Training

Spanish

I was recently confronted with an education certificate which discussed capacitación, entrenamiento, and formación in the same sentence. Let’s call it the Centro de Capacitación, Entrenamiento y Formación. If I’d seen any one of these words alone, my go-to translation would be training. But seeing all three words together made me wonder – are they perfect synonyms or is there some nuance of difference which could be adequately described in English in the same way? I had a hunch, but it needed to be backed by scientific research.

First stop is obviously the RAE, which wasn’t much help at first glance.

• Capacitación: f. Acción y efecto de capacitar.
• Entrenamiento: m. Acción y efecto de entrenar o entrenarse.
• Formación f. Acción y efecto de formar o formarse.

So let’s dig a little deeper.

• Capacitar: tr. Hacer a alguien apto, habilitarlo para algo.
• Formarse: tr. Preparar intelectual, moral o profesionalmente a una persona o a un grupo de personas.
• Entrenar: tr. Preparar o adiestrar personas o animales, especialmente para la práctica de un deporte.

Hmm, still training. While entrenar is more closely linked with sport (which I already knew), it didn’t make sense in the educational training context that I was investigating. Down the rabbit hole again.

• Habilitar: tr. Hacer a alguien o algo hábil, apto o capaz para una cosa determinada.
• Adiestrar: tr. Hacer diestro, enseñar, instruir. U. t. c. prnl.

Great, now I’ve got five verbs that all mean training in English. How to distinguish between them? Enseñar and instruir are easier, they are closer to teach and instruct in English.

So let’s say capacitación is more about training some-one to become qualified, formación is more about professional or personal development, and entrenamiento is closest to the traditional meaning of training. In a sporting context, we wouldn’t use any verb other than training for professional athletes, would we? So perhaps a draft translation might be:

• Capacitación: Skills development for the purpose of accreditation
• Formación: Professional development
• Entrenamiento: Sports training
• Habilitación: Accreditation
• Adiestrar: Instruction

Now we’re getting somewhere, but am I right? Surely Spanish has the equivalent of skills development and professional development as well. Hmm. Let’s try a different dictionary. Nothing much in WordReference, but Reverso reveals more.

• Professional development: Desarrollo profesional, formación profesional and capacitación profesional
• Skills development: Desarrollo de habilidades, desarrollo de competencias and desarrollo de aptitudes

Now, Reverso isn’t a dictionary per se, and some of the published translations in the corpus are definitely sub par. In fact some of these look to be more literal translations from my experience. So what do native Spanish speakers use in real life? My friend Google might have the answer.

• “Desarrollo profesional“: About 26,700,000 results
• “Formación profesional“: About 34,900,000 results
• “Capacitación profesional“: About 2,310,000 results

That’s enough for me to think that formación is on the money for professional development. I’m still stuck on capacitación though. Skills development alone doesn’t seem to be enough to capture the nuance that it is skills development for the purpose of accreditation of some kind. Hmm. What do we call that kind of training in English? Maybe ChatGPT can help.

What’s a single word or short phrase that means skills development for the purpose of accreditation? “Certification Training“

Nope. That doesn’t feel right and Google confirms it. Only about 158,000 results for [“Certification Training” site:au]. We don’t use that phrase.

Back to ChatGPT and this time I add “in Australia” to get “Accredited Training“. While it’s true we do use that phrase, it refers to the Accredited Training Providers – where the trainer is accredited, not the trainee. So that’s a dead-end.

What about exploring habilitación as a synonym for capacitación instead. As a translator, we have Translating Skill Set courses in Australia, which are almost purely designed to prepare a candidate for the NAATI exam. Maybe that’s it? I’d never heard that term before becoming a translator though, and there certainly weren’t any skill set courses to become an accountant in my previous profession.

I ask ChatGPT to clarify “like a skills set” and get “Competency Training” or “Skill Set Course“

I like competency training! That has the right feel and meaning. Now how can I refine it so that it rolls off the tongue a bit more. Or am I close enough already?

Google [“competency training” site:au]: Nope, only about 39,600 results. Close but no cigar. That’s even less common than Certification Training. Still, I like it. The meaning is correct, it’s just not particularly idiomatic.

At school I grew up with Roget’s Thesaurus, so let’s give that a shot. That particular thesaurus is now out-of-date but Merriam Webster turns up a number of synonyms for competency: ability, capacity, capability, competence, aptitude, faculty, talent, skill, capableness, reason, equipment, facility, knack. instinct, gift, prowess, understanding, intelligence, dexterity, endowment, address, resources, usefulness, fitness, adequacy, resourcefulness, effectiveness, potency, influence, aptness

None of them meaning training, or combine with a noun to mean training. Maybe I’m going about this the wrong way. What about English synonyms for training? Teaching, education, schooling, instruction, tutoring, tuition, preparation, tutelage, development, conditioning, pedagogy, coaching, cultivation, improvement, higher education, higher learning, pedagogics, guidance, didactics, direction, enlightenment, readying, nurturing, edification, nurturance

I like “preparation” from that list. Almost there. So my last translation for capacitación needs to be something about competency training/preparation. A quick google search of that phrase turns up “Competency-Based Training”. Bingo! That’s why I didn’t get any hits for “competency training”. It’s called competency-based training in Australia! One last google to double-check [“competency-based training” site:au]: About 38,500 results

Damn. It’s no more popular than the last. And yet, the meaning is right, the google results it shows are right, and it feels right. That is a very Australian way to describe skills training for the purpose of assessment and qualification (satisfactory/unsatisfactory). And being a translator is about more than just being good at googling. Maybe it’s because I limited the results to Australia only? Googling competency-based training tries to self-complete with “competency-based training and assessment” and I know I’m on the right track. About 146,000,000 results for competency-based training internationally and about 856,000 results for competency-based training site:au without quotation marks. Maybe the problem is the hyphen.

So where does that bring me? Back to my original question I now have:

• Capacitación: Competency-based training
• Entrenamiento: Sports training
• Formación: Professional development

So the Centro de Capacitación, Entrenamiento y Formación could be the Centre for Competency-Based Training, Training and Professional Development. What a mouthful.

How about the Competency-Based Training, Skills Enhancement and Professional Development Centre? I’m happy with that. It conveys the same meaning, uses words that feel idiomatic to me, and draws out the different nuances of training. It’s a bit more of a mouthful than the Spanish, but we don’t have direct word-for-word translations to utilise. I wonder if my client will like it or understand the subtleties.

And there you have it. A day in the life of a translator. I’ve just spent half an hour working out the difference between training, training and training, but I am a better polyglot for my efforts. An interpreter doesn’t have the luxury of time and they would probably have just said something like “training provider”. But as a translator I’ll pop those three words in my glossary for next time, and will never be so unmindful as to translate all three words as training in future.

What do you think? What would you have translated it as?