In its founding manifesto, the ARA noted its desire to address diverse audiences, including "the scientific community," and explicitly mentions "sustainability." This commitment to environmental stewardship has been amply demonstrated over its fifteen-year history.
I say "journey" and not trajectory because the subject at hand is oceanic, hence the title of this piece, which traces the route based on an exceptional (nautical) chart, addressed to the Reader's Advocate Joandomènec Ros, emeritus professor of ecology at the University of Barcelona, former president of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, Creu de Sant Jordi and a distinguished curriculum of excellence and academic and civic awards.
"Anglophones can afford to say whale (whale) in any cetacean, but not us. One thing is the whales (whales: there are half a dozen species) and another ones orcas (killer whales) or the sperm whales (sperm whales), among other cetaceans. In a newspaper article dated February 19, the headline (oh, headlines, they don't always say what the article says!) is: "More than 150 whales condemned to die after being stranded on a beach". Leaving aside that it was better stranded that stranded, the text already tells us that they are not whales, but another species of cetacean, false killer whales, relatives of dolphins (of which there are also several species). The solution, for this and other articles, would be to give the generic name (cetaceans) if you don't want to give the specific name of false killer whales, and better yet, the scientific name (Pseudorca crassidens). It is true that, very rarely, some whales (real ones) end up stranded on a beach, but the cases of false killer whales and other small species of cetaceans are much more numerous. The text of the news confuses the reader again: "black pot-headed whales" should be "black pot-heads" (several species ofGlobicephala). I'm not asking the ARA editors to have a cetacean manual at hand (in this case, or for other groups of animals or plants, which exist and are very good in our country), only that they consult the internet to avoid making these mistakes, which, at least for biologists, drive us crazy."
I have forwarded this email to Sònia Sánchez, an editor specializing in environmental and climate issues at the newspaper, and to Pau Domènech, the head of the Language Department. Both sides agree with Dr. Rubio. Sánchez incorporates the criterion ofauctoritas by Sílvia Giralt, oceanographer from the research and conservation area of the CRAM Foundation, who points out, among other arguments, that effectively "the term cannot be used whale when we talk about orcas and false orcas, even though it has been popularly done this way for a long time in non-scientific contexts (orcas, for example [...] have come to be popularly called – and probably unfairly – killer whales, a term that has contributed to the confusion in a context copy with: "Sònia Sánchez: that the main source of the news (not the only one) was a news agency that already had this confusion incorporated in its text, and this, in fact, caused the news to also appear with the term whales to the headline in other newspapers and media, in this case in Spanish, which shows you that it is a common confusion and not exclusive to the ARA."
Pau Domènech, for his part, explains: "Lexical precision in a media outlet is very important. In the same way that we try not to confuse murder and homicide, we must be able to distinguish terms in content that may not be so common. It is also true that the ARA is not a scientific publication, and that lexical precision is not the responsibility of non-specialists). In a case like this, the most appropriate, instead of specifying the scientific name of the species (which would obviously never be out of place in a piece of this type), and considering the limited space of the title, would have been to use the genericcetaceans, and within the text (obviously) having used the correct name of the species."
To complement a topic that does not require experts, given the high level of competence of the reader making the complaint, I have asked the opinion of Dr. Francesc Lleal i Galceran, who combines the pure science of a former professor at the UPC Faculty of Nautical Studies with the applied science of twenty-three years of sailing, most of them as a captain.
Dr. Lleal also agrees with Dr. Ros, but qualifies the term "stingy": "As for changing stranded by stranded, I don't agree. In that case, I would change stranded by stranded, because although the IEC dictionary of the Catalan language indicates that to avarice and beach are synonyms, for seafarers these two words are not, and they do not only have the meaning given to them by this dictionary. For me, the key is in the DCVB by AM Alcover and F. de B. Moll, which also indicates that to avarice is synonymous with beach, but in the definition of this last term there are two meanings, the meaning of which is currently fully established among seafarers. These are: "To take out, to dry-dock a ship or other vessel. / To touch a vessel with its keel to the seabed and remain stationary due to a lack of water for flotation." In fact, the note on the etymology of the word states that these two meanings are not documented in Old Catalan, and that they appear to have been borrowed from Castilian. However, I would say that the borrowing is not new, because it is deeply rooted. However, perhaps the IEC should be asked to review these two words.
Nautical language and its rich array of metaphors have been with us, at least since the legendary fish of Serrat (Through the walls(an exceptional song) bore the stamp of the four stripes, sailing back and forth across the Mediterranean in the days of the chronicles of the armada of Peter the Ceremonious. And to this day, when President Mas put a rudder in his office and revived the language of those political ancestors. In the sea of journalism of the ARA, it has become clear that we will be ready for this linguistic roadstead.
I end with a paragraph from Francesc Lleal's latest book, Life aboard a merchant ship (Payés Editores, 2024). You'll see that this is relevant to Dr. Ros's initial reflection, thanks to which words have been stowed in the cellar of this article.
The scene was a thick fog in the Gulf of Lions. "I was on the starboard bow, listening for any signals from any other vessel, but the silence was absolute. Suddenly, right next to me, I heard the sound of a powerful blow coming from the water. I looked over the rail and was surprised to see—to see me—that it wasn't one, but two whales. However, later on I was able to confirm that, judging by the type of spring those animals were in, we had come across two sperm whales. It was the welcome gift I could have hoped for!
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