Abstract

Any native Spanish speaker who has spoken to someone from another Spanish-speaking country has had a moment of confusion when they hear a different word instead of the one they expected. Geographic differences in Spanish are common, so when translating a piece of writing from English into Spanish with the intention of sharing it with several countries in Latin America, one must ask several questions: Is it possible to use a form of Spanish that can be understood in all of Latin America? Does a “neutral Spanish” exist? What does the Spanish language lose when a translator removes regional differences? This research paper will seek the answers to all these questions for those who seek to translate without an “accent” and who intend on sharing the translation with a wider audience living in several countries. 

Keywords: neutral Spanish, Spanish, Latin American Spanish, indigenous influence, varieties of Spanish, translations, commercial, dubs/dubbing

 

Title: Bombilla, Pajilla, Popote, or Sorbete: The Search for a “Neutral” Spanish When Translating for a Latin American Audience

Author: Stephanie Sosa

Any translator worth their salt knows to consider the target audience when working on a translation. After all, this knowledge informs decisions on their word choices, sentence structure, and terminology. Everything from the audience’s age to their country of origin helps inform each decision made. But, what happens when a translator is asked to translate something meant for a Latin American audience? There are 33 countries alone in Latin America and the Caribbean, spread over almost 8 million miles, and while most speak Spanish, they each have a different accent, have their own slang, and even use completely different words for common objects amongst themselves. Ask for a “popote” in a coffee shop in Argentina, and you’ll likely get a blank stare. Stop by a store in Colombia and ask where they keep their “bombillas,” and you might be led to the lightbulbs. Choosing the right words is important, so how do you do that when you’ve been asked to translate something into a type of Spanish that can be understood in over 30 countries? The current answer to this question is to use neutral Spanish, a fairly recent form of Spanish that is supposed to be understandable by all Spanish speakers. But, how does one create a “neutral” form of a language? What does “neutral” even mean? And, lastly, what does a language lose or gain when forced into this neutrality?

Spanish wasn’t the original language spoken in Latin America. When Columbus first arrived, he had no idea that he’d landed in a brand new continent which contained hundreds, if not thousands, of indigenous groups and languages. But, when the Spaniards arrived, they came with a divine task, assigned to them by the Pope himself: to evangelize the people they met. This was already a difficult task, made more complicated by the variety of languages spoken in the Americas, and the fact that none of these new peoples spoke Spanish. Missionaries employed a mix of teaching the new peoples they encountered Spanish as well as learning the indigenous languages themselves (Bravo García, 2018). They were somewhat successful, and by the time that the American countries achieved independence, of the thirteen million people in the Americas, three million of them spoke Spanish (Muñoz Machado, 2019). And, while the newly-formed countries wanted to become independent from Spain in every way, even in their language, there was no way to realistically do that. “La lengua de los líderes de los Estados recién establecidos era el español. También era la lengua de la legislación, de la justicia y de la Administración. Para relacionarse con los poderes del Estado había que conocerla” (ibid, p. 63). Thus, Spanish became the main language spoken in Latin America.

But while Spanish continues to be fairly homogenous worldwide, (Fernández Vítores, 2019) it can’t be argued that it does contain variety, depending on the geographic location where it is spoken. Fernández Vítores, in the chapter “El idioma español crece y se multiplica” in the book Más de 555 millones podemos leer este libro sin traducción, counts eight varieties of Spanish: “en España, la castellana, la andaluza y la canaria; en América, la caribeña, la mexicano-centroamericana, la andina, la rioplatense y la chilena” (p. 72). Lope Blanch (1968) disagrees, bringing up a study that was able to differentiate at least 23 varieties of Spanish in the American continent alone. While the exact number is still unknown, and likely impossible to pinpoint, one thing is clear: not all Spanish is the same.

Why is there so much variety? Bravo García (2018) talks about these “diatopic” differences, which are caused by the geographical expansion of a language, and specifically mentions how important it is to consider the contact that Spanish has had with the indigenous languages spoken in the Americas. Lope Blanch (1968) has more to say on the subject: “Hay evidente influencia indígena en el léxico, en especial de las lenguas antillanas, que fueron las que primeramente entraron en contacto con el español […]; siguen en importancia numérica los términos tomados del náhuatl […], y, luego —ya en menor proporción— las voces del origen quechua […], guaraní […] y araucano […]” (p. 29). In response to these indigenous languages, Spanish changed in how it was spoken and pronounced, in its structure, in its way of addressing others and politeness, and even in its syntax (Bravo García, 2025). This means that, not only does Spanish vary country-to-country, but even internally. The Instituto Nacional de las Lenguas Indígenas (INALI, 2018) in Mexico determined that within Mexico alone there were 68 indigenous linguistic groups, with over 364 linguistic varieties within them. And, in fact, the Spanish in Mexico does vary depending on what part of the country the speaker is from. If one were to try to count all the linguistic varieties in Latin America, this number would likely reach the thousands. When considering the influence of indigenous languages on Spanish, trying to trace back words and structures to their original source becomes a herculean task. 

Today, over half a billion people speak at least one form of Spanish, which has generated some interest from other areas. 

[…] el conjunto de los aproximadamente 550 millones de hablantes de español (en torno al 7 por ciento del total de la población mundial) tiene una capacidad de compra […] que representa en torno al 10 por ciento del PIB mundial, todo un estímulo para las industrias culturales de productos en español, comenzando por las que atienden demandas de los hispanos en Estados Unidos, pues la renta per cápita de ese colectivo duplica el promedio de América Latina […] (García Delgado, 2019, p. 142).

Spanish-speakers represent a rapidly-growing market, especially in the American continent, and not just in Latin American countries, but inside the United States itself. And as globalization continues to trend, the world is more inter-connected than ever. Products, everything from food to movies, can be exported. Articles and videos are posted online for the world to consume. People can work from the comfort of their own home for a company located an ocean away. With this in mind, and knowing the size of the Spanish-speaking market, more and more people ask themselves the following question: how does one write or speak to all of Latin America, with audiences from Mexico to Argentina and beyond? 

This question was asked and answered in the early twentieth century in the United States. When Disney began translating and dubbing movies for Spanish-speaking audiences, their first attempts were widely panned due to a mix of varieties of Spanish, “argentino, mexicano, cubano, norteamericano, español, etcétera,” that sounded strange when combined (Martínez Moreno, 2022, p. 7). As a result of this, Disney had to ask itself how it would create dubbed material for a region that, in theory, spoke the same language, but, in practice, was so linguistically diverse (ibid). Their answer: to create a neutral Spanish. 

What is this “neutral” Spanish? According to the Argentinian Decree 1091/88 Reglamentación de la Ley del Doblaje, “se entenderá por ‘idioma castellano neutro’, al hablar puro, fonético, sintáctica y semánticamente, conocido y aceptado por todo el público hispano parlante, libre de modismos y expresiones idiomáticas de sectores.” It’s a type of Spanish that is widely used in mass media, especially in marketing and publicity, with the goal of reaching as wide a Spanish-speaking audience as possible and having them understand everything that is said. Supposedly, it loses all idioms and local expressions, making it perfect for “todo el público hispano parlante.” 

This neutral Spanish originated in Mexico, which, in the twentieth century, was beginning to grow its cinematic and dubbing industry. When Disney began reaching out to studios to create its ideal “neutral” Spanish, Mexico was one of the few countries that had a large enough film industry and was close enough to the United States to be able to take on the job. It was Mexican cinematographers and translators who began creating this new Spanish, and, while there was an attempt to “standardize” this form of Spanish, elements of Mexico remained. “En general, podemos hablar de un léxico estándar, por lo tanto, bastante neutro, donde, sin embargo, se pueden rastrear términos eminentemente mexicanos como charola ‘bandeja’, agiotista ‘usurero’, concuño ‘concuñado,’ platicar ‘conversar’” (Llorente Pinto, 2006, p. 5). Despite the efforts of the creators, and the heavy influence from the United States, this “neutral” Spanish wasn’t exactly neutral. “[…] el español neutro corresponde a un español mexicano exportable. En ese sentido, el español neutro no era originalmente mexicano, sino que se impuso como mexicano gracias al poder que ejercía México en el mundo” (Martínez Moreno, 2022, p. 9). Not fully Mexican, but still with Mexican influence. Yet, this supposedly “neutral” Spanish is still widely accepted as such throughout Latin America, and it was even legally required for dubbing in Argentina for a short while, enforced by the Decree 1091/88. 

Is it even possible to have a fully neutral language? Many words and sentence structures in Latin American Spanish are tied to local indigenous origins, so is it a matter of stripping the indigeneity from them? Going back to Spain’s Spanish, however, is impossible. A Spanish speaker from Latin America and a Spanish speaker from Spain will understand each other, but often find themselves needing an extra moment or two to truly understand what is being said. “El español americano se caracteriza por el arcaísmo […] tiene palabras que el español peninsular y el español europeo ha olvidado [….] El español americano, siguiendo la estela del andaluz, es una modalidad en general más dinámica, más activa. Lo podemos ver muy bien en la formación de palabras” (Bravo García, 2018). Latin American Spanish and Spain Spanish continued developing after mingling all those years ago, and while both consult the Real Academia Española’s (RAE) dictionary, and several of the same sources, one can’t help but notice the many synonyms each word has, each tied to a specific country or location. Looking up a single word, for example, “popote,” invariably brings up not only the country where it’s used in, but all the other options used in other countries: paja, pajilla, pajita, pitillo (Col., Ven.), sorbeto (P. Rico).

Going back to Spain’s Spanish, then, is impossible. Then, perhaps, it is possible to strip every cultural or local element from a language and only work with words that are used in every single location. Culture and language, though, are intrinsically linked. From the very first moment when a parent or guardian greets a new baby and starts speaking to it, they are speaking a form of language that is tied to their experience, their cultural setting, their social status, and their educational level. The baby, the child, begins to learn this form of language first, to the point where they can communicate well enough to be sent to school. At school, the child is taught more language, but this time, this teaching is often delineated by local or national governments, who have specific standards that students must meet to move on to the next grade (Henry Robins & Crystal, 2025). People do often pick up variations in how they communicate, whether it’s to family members, authority figures, or friends, or they even pick up a different language or dialect. “Languages and variations within languages play both a unifying and diversifying role in human society as a whole. Language is part of culture, but culture is a complex totality containing many different features, and the boundaries between cultural features are not clear-cut, nor do they all coincide” (ibid). This is a problem that translators often find themselves grappling with, as they are forced to make decisions regarding the cultural setting of both the origin language and the target language. 

These problems [within translations] and conflicts arise because of factors already noticed in the use and functioning of languages: languages operate not in isolation but within and as part of cultures, and cultures differ from each other in various ways. Even between the languages of communities whose cultures are fairly closely allied, there is by no means a one-to-one relation of exact lexical equivalence between the items of their vocabularies (ibid).

This is made infinitely more difficult when trying to translate something for the entire geographic region of Latin America, where cultures and types of Spanish can vary so much.

Of course, there is always the option of going with the supposedly “neutral” Spanish, even if it contains a Mexican influence. There are both pros and cons to this, with one of the biggest benefits being for the translator: they have no need to question themselves endlessly on what word or stylistic choices to make, when this neutral Spanish prescribes what they should do instead. It also makes it easier for film studios, book publishers, marketing firms, mass media, social networks, and many more. Having the ability to use a neutral Spanish allows them to only produce one translation and send it to all 30-odd countries in Latin America, knowing that most people will understand what is being said and marketed, even if it’s not exactly in the words they would use themselves. Bravo García (2018), however, argues that this “neutral” Spanish has more than just monetary or convenience-related benefits in her podcast episode “Las claves del español internacional.” She speaks about the need to have a Spanish that is agile, able to adapt to the many-evolving needs of mass media and the world, especially as globalization continues to reach new heights. And, rather than saying that neutral Spanish negates culture, she emphasizes that it might actually be beneficial to it. “[El español neutro] permite mantener las particularidades lingüísticas propias de la identidad hispánica, sin renunciar al acervo cultural latino [….] sirve como medio para transmitir un sentimiento hispano, y para asentar la comunidad cultural también, por lo que actúa como un refuerzo en el sostenimiento de una tradición lingüística común.” This might be a too-simple take, but it is a valuable one, especially for people of Latin American descent who have moved to the United States, and who need a link to their culture and heritage in the midst of an English-speaking community.

Not everyone agrees with the use of a neutral Spanish. Martínez Moreno (2022) has some strong words on the subject: 

De lo anterior extraemos dos premisas; la primera, es que el español neutro es una imposición. En efecto, en ningún momento la totalidad de los agentes que hacen uso de él, en especial los consumidores, tuvieron la oportunidad de participar activamente en su creación, siendo relegados a un papel meramente pasivo. Ello constituyó un proceso violento para los hablantes, pues no respetó la diversidad lingüística de la región. La segunda, recae en que este español surge de una lucha simbólica dentro del sistema, lo que nos obliga a preguntarnos cómo se configuró esa lucha y de qué manera se impuso esta realidad en la que el español neutro, con base en el centro de México, es la regla para la producción y consumo de doblaje (p. 12). 

Martínez Moreno’s main complaint is that neutral Spanish wasn’t actually created by the target audience. Its creation was highly influenced by Disney, a United States company, which sought to amalgamate over 30 countries and even more cultural and linguistic practices into a single version. This Spanish was not created with the aim to simplify and streamline a process, or with the goal of respecting cultural and linguistic differences found in the same language. Iparraguire (2014) emphasizes that it was designed for the use of companies and the market, even going so far as to call it “artificial” and “exportable.” She does admit, however, that it is often necessary, especially given certain contexts, such as media, commercials, scientific discoveries, and others. Iparraguire also warns that “Frente a la riqueza de la variedad que el español ofrece, el español neutro muchas veces es simplificación que implica y el empobrecimiento de vocabulario que supone” (p. 249). Given what we know about how closely knit culture and language are, trying to remove all the culture from a language does indeed sound like stripping a language of everything that resonates with people, and what makes them respond to the words they hear or read.

Truly neutral or not, neutral Spanish is practically a requirement in today’s globalized world. Translators, both for the written and the spoken word, have to understand what it is and how to use it, but it is also worth understanding its history, as well as what implications it has. After all, this neutral Spanish was recently imposed on Latin American countries, just as the Spanish language was originally forced on them hundreds of years ago. While some may argue that distilling all these cultural and linguistic varieties into a single form might be an act of violence, it is impossible to argue against the convenience it presents in the translation market, especially in products that are meant to be marketed and consumed by the Latin American public. However, there is always the potential for loss when language is forced into a tight little box. Spanish, especially Latin American Spanish, is characterized by its ability to quickly adapt to change, while retaining so much of its history, both from the colonial and pre-colonial era. “Pensar en el español de América como un producto mestizo no es una metáfora, es una descripción histórica. La lengua que hoy hablamos en tantos países no es el resultado puro de una herencia castellana, sino una síntesis de muchas voces” (Bravo García, 2025). Like its people, Latin American Spanish is a combination of so much, and it’s important to honor that, as well as its differences and varieties. While the humble writer of this research paper can’t expect great change in the use of neutral Spanish and translations, I can sincerely hope that translators and those who hire them understand the implications of “neutral” Spanish and its use, and perhaps, when they’re able to, choose to involve more of their audience in the conversation. They should not be afraid of culture or regional differences, and rather, embrace language in all its complexities. After all, isn’t that what globalization is truly all about?

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