Now we will continue by analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of translating for a specific country. Finally, we will give you a short description of the Spanish spoken in Spain and its differences. We will also make a comparison of Spanish in Spain vs Latin America.

Translating for a Specific Latin American country

Spanish speakers are distributed in over 25 countries. The grammatical structure of the language is shared. Still, there are differences among countries and even among regions in the same country, such as pronouns, verb conjugations, and specific words and expressions.

If you are directing your content to one specific Spanish speaking country, you can take advantage of that to get translations that are aimed straight at your audience.

This is particularly important for translations such as publicity, marketing strategies, social media content, and other advertisements users want personalized experiences that speak to them.

3 out of 4 customers prefer to buy products in their native language. This means that if a potential customer can’t understand the content, they won’t even try to shop and will leave. When translating for advertising purposes; it is highly recommended to focus on the target audience, in this case, the specific country, to increase the desired impact.

As a company, you must do your research and decide what type of Spanish will be the one that meets your needs: either translate your content into Latin American Spanish for a more generic solution or localize it for each target country or region, for a more personalized connection with each audience.

In conclusion: translating for a specific country demands a special effort that is widely rewarded. You can talk to your audience as one of them and make them feel comfortable. That being said, please bear in mind that you will be narrowing the reach of your message to only that country.

Spanish from Spain

Reaching the end of this article, there is one type of Spanish that is as unique as the others: Spanish from Spain.

Let’s start by saying that in Latin American countries, the Spanish language is called español (Spanish) as that is from where the language was brought. However, In Spain, the Spanish language is called Castellano (Castilian), which refers to the historical region of Castile where the language was originated. Spaniards do not call the language español because other languages like Catalan (or Valencian), Galician and Basque, which are spoken in Spain, would also be considered Spanish languages (lenguas españolas).

Spain is the only Spanish-speaking country where the pronoun “vosotros” is used, giving Spaniards an extra ending to memorize for each tense.

Another important aspect of the Spanish spoken in Spain is that it tends to keep loan words to a minimum. While in Latin America we’ll use English words like “Mouse” (as in a computer mouse), in Spain you’ll find the translated “Ratón”.

Moreover, word choices are different in almost every aspect of life.

In conclusion: this type of Spanish is very different from the other types of Spanish discussed in this series. If your audience is in Spain we highly recommend you to localize the content for them and stay away from using a more “generic” or “neutral” approach.

Final thoughts

In this series, we talked about each region having its own particularities, and why choosing the right Spanish might be challenging. Make sure to gather market data and discuss a strategic plan with your language service provider in order to determine what’s the best strategy to localize your content.

Choosing the right provider is no easy task either. Discuss with your potential vendors the qualifications and experience of their translators, their quality assurance process, and their confidentiality.

At Australis we offer comprehensive translation services to advertising agencies, educational institutions, financial and insurance companies, market research companies, medical and health care providers, media and marketing companies, among others. If you still want to learn more about what we do and how we do it, please subscribe to this Blog.

SOURCES:

https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-47036609

https://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/anuario/anuario_20/bibang_larre/p04.htm

https://www.languageline.com/hubfs/Downloads/Guide-to-Translation-and-Localization.pdf

https://wpforms.com/digital-marketing-statistics/

https://www.responsify.com/digital-marketing-statistics/

Images:

1. By Heraldry – Own work,, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7185231 – modified to highlight  the countries
2. By Rob984 – Derived from File:Germany on the globe (Germany centered).svg, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70142704

Getting this aspect right can set you on the right path to communicating with your audience of choice in their language. On the other hand, getting it wrong would make your message sound strange and unnatural.

Spanish is a very diverse language. According to the Cervantes Spanish Institute, in 2020, almost 489 million people have Spanish as their native language. The group of potential Spanish speakers globally exceeds 585 million, which is 7.5% of the world population. Given this wide range of people and knowing this is the second most spoken language globally, it’s no surprise that it might be hard for people from a Latin American country like Ecuador to understand someone from Spain. They both speak Spanish, but their dialects are different.

Does this mean that you need to make a Spanish translation for each country? The answer is “It Depends”. In this article, we will discuss the four most common ways to define the target audience for Spanish, so you can choose the one that matches your necessities:

• Spanish in USA
• Spanish in Latin America
• Specific country
• Spanish from Spain

Spanish in USA

According to the BBC in January of 2019, almost 59 million people in the United States come from Latin America, representing 18% of the population and 18 countries in Latin America speak Spanish.

Each country has its own variations, slang, idioms, colloquial expressions, and regionalisms. This means that when translating to Spanish for the United States, we set regionalism aside and propose neutral generic terms and expressions.

Spanish in USA has a lot of similarities with American English. For example, the use of English capitalization is accepted. US Spanish also uses a period as a decimal separator and a comma as thousand separators. The American units of measurement are used for US Spanish as well, and dates are written in the same format: mm/dd/yy.

In conclusion: this is a good general-purpose type of Spanish recommended if your main focus is on Spanish speakers living in the US.

Latin American Spanish

If you desire to pursue Latin American audiences’ attention, you must know the differences between this type of Spanish and the rest. Latin American Spanish is the so-called “Neutral” Spanish; this is used for international movies, international advertisement campaigns, and documents that must be understood in several countries. As with the US Spanish, Latin American Spanish avoids using regionalisms, slangs, and other language particularities that are not understood in other

countries. However, it is not written in the same way or with the same rules or exceptions as the US Spanish because its audience is not used to interact with the English language.

This type of Spanish is grammatically similar to the Spanish from Spain, and the RAE (Real Academia Española) rules are used and accepted by the majority of the population.

Some rules for Latin American Spanish are:

• Date format (dd/mm/yy)
• Use of a period as a thousands separator and a comma as a decimal separator
• It uses the Metric system.
• The RAE indicates that Family names including the letter “ñ” in Spanish must be included, (while in the U.S, Spanish might be omitted and replaced by an “n”)
• When writing the time, is used “a. m.” and “p. m.” (unlike U.S. Spanish that can use “am” and “pm” or “AM,” “PM” or “A.M.” and “P.M.”).

In conclusion: this is the best option to choose when your content is aimed at all of Latin America. It isn’t a flavor spoken by any country in particular but it is accepted by all.

In the next post, we will explore when it is appropriate to localize your content for a specific country and discuss the particularities of the Spanish language used in Spain. (Link to Part 2 of this post)

Images:

1. By Martin23230 (mapa base/base map) – This file was derived from:  Americas (orthographic projection).svg:, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81817200
2. By Heraldry – Own work,, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7185231  File:Latin America (orthographic projection).svg – Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org – Modified with the removal of Brazil