capital humano/human resources

Eileen Brophy (asker) Sep 29, 2017:

@Charles Davis Thanks Charles, I have left it as it is, i.e. human capital, but I do not like the term at all, it turns people into objects, but that is what business is all about these days. Thanks for your comment.

Charles Davis Sep 29, 2017:

I gather it originated in the University of Chicago, to which the world owes so much of its modern economic theory.

Charles Davis Sep 29, 2017:

Hi Eileen It's probably a bit late to chip in, but I haven't had a chance to have a look until now. Picking up on what Phil and Peter have said, my feeling is that you should have no qualms about translating this as "human capital", and you should very wary of translating it as anything else, especially human resources/workforce, because if your text is using the term properly that's quite probably not what it means. "Human capital" is an extremely common term, with vast numbers of Google results, and it means not so much human resources in terms of just people, but specifically the knowledge, creativity and skills of a given group of people. It's a recognised and important term in economics with quite a specific meaning. You may not like the attitude that seems to lie behind the idea of "human capital" — I don't like it much myself — but I wouldn't translate it as anything else.

Eileen Brophy (asker) Sep 29, 2017:

Thank you everyone for your help with my doubt, I greatly appreciate your time and help.

Eileen Brophy (asker) Sep 29, 2017:

polyglot45 I agree with you, lately the internationalisation of English is creating weird new words. I think I will go for your option.

peter jackson Sep 29, 2017:

human capital is a fairly standard term in economics ... human, social, intellectual capital.

polyglot45 Sep 29, 2017:

human capital sounds find to me in romance languages but very bizarre in English. It would all depend on the sentence/context but you could perhaps write round it ? The assets represented by HR, the workforce.

Eileen Brophy (asker) Sep 29, 2017:

@philgoddard It is referring to a company running a nuclear power centre, sorry Phil, this project is stressing me a lot because of the style. Thanks for changing the fields for the question too.

philgoddard Sep 29, 2017:

You haven't given any context, but generally speaking if they've chosen to call it "human capital" in Spanish, that's what you should say in English. Otherwise they'd have said "recursos humanos".