example, a few weeks ago, I went to a spanish-english language practice event. Each of the expats was paired with a native Spanish speaker looking to work on their English. I found it easy to make small talk about my family, my indian culture, and other simple topics, until we somehow transitioned into a discussion on economics and finance. The native speaker that I was paired with was particularly interested in understanding the financial crisis – a topic I’ve explained hundreds of times in English, but have never had to articulate in a foreign language!

It was very interesting! Right off the bat, I realized that my vocabulary was limited. Specifically, I had to explain certain concepts (such as leverage) for which I didn’t know the appropriate terms in Spanish. Roughly translated, my explanation went something like this:

“There were many people and companies who wanted to buy things. They didn’t have the money to buy these things, so they used credit cards to make the purchases. Eventually, they had to repay these credit cards. But they didn’t have the money for that either, so instead they got new credit cards to pay off the old ones. Eventually they needed to pay very large amounts of money each month, and couldn’t get any new credit cards. Companies did the same thing, but not with credit cards, but with money from the bank. Once people lost their jobs, they couldn’t make their payments, and this led to a bad cycle. There was no confidence in the financial system.”

One of the hardest things about a foreign language is coming up with a new way to explain things with limited vocabulary. My explanation was definitely not fully accurate (I left out all sorts of issues about different securities and incentive problems), but at the same time, my native Spanish speaking partner definitely got the idea.

This is my first time struggling with something like this – would love to hear suggestions/comments about similar experiences.

April 5th, 2010 | Category: Sathvik, Uncategorized

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