With the U.S. presidential election around the corner, both John McCain and Barack Obama are fighting harder and harder for the Hispanic vote. McCain however, has been accused of trying to take advantage of the supposed Spanish-English language barrier to make contradictory claims to English and Spanish speaking voters.

It is ironic that McCain would want anything related to his campaign translated, given that he voted to “amend title 4 United States Code, to declare English as the national language of the United States.” And although he has a website in Spanish, Spanish radio ads, and numerous translated print ads, until now they have been fairly straight forward. The new ad however, in which McCain is portrayed as being dedicated to improving guest-worker programs and the path to citizenship, goes directly against his English language position:

“[I] have pledged that it would be among my highest priorities to secure our borders first, and only after we achieved widespread consensus that our borders are secure, would we address other aspects of the problem in a way that defends the rule of law and does not encourage another wave of illegal immigration.”

So what is McCain’s real stance? Obama supporters say it depends on who he’s talking to.

One of the things that we as translators tend to be concerned with is the rights of our published work, especially when our name appears alongside it.

For a translation of scientific research material published in a technical journal, the translator is usually thanked for his or her services in the Acknowledgements section. For a book put out by a publishing house, the translator has the same rights as the author, as he or she has created an original piece. Among these rights is having your name on the work.

In Section II of their Charter (http://www.fit-ift.org/en/charter.php#rights), The International Federation of Translators establishes the Rights of the Translator, intended to be used as guide on the principles to be upheld in the profession. The first article states that “Every translator shall enjoy all the rights with respect to the translation he/she has made, which the country where he/she exercises his/her activities grants to other intellectual workers.” (This is an important detail– it depends on each respective country’s laws.) But this institution, among others, recognizes the translator’s right to authorship, copyright, as well as the same rights held by the original author in regards to a moral right to recognition for his or her work, legal rights against the distortion or modification of the translation, and the power to authorize any use of it (publication, transmission, adaptation, etc.).

Most countries use the International Standard Book Number (ISBN code): a unique commercial identifier assigned by the national ISBN agency. It is not obligatory for publishers to assign an ISBN to each book, nor do they have to give any sort of identifier, but– luckily for us– most bookstores only deal with merchandise that does have this number. The ISBN’s purpose is to establish and identify a publishing house’s title and to make it exclusive to that particular edition, author, and translator.

The author and the reader both have the right to expect and demand a quality translation. Protecting the rights of the translator is a way to protect the rights of the reader and the author.

Anyone using Trados is going to break a few tags at some point. It happens. There’s no way around it (that I’ve found), and it can be an extremely frustrating experience. If you are translating with Microsoft Word and you haven’t yet tried to close the segment or done any other Trados operation, you can undo your last action (Ctrl+Z) and hopefully fix it that way.

If you have however tried to use Trados, your best bet is the “Fix Document” command. This is the second to last option in the Trados menu ( Alt+Ctrl+U) and will usually fix small errors and broken tags. It finds the damaged tag, repairs it and then takes you back to the beginning of your document. Unfortunately, it is not always so “magical.” If it does not work for you, you can try to copy source and re-translate or try and copy a good tag and paste it over the damaged one.

Trados Fix Document should not be seen as a failsafe way to fix tags, but rather as a first attempt that will sometimes save you a big headache. In my experience, it has worked about 2/3 of the time. So keep it in mind, watch your tags and good luck!

If there is one thing that almost all translators can agree upon, it’s that two of the most things to translate, no matter what the language, are jokes and poetry. Jokes, because they usually have a play on words or phrases with a “double meaning” that are practically impossible to transfer from one language to another.

Take this English one-liner for example:

“Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He’s all right now.”

One possible translation would be: “¿Te enteraste de ese chico al que le cortaron todo el lado izquierdo? Ahora está bien.” It would be technically correct, understandable, but missing the punch line. The joke works in English because “right” here means “bien” and “derecho.” Maybe you could make a play on words with “derecho” in the sense of “recto,” or maybe in the sense of laws… Eventually, and with a good bit of work, a good translator could get some kind of humor out of it.  But it would never be the same joke.

And poetry holds even greater challenges, even if it the original does not rhyme or you decide not to try and make the translation rhyme, it still involves meter, cadence, and rhythm that tend to be most difficult to translate. If it’s not a translation, you’re writing a new poem… A poem is a unique combination of special words- and not others– that are also laid out in a unique arrangement. How does one do that? So then, does everyone need to learn the original language in order to read the poem? Exactly how many languages do we need to learn? Right.
Every language has its own ways to twist words around, its own double meanings and plays on words. It’s not exactly vital to translate jokes since every country or region has its own style of humor. But for poetry, I feel that we translators don’t have a choice. we wouldn’t have access to Russian poetry, Greek classics, Latin sonnets, or Japanese haikus if a translator hadn’t first taken on the task of translating them. And although it may not turn out “perfect,” I think we should keep trying…

Maybe one of the higher ups forgot that the handbook has to be in Spanish as well as English. Maybe part of the PowerPoint presentation is missing and needs to be translated into English for tomorrow’s meeting. Whatever the case, if you’re the client, you need it now. And if you’re the translator, you need to do it now. Here are a few tips on what both sides (client & translator) can do to make a situation known for causing nervous breakdowns go as smoothly as possible.

For the Client: Make sure that the translator or translation company has all the information they need, plus anything else you can provide (glossary, translation memory, translation style guide, etc.) so that there are no hold ups once the ball gets rolling. Answer any questions coming from the other side as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. And above all, remember that a quality translation takes time and hard work. Miracles can happen, but impossible demands will not get them.

For the Translator: Take a deep breath. Get all of your materials together, make sure you’re clear on the exact specifications of the project, and then get to work. Here’s the trick though: take a lot of short breaks. I know it seems impossible, but force yourself to do it. Rush projects typically result in low quality not because of the time crunch per se, but because a translator spends 8 consecutive hours translating and errors get made, the translator zones out, and the translation itself becomes more and more literal. So take 5 minutes and take a walk or eat an apple. Whatever you need to stay fresh. And follow the golden rule of course, save early and save often!

About a century ago George Bernard Shaw remarked that England and the United States were two countries divided by a common language.  The differences in the Spanish spoken in Spain (not to mention in the different regions of Spain itself) and that spoken in Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, etc. can make it seem like everyone is not speaking the same language either.
When translating from English to Spanish, one of the problems we commonly face is knowing what country or region we are writing for, then adapting our text to the “flavor” of the intended audience. We may also have to take a text in English and put it into a Spanish with Caribbean slang, Catalan terms, or lunfardo from Buenos Aires. Maybe we’re not sure of the meaning or if the word we know is used in the same way there. Most times a translator will have to consult a local native speaker (if he or she is lucky enough to know one), search in a forum that has speakers from different countries, or look to a special resource, such as the one that I’d like to share with you now: the “Jergas de Habla Hispana” website. I’ve found it to be a useful tool for finding some of those “weird” words that don’t appear in other dictionaries, and though the site’s creators acknowledge that it’s not all-encompassing, they invite visitors to further enhance it.  http://www.jergasdehablahispana.org/

Harry Shaw is credited with saying, “There is no such thing as good writing. There is only good rewriting.” Believe it or not, translation is no different. In a best case scenario, a project will be translated, edited and then proofread by three different qualified translators. Most reputable Spanish translation companies provide these services as part of their normal translating process. Now maybe you don’t have time to give your document the full treatment, or you feel like you’d be wasting money by getting anything but a bare bones translation. Things come up out of the blue of course, but remember where that difference in time and money spent is going to show up: in the quality of the translation.

It comes as a surprise to many, but having a good translator does not always result in a good translation. A million things can go wrong: a misspelled word here, a missing phrase there, etc. These are the little things that, if not spotted, can blemish an important article, make you and your company look careless and possibly ruin a business opportunity.

As the world becomes more and more globalized, the realities of translation are reaching the mainstream. Machine translation does not work. No single translator is perfect. A project needs to be reviewed, revised, and corrected before it goes out. So a final quote to stress the importance of editing and proofreading.

“Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear.”
——- Patricia Fuller

What does a person need to be able to translate? We all know the answer. Well, we’re all working on it at least: know both languages, the “source” and the “target,” have a broad vocabulary, know the grammatical rules, etc. But…what does a person need to be able to translate well?
It’s easier for any translator to translate into his native language, given that he or she can handle the forms, has a more extensive vocabulary, knows how to properly conjugate, and is generally more comfortable expressing himself in his native language. But even when someone translates only into his native language, he also needs to know the source language extremely well. It’s not enough to only know how to read the language, the translator also has to be able to INTERPRET IT CORRECTLY. And in this trade, that’s where a lot of people fail. One must be very sure of what the original text is actually saying, because everyone (hopefully) knows the difference between “beef” and “flesh”) for example (both are “carne” in Spanish), and when translating a menu this distinction becomes quite important. And the same thing happens translating into Spanish, as “lima” and “archivo” are both “file” in English, but when a Hollywood film is dubbed into Spanish and these two are confused, a prisoner’s girlfriend ends up bringing him a cake with an “archivo” inside for him to file down his cell bars.
Besides keeping in mind that there may be exceptions that we haven’t learned yet and that we should look something up if it doesn’t sound quite right, we also have to see if the word order, the sentence structure, could maybe be a bit different to give the text more sense than what we had originally thought. That can be a bit more difficult to discern.
So how does we get to that level of understanding the language well, that of interpreting the source correctly so that it can be properly worded in our language? Keeping an open mind and looking at all the possibilities seems to be the most obvious pieces of advice. But to reach that level, there is only one sure-fire method: read, read a lot, and read in a language other than your own, that which you’ve studied so exhaustively and that you enjoy so much as to have devoted yourself to translating it.

“Estamos Unidos con John McCain” versus “¡Obamanos!”

Both the Republican and Democrat camps have made unprecedented efforts in their campaigns to show support for the Latino community, as well as court its crucial votes. Both candidates have spent millions on translating and creating websites, radio and TV ads, and billboards directed towards Hispanics in the U.S.

And while their goals are certainly the same, their Spanish language campaign approaches are as different as they are. McCain’s Spanish website is very professional looking, featuring interviews with prominent Hispanics in the U.S. and a special section called “Hablando Claro,” which is his Spanish version of “Straight Talk” on issues like the economy, the use of natural resources, and gun rights. The most popular Obama sites reflect the more “grassroots” style of his campaign, with an Obama reggaeton song, videos of Obama speaking Spanish, and talk about immigration, education, and foreign affairs.

So while both presidential candidates have put record efforts into addressing the Latino vote, whose approach will be more effective? That’s for voters to decide in November.