la paga extra

16:40 Nov 18, 2019 

Employers in Spain are required to pay their workers in 12 monthly payments. In most collective agreements, there are also two "extra" paychecks, typically in July and December. These paychecks are prorated and included in monthly payrolls through social security contributions. Therefore these two payments are neither bonuses nor "extra" in the usual sense of the word. The yearly salary as per contract or collective agreeement is split not into 12, but into 14 payments: one per month and the two extras in July and December. Effectively it is a saving plan: the worker "saves" for the two most expensive parts of the year, the summer holidays and the festive season. The company - if it has sufficient reserves - gets to invest or bank the money for the number of months involved and to keep any return on that investment.

07:02 Nov 9, 2013 

has put up a succunt explanation of what it is and how it works. As I suggest, "Holiday pay" is a possible brief rendition into English

09:34 Nov 8, 2013 

As Bill suggests, as legal translators we are definitely on the same wave length, perhaps because we know that we may be called upon to justify the accuracy of our terminology choices when translating for lawyers or law professors. Would "extra month's pay" work here? It's simple enough and may suffice for a market research study that, as Phil noted, may really not warrant an explanation of the Spanish wage structure.

08:09 Nov 8, 2013 

in that we are both legal translators and in the legal field correctness of meaning is far more important than style. When translating multi-million, or even billion, euro contracts an incorrect word or two can have multi-million consequences. I don't translate poetry or advertising blurb and it goes against the grain to use the wrong word for the sake of convenience.

Here I could live with 'extra payment' in this context as it is sufficiently ambiguous and vague but BONUS is simply wrong and misleading. I think Rebecca and I sing from the same hymn sheet.

22:41 Nov 7, 2013 

A friend who is a professor of Comparative Law at Arizona State gave me some advice about translation ("accurate is always better than short"). Here, as Phil says, it may be too complicated to find something to use in this case instead of "bonus," and the context may not warrant the bother of finding a better term (the poster will have to decide if it is). But at least in the discussion we have underscored for those who may not be familiar with Spain's standard pay structure that "bonus" isn't really an accurate translation for "paga extra" and that, indeed, "bonus" is also used here in a different sense.

14:59 Nov 7, 2013 

But look at the context! It's useful to have all this information, but it's too complicated.

14:52 Nov 7, 2013 

This 1/14th salary payment made twice yearly in Spain is not actually a "bonus" and I think it would be misleading to call it that, since in addition to the "paga extra" many Spanish firms also pay what is called in Spanish a "bonus," often linked to yearly profits. And a "bonus" is discretionary, and even if employees may tend to expect it each year, it is treated as a one-time payment. In fact, when receiving bonuses employees may be asked to sign a document indicating that they are aware that the bonus is a one-time discretionary payment that doesn't create any future rights. In contrast, as indicated in the discussion, the "paga extra" is part of the salary structure in employment contracts that indicate that the annual salary will be divided into 14 "pagas" to which the employee is entitled as of right.

23:12 Nov 6, 2013 

...with the discussion so far in that it is unfortunate that this mandatory part of a salary has come to be seen as a bonus.

I just wanted to add that the months when a paga extraordinaria may be paid will vary according to your professional group, although the most common are June and December. This will depend upon the negotiations arrived at for the "convenio colectivo", the collective agreement over pay and conditions for each professional group.

23:09 Nov 6, 2013 

Thanks for the clarification. But I would still use "bonus" for simplicity here - it's not a contract of employment or other legal document, just someone explaining that they had extra money in their pay packet and used it to buy whatever it was.

21:51 Nov 6, 2013 

It's a synonym of paga extraordinaria, commonly just called the extraordinaria, and is an extra month's salary which used to be paid to public servants in July and December and currently is only paid in December.

It's not a bonus. You might perhaps argue that seniority payments etc. (complementos) are bonuses, though it would be stretching a point since they're not discretionary. But the paga extra is simply a matter of dividing the annual salary into 14 instead of 12 and paying 2 parts instead of 1 in certain months. What they've done by cutting the summer extraordinaria is to reduce the salary by 1/14.

Bear in mind that "paga" and "pago" are not synonyms. "Paga" means a regular, prescribed, non-discretionary wage or maintenance payment. (It's also what we call pocket money in Spain.)

This is actually in the Oxford Superlex dictionary:

paga de Navidad extra month’s salary paid at Christmas
paga extra or extraordinaria extra month’s salary gen paid twice a year

20:40 Nov 6, 2013 

It's not a bonus any more than your basic wage. It is not discretionary. It is simply part of the salary structure.

19:45 Nov 6, 2013 

Whether it means extra or extraordinario doesn't make any difference to the meaning, though I think it's unlikely to be an abbreviation, just as "extra" isn't an abbreviation for "extraordinary" in English. But I don't see how you can disagree with Vesna's translation and say that "extra" doesn't mean "additional". It may be contractually agreed, so they get it every year, but it's still a bonus on top of their monthly salary.

19:11 Nov 6, 2013 

extra is short for extraordinario, it does NOT mean extra.