If you are still translating documents on notebook paper or a typewriter then I wish you all the luck in the world, but this post is not for you. Keyboard shortcuts may first appear to be more trouble than they’re worth, given that you can navigate through Microsoft Word and Trados just fine with the […]...
I always think about a professor from University who would insist– and rightly so– that it was imperative for us to check and recheck that we had correctly translated all the different figures correctly: prices, amounts, measurements, dates, etc. An incorrect sum or total in a contract, for example, could lead t...
After hearing about the now infamous Obama/Osama slips (John Ashcroft, Mitt Romney, etc.), plus the thousands of intentional “jokes” (Rush Limbaugh, Liz Trotta) on an almost weekly basis, one would think that the election and campaign mix-ups and mistakes would have run out by now. But a translated letter sent o...
Many people think that anyone who speaks a second language would make a good translator. It’s not enough however, for the translator to just be bilingual. He or she must be “bicultural” as well. Understanding their “second language’s” culture is a must for translators. A professor from Un...
With so much often said about the infiltration of English into the Spanish language, one often forgets that borrowed words and loan words are a two-way street. United States English has its share of linguistic contributions from Spanish, words that come from Mexico, Cuba, Spain and beyond. The two most common classification...
“Translations” The same thing always happened to him. When someone translated one of his poems into a foreign language (at least, a foreign language that he knew), his own verses sounded better than in the original. This is why it came as no surprise that he found the French version of his poem “Time and [...
The general consensus about Spanish in the U.S. is that its use, in terms of the number of speakers and general “visibility” (mainstream media, advertising, etc.), is growing exponentially. And with record numbers of Spanish-speaking immigrants coming from South and Central America, it looks like this will conti...
Just two weeks after Translator’s Day, which is celebrated on the anniversary of Saint Jerome’s death as a tribute to him having been the first to translate the Bible into Latin, an agreement was reached at the Vatican in favor of further translation and distribution of the most widely book in history. Accordi...
The United States has long prided itself on being a “melting pot” of different cultures and backgrounds and this becomes especially apparent amidst talk of the different voter demographics and the pledges made to different ethnic groups. Apart from the Spanish translations that I mentioned before on McCain and O...
She is known by many names: Malinalli, Malintzin(Spanish transliterations of her original name– the tzin suffix was added to indicate hierarchy and nobility), “Doña Marina,” or most commonly, La Malinche. Malineli Tenepatl (c.1502 – c.1529), a Mexican girl born into the upper class, was presented to...
Cheap and fast are the first two words that go through most people’s minds when they start looking for a translation agency. But when they read over the first translation that they had done based solely on those two criteria, they’ll probably rethink the whole idea and realize that “quality” was actu...
Personally, one of the things about translating that gets under my skin is having to check over it once I’m done. I hate it. But after a few jobs where I wanted to bang my head against the wall because I hadn’t gone back over it and spotted my stupid mistake (but of course someone […]...
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 ...
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....
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 [&...
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 langua...
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...
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 [&...
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...
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’...