Goya Awards 2020

Last weekend, 3.6 million people watched the 34th Goya Awards ceremony, honoring the top Spanish movies of 2019. This is the Spanish film industry’s main event, equivalent to Hollywood’s Oscars. It is organized by the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences and this edition was held in the city of Malaga.

If you’re looking for a fun different way of learning Spanish or you’re just a moviegoer, keep on reading to find out which were the top 2019 Spanish movies according to the Academy. Or, if you prefer, click here to switch to the Spanish version of this post.

Almodovar Movies Keep Winning

Pedro Almodovar, Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas… these are all names that sound familiar to you, right? Well, imagine all three together in one production. Dolor y Gloria (Pain and Glory) is the undisputed winner of the ceremony and probably one of the best Spanish movies in 2019.

This biographical story, which is also nominated for the 92^nd Oscar Awards as Best International Feature Film, has been chosen Best Film of the Year by Time magazine. On Saturday night, this movie was awarded with several Goya prizes, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Director for Pedro Almodovar. Good luck at the Oscars!

Most-Awarded Spanish Movies

After Pain and Glory, with 7 awards, the second most-awarded movie was While at War (Mientras dure la Guerra), which got 5 prizes, including Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design and Best Makeup. This historical drama was directed by Alejandro Amenabar (The Others, The Sea Inside, Regression) and it shows how Miguel de Unamuno, a popular Spanish writer, lived the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

Fire Will Come (Lo que arde) is a movie shot in Galician language which was awarded with Best New Actress and Best Cinematography, so if you’re a photography lover, you know what’s next on your watchlist. And, by the way, this is one of those Spanish movies on Netflix. There’s no excuse!

Another movie awarded with two Goya Prizes is The Endless Trench (La trinchera infinita), which has not one but three directors! The film won Best Actress and Best Sound.

Best Spanish Actors and Actresses

Some other major prizes in this Goya Awards ceremony include Best Actor for Antonio Banderas in Pain and Glory and Best Actress for Belén Cuesta in The Endless Trench (La trinchera infinita). The protagonist of The Mask of Zorro played the role of a film director in his decline, who remembers his early life through flashbacks. Belén Cuesta tells the story of a woman who lives a forbidden romance during the Spanish Civil War.

Goya Winners 2020

To sum up, these are some of the Spanish movies you can’t miss according to the Goya 2020 Awards:

We have already talked about the presence of the Spanish language in the world, even in some remote countries we could not imagine. The spread began in 1492 with the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and, today, it is the second language most used by native speakers worldwide. Its relevance due to the great number of speakers in some countries such as the United States (according to CNN, there are an estimated 58.9 million Hispanic people in the US, comprising 18% of the population) has forced different industries to localize and translate their products in order to reach the Spanish-speaking audience.

Continue reading this post in Spanish and improve your reading skills!

This is the case of the music industry, a business that moves billions of euros every year. There have been many Latin artists who have achieved fame by singing tracks in Spanish, even reaching the top positions in charts and rankings all over the world. At don Quijote, we once again claim music as an instrument for teaching Spanish as a foreign language. For today’s blog post, we’ve selected 10 international artists who managed to succeed with songs performed in Spanish.

1. Jennifer Lopez

The North American singer of Puerto Rican origin has an entire album recorded in Spanish. It is entitled Como Ama una Mujer (2007). She has also a Spanish version of her song Dance Again (2012).

2. Christina Aguilera

The North American artist released an entire album in Spanish: Mi Reflejo (2000). This album was nominated as "Record of the Year" for the Latin Grammy Awards of 2001.

3. Beyoncé

Irremplazable (2007) was the singer's third single in the United States. It was recorded in Spanish as part of the `Luxury edition’ of the album B'Day (2006) and was the first crossover of the artist to the Latin market.

4. Tiziano Ferro

The Italian artist recorded his first single Perdona (2001) in Spanish. The song belongs to the album Rojo Relativo, which was a gold record in sales.

5. BSB (Backstreet Boys)

The first song that the Orlando boys recorded in Spanish was Nunca Te Hare Llorar (1997). Never Break Your Heart (the original track) was the second single from the first Backstreet Boys album.

6. Madonna

The Queen of Pop also crossed language barriers and took the plunge and popped out in Spanish. Madonna introduced some phrases in Spanish in two of her hits of the 80s: Who's that Girl (1987) and La Isla Bonita (1986).

7. Mariah Carey

This vocal goddess recorded the ever memorable ’90s hit My All in Spanish, renaming it Mi Todo (1997). Whoever translated the song did not a great job and Spanish speakers criticized this new version.

8. Nelly Furtado

Almost a decade after she came to fame in 2000 with the single, I'm Like a Bird, this Portuguese-origin singer recorded an entire album in Spanish: Mi Plan (2009). The presentation single of her album, entitled Manos al Aire, made history as it marked the first time a North American artist reached No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Latin Songs chart with a song that was originally written in Spanish.

9. Bon Jovi

Spanish is not the strong point of. Cama de Rosas (1992) was a Spanish version of his song Bed of Roses. If we listen to the track, it is quite clear that the artist would need a Spanish course to be able to express himself more clearly.

10. Demi Lovato

She tried it along with Pablo Alborán at the Latin Grammy Awards of 2011. The song performed was Solamente Tú and was very well received by the Spanish public.

As Colombian artist J. Balvin said some time ago in an interview for ABC "By Singing in Spanish you can go as far as in English." The great reggaeton star also explained that his intention "is not to make music for Latinos, but for human beings", and the truth is that half of the audience that attends their concerts does not speak Spanish. Can we say then that music in Spanish is increasingly popular even for an audience that doesn't speak it?

Want to learn more Spanish through music? Enjoy our video about last decade’s top tracks in Spanish!

Let’s talk about machine translation. Often abbreviated as MT, it refers to automated software that can translate text inputs from one language to another. Google Translate or DeepL are some of the most popular machine translation services on the Internet.

Although the machine translation market size is expected to grow worldwide in the next years, as Statista data shows, Google Translate will never achieve the efficiency of human-powered translation. Do you want to know why? Keep on reading to discover some of the funniest Google Translate Fails in Spanish and why they can’t (yet) be avoided.

Switch to the human-translated Spanish version of this post.

Polysemic Words: A Nightmare Scenario

Without the right context, polysemy can be a great challenge for translation machines, especially in short text strings. When a word has multiple meanings, Google Translate chooses one according to the information given in the rest of the sentence. But, as you can see in the example below, that doesn’t always work.

The word school refers not only to a teaching organization, like don Quijote Spanish schools, but also to a large number of fish swimming together in the same direction. However, Google Translate does not quite grasp the difference. The result? A target text stating that some fish spend most of their time being schooled.

Proper Nouns Hinder Proper Translations

Proper nouns should only be translated in very specific cases. For example, when a fictional character’s name defines something about his personality. If you’re a Lord of the Rings fan, you’ll know how important it is for Gandalf the Grey to become later Gandalf the White. That’s why, for once, Spanish movie translators did well in translating this character’s name for ‘Gandalf el Gris’ and ‘Gandalf el Blanco’.

However, in most cases we shouldn’t translate proper nouns. In the example below, Google Translate didn’t realize that Pink is (also) a proper noun and ended up saying a that a color went straight into the Billboard Hot 100 list.

Proverbs and Sayings: A Long Way to Go

Google is getting more and more efficient thanks to artificial intelligence. However, and even if English<>Spanish is one of the language pairs most human input, it makes mistakes. It can translate well-known sayings, like it’s raining cats and dogs, but it doesn’t work with the less common ones.

The equivalent Spanish saying in the following case would be mejor pájaro en mano mejor que ciento volando.

Cultural Differences: Guaranteed Failure

Even professional translators can sometimes overlook cultural differences… imagine how often machine translation does so. How many lives does a cat have in your language? In English it’s nine, but in Spanish it has seven, and in Arabic only six. And believe us, Google can’t tell the difference.

Final Thoughts

Automation is taking over the world, but there are some tasks that a machine will successfully perform on its own. Translating is one of them. If you work in an international environment, we strongly recommend you to take a business-oriented Spanish course so you don’t need to rely 100% on Google Translate for your emails and presentations.

As the 2010s come to an end, don Quijote wants to take the opportunity to pay tribute to this last decade’s top tracks in Spanish. Because the end of a decade is almost the end of an era, especially when we talk about artistic movements such as music.

Switch to the Spanish version to improve your reading skills.

As a Stevie Wonder song says: "Music is a world within itself, it is a language we all understand." Although it is true that the language of music is universal, understanding the lyrics helps a lot when making the most of the them. In fact, music can be an effective and fun way to learn a language. For this reason and for all those who are studying Spanish as a foreign language, we have selected a playlist with last decade’s top tracks in Spanish. We are sure that you’ll learn some very useful expressions while enjoying these dance floors’ greatest hits.

2010 Enrique Iglesias & Juan Luis Guerra: Cuando me enamoro

Cuando me enamoro is a Latin pop and bachata song performed by pop singer-songwriter Enrique Iglesias (Spain) and featuring singer-songwriter Juan Luis Guerra (Santo Domingo). It was released as the first single from Iglesias ninth album on 26 April 2010. The song is the main-theme of soap opera very popular in Mexico and became a contender for Latin Grammy Award in 2010.The single has sold around a million digital downloads worldwide.

2011 Don Omar & Lucenzo: Danza Kuduro

Danza Kuduro is a bilingual song (Spanish-Portuguese), performed by Puerto Rican singer Don Omar and Portuguese–French reggaeton recording artist Lucenzo. It was released on August 11, 2010. In 2011, a remake was included in the soundtrack of the movie Fast Five, in which Don Omar plays a role. Danza Kuduro was the Top song in Spanish in 2010 and the music video has received over 1 billion views on YouTube.

2012 Juan Magán, Pit Bull & El Cata: Bailando por el mundo

Bailando por el mundo is a song by the Spanish artist Juan Magan, featuring vocals from American rapper Pitbull and El Cata. It was launched in October 2011 and became Top track on Latin music lists in several countries. Currently, the music video has more than two million views on YouTube.

2013 Marc Anthony: Vivir mi vida

This is a Spanish cover of the original song C'est la vie, by the Algerian artist Khaled. It was the first single from the 3.0 album, by Dominican artist Marc Anthony, and was released on April 15, 2013. It has sold more than 300,000 units worldwide.

2014 Enrique Iglesias, Descember Bueno & Gente de Zona: Bailando

Bailando is a song by Spanish singer Enrique Iglesias, Cuban artists Descemer Bueno and Gente de Zona. The song was written by all of them and produced by Carlos Paucar. It was released by Universal Republic Records as the sixth single from the record.

The original Spanish version served as the theme song of the soap opera Reina de Corazones. Bailando was the tenth best-selling song in 2014 with 8 million units.

2015 Nicky Jam & Enrique Iglesias: El perdón

El Perdón is a song by American singer Nicky Jam and Spanish artist Enrique Iglesias. On 10 July 2015, an English-language version of the song, titled Forgiveness, was released.

2016 Nicky Jam: Hasta el amanecer

"Hasta el Amanecer" is a song by American singer Nicky Jam. It won the Billboard Music Award for Top Latin Song and the Urban Song of the Year in 2017. It was also nominated for Single of the Year at Lo Nuestro Awards in the same year.

2017 Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee: Despacito

Despacito is a song by Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi featuring Puerto Rican rapper Daddy Yanke.  It was released by Universal Music Latin in January 2017. It has been ranked among the best Latin songs of all-time as well as the most successful Spanish-language tracks in pop music history.

2018 Nicky Jam & J Balvin: X

X is a song by American singer Nicky Jam and Colombian singer J Balvin. It was released by Sony Music Latin on March 2, 2018. A Spanglish version of the song was released on April 27, 2018. The music video has more than 1.7 billion views on YouTube up to now.

2019 Bad Bunny & Drake: Mía

Mía is a song by Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny featuring vocals from Canadian rapper Drake. The song was released by Rimas Entertainment Records on October 11, 2018 as the second single from his debut studio album. The song topped the charts in Spain, and reached the top 10 in Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Greece, Portugal, Romania, Switzerland and Venezuela.

Here you have the video of our YouTube channel for you to enjoy!