Translating matters

Last week I attended the 2018 Mediterranean Translators and Editors Meeting (METM18). It was set in the beautiful Catalan city of Girona - conveniently only a stone's throw away from Barcelona, where I am based. As well as taking part in a practical workshop led by Laura Bennett* and learning a wealth of information from presentations by fellow translators and editors, METM18 was a wonderful opportunity to meet fellow colleagues based in the Mediterranean region and beyond. When talking to other translators, I was struck by how hard it was to get a straight answer to the simple question: "Where are you from?"  Now, before you jump to conclusions, I'm not saying that translators are a shifty or reserved bunch. To the contrary, most answers were fascinating and reassuringly resembled how I usually (sometimes uncomfortably) respond: "I was born in Country A, studied in Country B, moved to Country C for work and am currently living in Country D".  ...

Location, Location, Location Or how to create REALationships AND nurture your target language For the first two years working as a freelance translator, my company was based in the UK and I was translating exclusively from French into English, mainly for customers in the aerospace sector. Previous to this, I worked as an in-house translator for several years in Toulouse, France (the headquarters of Airbus, hence my specialisation). Although in Toulouse I worked alongside other English speakers, one of the aspects I noticed about spending a vast amount of time speaking a source (foreign) language or even speaking your target language with other people who master both languages as well as you do, is the effect on the quality of your target language (the language you translate into, namely your native language, or mother tongue). By quality, I do not mean that you suddenly start to make grammatical errors or use the wrong terminology. However, over time, it becomes increas...

I have been translating exclusively from French to English professionally since 2011 and, luckily, have rarely been short of work, for which I am eternally grateful. In part, this is due to the fact that I specialise in the field of aerospace and engineering, where there is no shortage of texts to be translated. However, with seven years of experience translating a large quantity of these very technical, but now very familiar documents, I recently reached a point in my career where I no longer felt challenged. Feeling like I am learning something new is very important for me in terms of job satisfaction. Variety is the spice of life, as they say! Therefore, I decided that something needed to change. I needed to push myself outside of my comfort zone. Further to completing my MA (in 2011), I had been learning Spanish rather sporadically. I have a lot of Hispanic friends and I have taken Spanish lessons on and off. Although I was able to express myself fairly well in the la...