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Variación en la media
ITe
Feb 4, 2018 11:57
6 yrs ago
14 viewers *
Spanish term

AMPA

Spanish to English Social Sciences Education / Pedagogy School description
The abbreviation stands for:
"Asociación de Madres y Padres de Alumnos.
- Las Asociaciones de Madres y Padres de Alumnos son, en España, entidades de derecho privado cuyo objetivo fundamental es la representación de los intereses de los padres, madres o tutores legales en los centros educativos de sus hijos."

The term appears in an article I'm translating about education. The authors haven't bothered defining it, as it's so well known in Spain, and I was going to just call it PTA (Parents and Teachers' Association), as I consider it a more or less equivalent term that should be understood on both sides of the pond. However, having looked at the definition, there don't seem to be any teachers involved, so I'm wondering whether I should insert a definition, or if there is a better, more current term nowadays which I'm unaware of.
Proposed translations (English)
5 +4 Parents Association

Discussion

Robert Carter Feb 5, 2018:
Apostrophe or no apostrophe I don't understood the use of the apostrophe in this situation. We never say "team's meeting", "committee's meeting" or "board's meeting", yet somehow we are supposed to believe there should be a comma when there is a plural involved, as in "shareholders' meeting" or "parents' association". The parents association presumably means parents as a collective body in the same way as we'd refer to a pile of bricks (the pile doesn't belong to the bricks, quite the contrary, they belong to the pile).
neilmac (asker) Feb 5, 2018:
@Charles Totally agree. I still can't get used to calling primary schoolkids "students" (in fact, I call them pupils as often as possible). And I was thinking about the h/ampa thing last night... Another gripe of mine is that they seem to have developed an aversion to "escuela/colegio" and keep calling them "centros", which I find can be confusing. But "the customer is always right" :)
Charles Davis Feb 4, 2018:
Up until about five years ago (maybe a little more, but less than ten), they were called APA, Asociación de Padres de Alumnos, "de toda la vida", with "padres" meaning "parents", of course. The change roughly coincided with starting to say "profesores y profesoras" and "alumnos y alumnas" (or "profesorado" and "alumnado", or "alumn@s", or indeed "estudiantes", which is ungendered and widely favoured now). It was fair enough, you could argue, in the case of APA, since mothers do tend to outnumber fathers, as has been said, and the mothers go first, if only because "APMA" is difficult to say. But it provoked widespread amusement in the teaching profession because it sounds like "hampa".
The most progressive schools apparently have an "AFA" (Asociación de Familias de Alumn@s).
Yes indeed, just parents, not teachers.
peter jackson Feb 4, 2018:
I think parents’ association is fine. Agree with Isa and Marie about no teachers both from my experience as a teacher in a school here and as a member of the association but at least in my case disagree about lack of fathers.
Iseult Harrington Feb 4, 2018:
Agree Agree with Marie on both points :-)
Marie Wilson Feb 4, 2018:
Definitely no teachers, except for some meetings between the head of AMPA and headmaster. And in my experience, not many fathers either.

Proposed translations

+4
35 mins
Selected

Parents Association

I'd go with Parents Association. The European Parents' Association (http://euparents.eu/) uses the possessive form, but I don't think it's necessary, and the EPA even says "The EPA gathers the parents associations in Europe".

Interestingly there seem to be a lot of "parents associations" for US universities. Perhaps parents in the US are more involved with their children's university education than in the UK, where I think students would be horrified at the thought of their parents' forming an association. It's probably to do with the fact that US parents have traditionally had to pay much higher fees, so they naturally want more input on what they're getting for their money.
Note from asker:
That "gathers" looks suspiciously MT to me, but Parents' Association is what I've pencilled in... :)
Peer comment(s):
neutral philgoddard : I don't think you should translate it, since it's a specifically Spanish concept. And if you do, you should use an apostrophe.
41 mins
agree Taña Dalglish : Parents' Association is good. Absolutely disagree with Phil that it should not be translated. Regards.
11 hrs
agree John Cutler
1 day 4 hrs
agree Robert Carter : I applaud your dropping of the (grammatically incorrect) comma.
1 day 6 hrs
agree Andrea Sacchi
1 day 20 hrs
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Thanks Tim and everyone else for the comments :-)"
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