Soy diseñadora web. Diseño los sitios web.
I'm trying to find good ways of saying what I do for a living in Spanish, and it gets tricky, because not only am I ignorant about Spanish, but I'm a little picky about what I call myself professionally. I don't really like "web designer", because there are people who do only visual design, and I do that as well as coding and managing entire projects. And although people keep suggesting phrases in Spanish that translate as "web page designer", I really don't like using "web page", because it sounds like the early days of the web, when everybody talked about entire web sites as "web pages", or worse still, "home pages".
In English, I tend to use "web developer", although I'm starting to dislike it too, because to a large extent it's a phrase created by and for the people in this industry, and ordinary people don't understand it as well as "web designer". (Not to mention that people in this industry have long, silly arguments over the distinctions between "designing" and "developing" web sites.) I kind of like "web site producer" best of all, because it's the most accurate for what I do, but it's not used much in English, and I doubt it's used at all in Spanish.
So, first somebody told me that I'm a diseñador web. Then I realized that I'm a diseñadora, not a diseñador*, and somebody else told me that a better phrase would be diseñadora de sitio web. Yet somebody else suggested diseñadora de páginas web.
A smart person also suggested that I could elaborate with "I design web sites" or "I design web pages", so I set about figuring out how to say that correctly in Spanish, thinking that maybe I'd avoid completely the issue of finding a perfect noun phrase. Apparently the proper verb is diseñar, which I understand is a regular -ar verb:
Yo diseño los sitios web.
Tú diseñas los sitios web.
Usted/El/Ella diseña los sitios web.
Nosotros diseñamos los sitios web.
Ustedes/Ellos/Ellas diseñan los sitios web.
So I guess I might say, "Soy diseñadora web. Diseño los sitios web."
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*Although this reminds me of The Daily Show's Samantha Bee sarcastically discussing how far women have advanced professionally, and that these days, many women are "doctresses and lawyeresses". :-)
In English, I tend to use "web developer", although I'm starting to dislike it too, because to a large extent it's a phrase created by and for the people in this industry, and ordinary people don't understand it as well as "web designer". (Not to mention that people in this industry have long, silly arguments over the distinctions between "designing" and "developing" web sites.) I kind of like "web site producer" best of all, because it's the most accurate for what I do, but it's not used much in English, and I doubt it's used at all in Spanish.
So, first somebody told me that I'm a diseñador web. Then I realized that I'm a diseñadora, not a diseñador*, and somebody else told me that a better phrase would be diseñadora de sitio web. Yet somebody else suggested diseñadora de páginas web.
A smart person also suggested that I could elaborate with "I design web sites" or "I design web pages", so I set about figuring out how to say that correctly in Spanish, thinking that maybe I'd avoid completely the issue of finding a perfect noun phrase. Apparently the proper verb is diseñar, which I understand is a regular -ar verb:
Yo diseño los sitios web.
Tú diseñas los sitios web.
Usted/El/Ella diseña los sitios web.
Nosotros diseñamos los sitios web.
Ustedes/Ellos/Ellas diseñan los sitios web.
So I guess I might say, "Soy diseñadora web. Diseño los sitios web."
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*Although this reminds me of The Daily Show's Samantha Bee sarcastically discussing how far women have advanced professionally, and that these days, many women are "doctresses and lawyeresses". :-)

2 Comments:
I read your entire blog and all the articles tonight. Very helpful. And so many times, I was nodding my head in agreement with you. I might order the package at some point, for now though, just wanted to say thanks for the insight and the humor.
Chris
Thanks, Chris!
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