Lost in translation: Can we speak Spanish?

craiyon: Illustration Bill Murray wearing a Spanish flag pijama is seated in a bed

I am a Spanish coder working almost all my life in Spain and I have faced several funny situations about speaking my mother tongue.

I completely understand that English is the “Koiné” these days, and I enjoy speaking it, but sometimes this practical approach is challenged with some annoying measures, EG:

In Málaga (Spain), 95% of Spanish workers in the company, managers summoned several meetings to “Request speak English in the lunch break and after work”, two reasons given:

• The non-Spanish speakers could jump into any conversation and feel included.
• Some workers with a low level of English could train more, they need it.

Of course, this has no effect whatsoever. People wantto relax at these moments and If someone is speaking Spanish, part of the group will disconnect when you switch to English, it is just human nature.

I asked myself then: What is the minimum amount of non-Spanish workers to be able to Speak Spanish in the workplace? I am not asking about documentation or coding, because It is better to write it in the Koiné (for future coders to ignore it😆).

If the answer is “only one” because there is no harm in including everyone, I think this is ignoring the benefits of people expressing in their mother tongue.

Lost in translation

• Attention: Meetings are boring enough but if you switch to another language will increase this feeling.
• Accuracy: You can speak English reasonably well but you will never have the accuracy that you have in your mother tongue. Fun fact: I had to check with Google translate this very same sentence.
• Less stressing: Having the “translate switch” on all the time is exhausting. I stopped reading novels in English because I realised I didn’t relax/enjoy as in Spanish.
• Respect: Asking a Spaniard, in Spain, to speak English in his spare time may seem like contempt for Spanish culture.

I know for a fact this is a generalization: there are a minority of polyglots that don’t suffer these issues, but you can understand my main point.

I think it is worth considering creating same-mother-tongue teams and work groups could improve performance for some tasks.

Normalmente suelo pedirle a un amigo que domina mejor el inglés que yo que me corrija el artículo pero creo que es más divertido terminarlo tal y cómo está.

You can clap this article more than once but you can’t give me negative claps!