The miserly management of the private company Ribera Salud of the public hospital of Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid) has meant that the acronym CEO now appears with extreme frequency in the general news media (mainly in EL PAÍS, newspaper that reveals the stories), as well as in the resulting political and journalistic debates. We see that those who use it are considered excluded and that millions of people are led there by anyone, because they never explain what they want to decide. Another possibility, of course, is that you are ignorant.
The aforementioned abbreviation has been documented in academic databases since 1996. With one exception (El Monde, June 8, 1997), the first years it appeared exclusively in the Latin American press. (Thus, CEO in Spain means “compulsory education center”). And at the beginning of the 21st century it spread to the entire Spanish sphere, when technological development was flooded with anglicisms and commercial language.
The three letters representing general manager (executive director) refers to the position that normally sits between the president (top) and the general manager (bottom). The anglicism could be translated or explained, depending on the occasion, as “prime executive”, “principal director”, “general director” (more common in American Spanish) or “delegated advisor”. In the latter case, this is the person to whom the Board of Directors delegates part of its skills and gives them greater responsibility in the management of the company. Sometimes this position is compatible with that of president or general manager, according to him Dictionary of Business and Economics, directed by Marcelino Elosua (2003).
The options mentioned in Spanish are those that come from the recommendation of the Real Academia Española and Fundéu, the latter of which also celebrates its twentieth anniversary on December 17.
Then, “the CEO of Ribera Salud”, Pablo Gallart, ordered his team to increase the waiting lists at the Torrejón public hospital (Madrid) and eliminate unprofitable processes, increase services, in addition to reusing land use materials, according to what EL PAÍS has been reporting since December 3. A gift, CEO.
Irish poet and journalist John William Wilkinson (who has lived in Barcelona for over 40 years and is a regular contributor to La Vanguardia) write in your book on Anglicisms entitled From hipster to hacker (editorial Pons Idiomas, 2015) that this acronym is very widespread “in economic writings”. Without a doubt, but now it is also proliferating in general information. As Wilkinson states in this article, Spanish finance publications “are laden with anglicisms, acronyms and acronyms derived from English”, and “the reader suffers no more remedy than reading texts as if they were being read simultaneously in two languages”. A language that “for any Lego, the material is highly incomprehensible”.
Could it be that we now suffer from three CEO expressions because suddenly we no longer want to be legos in this and other materials, and we all know the specialized lexicons? Would it be better for us to see this, assuming we need it? Not true, but anyway elpais.com publishes around 90 anglicisms every day.
As this column that we are reading will be published only in the digital agenda, I put the supplement Babelia On Saturday December 13, Paper hosts a monographic summary of the literary year, which provides a proposal. In order to make the restriction a sale, I invite my friends – only my friends – to express themselves in the comments area if they consider CEO to be an acronym understandable firstly by themselves, their family and their friends; and therefore understandable to the massive collective that each of them represents. You can also say it yourself, without understanding it, you would prefer to use a term in Spanish, for reasons of style or solidarity, so as not to miss anything. in Albis there are undoubtedly very few unknowns in the specialized lexicon of economics; that the best becomes less and less because it seems that people dedicate themselves to studying it to read more periodicals.
On the credentials of the most successful leaders, as well as on the cards of the most accomplished, similar expressions appear as chief operating director, the COM, who is the “general director”; financial director, the CFO, formerly called “financial director”; operating manager, the COO – not to be confused with CC OO, nothing to do with it –, who fulfills the role of “executive director”, and he technical director, the CTO, who used to be called “technical director”.
El style book de EL PAÍS talks about all these acronyms, including that of the CEO: “Deben traducirse semper”. But it’s better to change it.
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