Friday, January 18, 2008

Indexing in Spanish

acortamiento: 160
anglicismos: 123-126
árabe: 146-147

It’s not easy to index a book written in a language you’ve never formally studied. Knowledge of a language is often described in terms of how well you can understand written or spoken forms and how well you can produce written or spoken forms. Should “indexing knowledge” join “reading knowledge” and “conversational knowledge” as a way to list language skills on a résumé? Does puzzling out lots of subway signs in Spanish as a child qualify me to index a textbook written in Spanish? Indexing skills can transfer, but this has definitely been one of the odder challenges of the past week.

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