Translating is Not as Easy as I Thought

For the first time, I am translating a book from Spanish to English. How hard could it be? I’m a native English speaker, and I read and speak Spanish pretty well.

The answer is, it’s much harder than I thought. First, it is a book that I think is important enough that English-speaking readers should have access to it. So I am motivated to do the best possible translation, not just to be a bit better than Bing Translator (aka. Bablefish)!

Second, it is an in-their-own-words type of book, so there are plenty of slang and colloquial expressions. Fortunately, the author is Salvadoran, and nearly all of the voices she writes in are also Salvadoran, since I lived in El Salvador for two years and thus know much of the slang. But there’s always expressions I don’t know! I found a very useful online resource at: “Linguee” (http://www.linguee.pe/) When I think a phrase might be slang or a colloquialism, I enter it there. It has already helped me out quite a few times.

Third, you have to be careful about translating into slang and colloquialisms in English too. I’m sure there are some expressions I could use that would leave you scratching your head unless you happen to also be from central Wisconsin and within 10 years of my age! Yet you would like the voice in English to resemble the original Spanish voice, and not that of an academic explaining what the guy said!

I found a good Spanish/English dictionary online at: http://www.wordreference.com I find myself looking up more Spanish words than I would have expected. Even when I know what the word means in English, I often look it up anyway in the hope of finding a synonym that fits the context better.

The book I’m translating could be described as a historical novel, so I find myself trying to get additional information about the historical events mentioned. Wikipedia has proven to be a good resource for this, although I’m somewhat shocked at how much richer and better the description of Latin American history is in the Spanish version of Wikipedia than in the English version. If I ever feel like I don’t have enough to do, I suppose I could work on that!