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In:Exploring and Exploiting Parallel Corpora of Spanish: The PaCorES corpus collection in language and translation education and research
Edited by Irene Doval and M. Teresa Sánchez Nieto
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 129] 2026
► pp. 287–305

A toast to languages

The translation of beverages and related terms in the English–Spanish Parallel Corpus (PaEnS)

 | University of Valladolid
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
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.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Cultural and linguistic perspectives on beverage translations
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data selection and analytical framework
    • 3.2Scope and limitations
  • 4.Findings and discussion: What travels unchanged, what needs explaining
    • 4.1Globalized beverages: Lexical stability as the norm
    • 4.2Culturally marked and festive drinks: Measured intervention
    • 4.3Branded beverages: Between retention and commonization
    • 4.4Text types and function: When stability does and does not yield
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Note
  • References
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