What is CORPS in Spanish?


The word CORPS is used to refer to a military unit within one of the armed forces like the Submarine Corps within the Navy or just another unit that is not necessarily part of the three armed forces but a complement such as the U.S. Marine Corps.
For some reason the word CORPS lost its military-status-only and some public organizations adopted the term. Thus, now we have the famous Peace Corps, which is funded by the United States and promotes understanding between that nation and others, or the Salvation Army which is religious in nature.
The problem here is that we do not have something like that in Spanish. The concept is a bit odd to us so the translation is completely literal and provides little to the understanding of the right significance of this term in English: CUERPOS. To say that one is "miembro de los Cuerpos de Paz" holds little meaning in those Spanish-speaking countries where the Peace Corps has little or no presence at all for example.

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