Sexism in the Spanish language?

Should we accept the generic use of the grammatical masculine gender in Spanish words to include both males & females OR should we start using alternatives that ensure women's visiblility?

El trabajador debe exigir sus derechos OR El trabajador y la trabajadora....


Todos tenemos sentimientos, OR Las personas tenemos sentimientos   
Todos los ciudadanos OR Toda la ciudadanía
Los niños vendrán a clase con ropa comoda OR L@s niñ@s vendrán a clase con ropa cómoda

These and many more questions are the subject of a great article by Ignacio Bosque (miembro de la RAE y catedrático de la Universidad Complutense) that I found by chance yesterday, International Women's Day.  Bosque writes about linguistic sexism, perceived and real, in the Spanish language and what different organisations are doing about it. The article has been supported by many academics of the RAE. All translators should read it, not only to be aware of the issues, but also to avoid over-correcting linguistic sexist practice.

Late Payment-Impago

Late payments or even lack of payment (impago in Spanish) are an unfortunate occurrences in  the interpreting and translating professions. Here you have two posts, one in Spanish (impago) and one in English (Late payments) , that deal wit the issue and give concrete advice on what to do if you find yourself in such situation.

Understandably, both posts refer to Spanish and British law. They discuss relevant legal means of reacting and protecting yourself in either country. Read them (if your LOTE is not Spanish, do a bit of research to find something similar in your language) and start thinking about  the equivalent situation in Australia. What can you do if you are not paid for a translation job? What venues do we have here if an interpreter is not paid in time or not paid at all?

If you want to keep in touch with issues related to interpreting and translating during the summer holidays, follow professionals like the ones in the blogs linked in this post (Silvia Ferrero & Oliver Carreira). There are many links on the right side bar of this blog and most of the blogs have twitter buttons for you to follow their authors.

Happy reading!

Court Interpreting

Last week I attended the launch of professor Sandra Hale's report “Interpreter Policies, Practices and Protocols in Australian Courts and Tribunals– A National Survey,” by the Hon. Justice Ian Harrison, NSW Supreme Court.

Today, while looking at my regular dose of translating and interpreting blogs, I came across this very relevant post by Juan Jimenez Salcedo, Intérpretes de cartón piedra. It looks as if the situation is not much better in Spain where a judge can use as an interpreter any person who can speak the language other than Spanish. No questions asked about qualifications or even knowledge of the Spanish language. It looks as even the interpreting agencies send unqualified people as interpreters for court interpreting.

Read the post, watch the TV news within it and listen to this Radio National about Courtroom interpreters.You can use it at consecutive practice and later on as transalting practice (the script is provided).

Translation, traduccion.

I have been forwarding interesting blog posts on translation to a couple of students I'm friends with in facebook, and I thought everyone else may be interested, so here they go:

• El Gascón Jurado publishes a link in Spanish to Traducciones de leyes españolas por el ministerio de Justicia
• Legally yours from Spain writes in depth about the same legal translations recently published by the Spanish Ministry of Justice and he does it in English. Read his analysis of the different styles used by  the translators of those documents. 
• La paradoja de Chomsky publishes a very interesting post,¿Dónde me apunto para ser traductor?, about what it really means to be a translator as opposed to knowing two languages and thinking that this qualifies anyone as a professional translator. Read the comments, they are all great!

What is TED Talks?

If you are new to TED Talks, watch this video. Notice that they've already created captions in Spanish (from Mexico, was that you Ailin?), Portuguese, Polish and English. They've been done via the Open Translation Project. Have you joined yet?

Translators' Web Presence

Tomorrow we are going to work on blogs as the last activity for the course. While I was looking at my twitter, I came across this video by Ian Emmet. It is a very simple way of advertising what his translation company does.



Via twitter, Ian Emmet has sent me a couple more videos. The one below shows some of  his hospitality and tourism translations.


You can achieve something similar with one of the many open source movie making/slide sites (animoto, stupeflix, even slideshare, smile box, etc).

You could easily create a similar little video with photostory or movie maker. Then you upload it onto your blog or onto youtube or vimeo to give it more air play.
Social media marketing for transaltors is becoming more topical by the minute.There are even webminars taking place. Just explore the net to get ideas and learn form what is going on out there!

Note-taking Revisited

248/365 one of those days

In a previous post, Note Taking for Consecutive Interpreting , we watched some videos on note-taking techniques. Today you can check this site, Interpreter Training Resources. Even though it is aimed at a French audience, the skills described are transferable, and often they use English examples, like;
The rule of thumb is that unless a word is short (4-5 letters) the interpreter should note it in an abbreviated form.

Check the whole file here

You can find the example above in the document,  Rozan - The 7 Principles of Note-taking.
Spanish students, check this out: Los pequeños detalles que marcan la gran diferencia en interpretación consecutiva, por Judith de dos palabras.
Happy practising!