Spanish terminology

[kev54]

OK, this one has me foxed (not that difficult, I admit). I'm trying to book a campsite in Spain (Burgos) that doesn't seem to have an English-language version. The booking section asks if I'm booking for Coche Cama or Autobus (there are other options but I can translate those). I thought the translation for motorhome is autocaravana. I emailed the site in my best Spanish and they replied "no need to book, just turn up" - which is not quite what I asked, and I'm looking around Easter so I think I probably do need to book. Any help on what I should tick?

 

[Coolcats]

No substitute for the native speaker IMHO. This is even when the locals question what you have suggested saying things like 'I have not never heard of this word in my live', and I say 'There's a good reason for that....'

Non-natives can sometimes be a bit too sensitive about corrections. A long time ago, I proofread and corrected an Argentinian neighbour's English translation of his business website. I did about 20 full pages of text and captions for next to nothing, thinking I could put it on my CV to help launch a career here in proofreading.

You may know that Argentinian Spanish style is even more 'exuberant' than the already convoluted regular Spanish. So I edited the flowery fluff out of the translation to clean it up - it was really OTT and sometimes hard to read in addition to a few grammar errors - not at all the functional, business style of a website.

He questioned almost every line and then rejected the correction, going live with his original, grammar errors and all. He said he wanted to be polite to people browsing his site and my correction was 'non-polite'.

Good luck to him

Totally agree with you unfortunately we have tech companies wishing to push this AI and as clever as it may seem there is nothing like human interaction