A toast to languages

Abstract

How are beverage-related terms rendered in English–Spanish translations? Do they tend to trigger cultural adaptation or lexical stability? Using the open-access English–Spanish Parallel Corpus (PaEnS),

this study queries a seed list of beverage terms and examines their aligned translations through a primarily qualitative analysis. The retrieved data (predominantly fiction) show two main tendencies: highly globalized drinks (e.g., coffee, tea, beer, wine ) are usually translated through stable one-to-one correspondences, whereas culture-specific items (e.g., eggnog, mate, horchata, guarapo ) more often prompt borrowing, explicitation, or light adaptation. Brand names are typically retained when internationally recognizable but are more frequently neutralized when local. Overall, the findings support a model of calibrated minimalism shaped by text type and communicative function.