'Zoompleaños' has been chosen as best 'word of the year' thanks to UAH students

A group of students from the UAH's Degree in Modern Languages and Translation, in particular from the subject of General German-Spanish Translation taught by Professor Ingrid Cáceres Würsig, presented this winning proposal to the call for 'Palabro del año' (swearword of the year) organized by the magazine Punto y Coma, Bulletin of the Spanish Translators of the Institutions of the European Union.

The pandemic has brought us many words and expressions to describe this new reality we face, for which we have had to reinvent the way we communicate, especially through new technologies. Now, celebrations and meetings between friends are almost normally held in virtual media and alternative platforms such as Zoom, which allow participants to interact on screen simultaneously with very acceptable audio and video quality.

To counteract the routine and the lack of human contact, these virtual meetings have managed to awaken a great deal of creativity and in them toasts are made, songs are sung, costumes are worn or the wallpaper is personalized. This new form of communication has led to UAH students proposing 'the swearword' zoompleaños in this contest, which is a combination of 'Zoom' and 'birthday' and has been used on the Internet and social networks to call these (no longer so unusual) virtual birthday parties.

'We believe that many of the new terms minted during this pandemic will not remain in the digital memory, so changeable and capricious, but that our 'word' will be used by many users to refer to the video conferences they make with family and friends who live far away or who, for any other reason, cannot attend the party in person. Likewise, we think that its use will be rather restricted to a certain age group, being children and young people who use this term more often than older people' say students.

Publicado en: Inglés