Spanish in Any Other Language
Yesterday I received an email with an attached document and the request that I translate it and return it.
From the start, I could tell there was some weird vocabulary going on, especially as it dealt with a religious order founded during the Crusades. I hop-skipped-and-jumped my way through the text, translating what I could and trusting that what I could get was sufficient information for their purposes.
And then I gave up and went to Google. I thought surely I could get some information somewhere that would help fill in my knowledge enough to make sense of what I was translating, and I did.
Wikipedia had a lengthy entry on the subject and I began to read through it until it sounded eerily familiar. On a hunch, I visited the Spanish version of Wikipedia and found almost word-for-word the document I was translating.
I work with someone who has become well-known for her answer "Let me tell you about this new thing on the web... it is called Google. Everything is google-able." You will all be very proud of me that I did not include that with the email I sent back with my partial translation and the link to Wikipedia.
But if only all translations were so easy. Earlier in the week found me sequestered away in a conference room remote controlling my way back over the same 45 seconds of film a bazillion times. A woman from Guatemala was crying, sharing details of her life, and words were swallowed up in sobs. The words I thought I understood enough to verify in the dictionary didn't make sense in context so I drafted a co-worker whose family is from Guatemala to help me. She listened a half dozen times before she asked for her "phone a friend" lifeline.
"Hey, random question. What are chuchos?"
"What? Why are you asking about that?"
"We are watching this TV show and this lady uses the word and we think it means dogs but it doesn't make sense."
"Why don't you just turn on the subtitles?"
Maybe next time we watch the show, we will. After we've finished writing them.
From the start, I could tell there was some weird vocabulary going on, especially as it dealt with a religious order founded during the Crusades. I hop-skipped-and-jumped my way through the text, translating what I could and trusting that what I could get was sufficient information for their purposes.
And then I gave up and went to Google. I thought surely I could get some information somewhere that would help fill in my knowledge enough to make sense of what I was translating, and I did.
Wikipedia had a lengthy entry on the subject and I began to read through it until it sounded eerily familiar. On a hunch, I visited the Spanish version of Wikipedia and found almost word-for-word the document I was translating.
I work with someone who has become well-known for her answer "Let me tell you about this new thing on the web... it is called Google. Everything is google-able." You will all be very proud of me that I did not include that with the email I sent back with my partial translation and the link to Wikipedia.
But if only all translations were so easy. Earlier in the week found me sequestered away in a conference room remote controlling my way back over the same 45 seconds of film a bazillion times. A woman from Guatemala was crying, sharing details of her life, and words were swallowed up in sobs. The words I thought I understood enough to verify in the dictionary didn't make sense in context so I drafted a co-worker whose family is from Guatemala to help me. She listened a half dozen times before she asked for her "phone a friend" lifeline.
"Hey, random question. What are chuchos?"
"What? Why are you asking about that?"
"We are watching this TV show and this lady uses the word and we think it means dogs but it doesn't make sense."
"Why don't you just turn on the subtitles?"
Maybe next time we watch the show, we will. After we've finished writing them.
Comments