Talk:El Águila de Veracruz

Team name

Because this page often gets edits from non-native speakers, it is reasonable to assume the team’s name is correctly rendered Red Eagles. However, this is not the case: the club’s name in Spanish isn’t Águilas Rojas but Rojos del Águila. (You will occasionally hear the team referred to as “El Águila” but never “los Águilas.”) The Águila part comes from the fact that this was originally a company team of the Eagle Petroleum Company. —Wiki Wikardo 21:12, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Is the team ever simply called "los Rojos"? The most literal word-for-word translation of the name is "Reds of the Eagle of Veracruz", which could also be interpreted as "Veracruz Reds of the Eagle" or "Reds of the Veracruz Eagle", etc. I'm not sure which of the latter two is the meaning the team intends, since Spanish is ambiguous with this kind of grammar. I also know nothing about the topic; I just have a strong interest in the Spanish language. Wolfdog (talk) 23:26, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Hm, interesting. My involvement in the article was as a copy editor, not a translator, so I'm not sure how much I can really weigh in. My personal preference is to never translate proper nouns, so I would probably render it "el Águila" or "Rojos del Águila" throughout the article with a translation note in the opening paragraph (i.e. "which can be translated as 'The Reds of the Veracruz Eagle'" or whatever).

"The Reds" or "The Eagles" would be the most English-comfortable way to translate it, I guess, but I'm not sure I'd use the former if the team is never called "los Rojos," and the latter is more of a transposition to what would be natural if the name had evolved in English, rather than an actual translation.

Another thought, could it possibly be translated "The Eagle Reds of Veracruz"? I'm parsing the Spanish grammar as meaning "the shades of red from the eagle" or some such but that's a bit hard to get across in English. —2macia22 (talk) 00:22, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

My personal preference is to never translate proper nouns, so I would probably render it "el Águila"

That was my initial inclination (see edit history) but the company their name was taken from is originally an English name (viz. Mexican Eagle Oil Company). So it seems silly to bring the Spanish name of the company back into English. —Wiki Wikardo 13:13, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Not really, no. Unlike los Rojos de Cincinnati, the “short name” of the club is not “the Reds” but “the Eagle.” So, when the Quintana Roo Tigers beat the Eagle Reds, the headline is “Tigres derrotan al Águila” (not “a los Rojos”). As such, I just edited the article to reflect that, restoring the team name as it was before subsequent waves of edits to bring the page closer to something resembling English.

And the original “Red Eagles” language in this article appears to be a result of Google Translate (which works off a probabilistic model). —Wiki Wikardo 13:13, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, Eagle Reds is a possible interpretation as well. However, any form of "the Eagles" (Red Eagles, etc.), makes no sense linguistically. "Rojos" is the main noun and means "Reds" or "Red Ones" (almost like how Les Misérables from French means "the Miserable(s)" or, in a translation more typical of English grammar, "the Miserable Ones"). Seems like it would be nice if we could find someone who can inform us of exactly what the redness is referring to, but, for all I know, that could be unimportant. Wolfdog (talk) 19:35, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

As the article states, the origin of the Eagle’s nickname is as obvious as it is uninteresting—their kit is red. —Wiki Wikardo 16:59, 6 September 2017 (UTC)