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Spanish Differences - Spanish language specialist

28/7/2017

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spanish language specialist
What do people look for when they travel to another country? For many it’s a rest from their everyday activities and routine, a chance to relax. Some enjoy an environment that feels like their home country with food, drink and sounds that are familiar to them. For others it is an opportunity to explore and enjoy cultural differences. The location may be one they return to time and again or they could be adventurers enjoying the new surroundings.

Even if the environment is an unfamiliar one where the visitor is comfortable among strangers and meeting new people, one aspect of their travel will be familiar. Although food is an obvious choice in many parts, language, whether there is a casual interest in it or a passion for it, is a common factor for many travellers. Some find a basic grasp of a local language, enough to be polite, is more than enough for them while others find themselves intrigued by the range of sounds and linguistic habits they encounter.

So, why doesn’t everyone strive for proficiency in another language? The honest answer is that for many of them they simply don’t have the ability to do so, the time or the interest in doing so. It is often said among anglophones that there is a lack of desire to develop other language skills. A reason given by many of them who are regular holidaymakers and even those who live in another country where the national language is not English is that there is no need because everyone else speaks English!

On the other hand, those who choose the route of learning or improving language skills generally do this out of a passion to communicate. Communication may go as far as “holiday Spanish”, more advanced language skills with an understanding of essential grammar or full blown academic achievements.

It is important to remember that whatever the aim of learning a language and whatever the motivation for learning, such a skill can have personal or professional advantages. Take the learner who wants no more than an informal knowledge of the language. The sense of achievement when simply greeting a friendly shopkeeper or frequently seen local who is a speaker of the language and understanding the response can be enormous in itself.

Others who are driven to attain a deeper understanding of their chosen language may be pleased to have such a skill appear on their curriculum vitae. With this achievement they may be able to impress a potential employer with their enhanced communication skills or motivation to study to gain additional qualifications and with this gain a new position, secondment or promotion. What drives people to take up languages as adults is therefore completely subjective with only one common factor that is the desire to communicate.

When you think about how language is learnt it’s interesting to consider for a minute how babies develop speech. They simply hear it spoken by their parents and others around them, then from there. Hence, it is no surprise for a child to speak with the accent of the area in which they are brought up and to use expressions typical of that area. On the other hand, it is sometimes found that children pick up the accent of one of their parents and can have almost a mixed or neutral sounding accent. A lot of the development and understanding of language stems from their imitation of the sounds they hear.

So, it is similar when adult language learners embarks on a course of learning. It is important to imitate the sounds made by native speakers of the given language. A minor issue here is that learners become so accustomed to the same accent, terminology and pronunciation that when someone comes along who is from a different region where the language is spoken such changes, although not extraordinary to the native speaker, can be sufficient to throw the language learner into a bit of a panic.

It would be useful now to look at this in the context of the UK. In England take an accent from the south coast and compare it to an accent from Manchester. Similarly, moving in the other direction, the difference between terminology used and pronunciation between Liverpool and Newcastle. The list could go on!

If we take the Spanish language as an example, particularly Castilian as opposed to one of Spain’s regional languages like Basque or Catalan, certain sounds can be quite distinct depending on the Spanish city. In Valladolid, “D” at the end of the word often has a “th” tone to it. The soft “th” is in fact quite a common sound in mainland Spain as the letters “Z” and “C” are pronounced “th”. The exception to this is in the Andalucia area where these letters sometimes have a softer “S” sound.

Anyone used to visiting the Canary Islands will have noticed a distinct absence of these “th” sounds in conversations with locals. Having something of a Latin American influence on the Canarian accent, Castilian spoken there has a much softer, less harsh sounding tone compared to the mainland variety. As in Latin American Spanish, the “C” and “Z” are pronounced as a soft “S”.

Some Spanish learners find the softer pronunciation more natural, however, in the UK, many Spanish classes teach the European dialect. Once some degree of competence and confidence is attained in one it becomes far easier to adjust the ear to differences in pronunciation. Anyone using Spanish in a professional capacity such as interpreters and many translators can confirm that the ability to decipher both the dialects and accents of the various regions is what makes a Spanish language specialist.











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What is a Legal Document Specialist to you?

12/7/2017

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There are industries and professions which are often heard of, are well known, and it is easily and commonly understood what generally goes on in them. It is clear that a teacher teaches, a builder builds, a translator translates and so on. With some, however, such as the translator, what the task entails and what the professional requirements are in order to be competent to perform the role are frequently misunderstood and underestimated.

Taking the further example of the legal profession, most people understand that a lawyer can advise on legal matters, ensure you gain compensation for a wrongdoing or that a wrongdoing is rectified, defend you in a courtroom, verify that legal documents, contracts etc are correctly and legally drafted, among other things.

It is therefore no surprise that the ordinary member of the public understands any role or task that includes the word “legal” or the term “legal document” to be directly associated with the legal profession.

To get to the bottom of this, let’s proceed with the comparison of two jurisdictions. Firstly, in parts of the USA such a person is understood to be someone who serves documents such as a court summons on members of the public and files documents with a court. In other parts of the country this is understood to be a type of legal support assistant, a bit like a legal secretary or similar assistant in the UK.

This person is expected to have finely tuned administrative and organisational skills. Examples of this include managing the firm’s filing systems, whether these are paper files, electronic ones or both and taking care that these are easily identifiable to others who may require access to them.
Excellent IT skills are clearly an advantage in organising the electronic files just mentioned but also to secure the safe storage of data within the office and manage the many other systems used there such as scheduling and calendar software, emails and other data recording applications.

Further skills the person will require include strong interpersonal skills with the ability to deal with both the legal professionals within the firm and from other firms, court and other staff. Quite likely this aptitude for communication is useful for dealing with suppliers, such as office stationery providers or travel companies, and competently processing invoices. The same can be said for the law firm’s clients with whom telephone and face-to-face communication is usually required. Dealing with client invoices and payments too can undoubtedly be tasks requiring much patience and tact!

An extremely important trait for the person employed in this role is naturally the highest standard of discretion and confidentiality in dealing with individuals from outside of the firm including clients. Any carelessness in this regard can easily lead to the disclosure of important information on which the success of a particular case entirely rests and result in a case being jeopardised. This circumstance would entail devastation for the client and needless to say the professional reputation of the legal professional under whose supervision the person had been working and potentially the firm as a whole.

legal-document-specialist
Additional duties requiring the utmost attention to detail include checking, revising and proofreading all forms of written correspondence whether in hard copy or electronically and meticulous typing and data entry capabilities.

To many it is with these last three attributes, namely, confidentiality, attention to detail and accuracy that some overlap with the responsibilities of another type of legal document specialist is acknowledged. This is not to ignore the administrative, organisational and interpersonal skills mentioned further above, which are equally necessary and important. In the UK the presumption would be that reference is being made to someone who works in the legal profession. However, there is a profession that supports not only the latter sector but also provides such support services to official bodies, organisations, individuals and the commercial sector: that of the translator who is a legal document specialist and who, in most instances, is accredited by an appropriate institution to provide an official English translation for a plethora of purposes.

This type of translator must be capable of understanding legal terms and principles as well as the legal systems of the countries where the language or languages from which they translate are used in addition to that of the country whose official language is the one into which they translate, and which should be their native or first language.

It goes without saying, then, that in a world where pen is rarely put to paper particularly in formal, academic and professional settings, ease in using various forms of telecommunications technology, programmes and software is one of the first skills to be developed or honed. Similarly, dealing with clients can be a particular challenge and so, the ability to deal calmly, rationally and professionally is a desirable attribute in successfully managing a translation business.

As the term suggests, the translator who is a legal document specialist is at all times required to exercise the utmost discretion and confidentiality to an equal extent as the non-linguist counterpart. A careless utterance outside of the work environment would doubtlessly result in a reduction in work from the client whose information has been publicly disclosed. And worse, they would consider this language specialist a liability who cannot be trusted with their files. Such a lack of confidence in a language professional always bears the risk of their own professional reputation disappearing rapidly into the abyss.

The final skill set shared with the namesake, that essentially consists in diligence, accuracy and attention to detail, is the one that resonates most with those who give a thought for the role and responsibilities of the translator of legal documents. Obvious aspects of this are great care in performing the translation task, reference to glossaries and researching new terminology, careful input while typing, revision and proofreading of the completed work.

It is shown therefore that a legal document specialist is widely and correctly understood to be someone who is sufficiently qualified and competent to handle a variety of legal documents in the completion of their work. Both roles referred to require an excellent understanding of legal speak and the workings of the given legal system. Both require a high level of diligence be it in verbal or written communications as well as an ability to overcome the challenges of information technology.

The clear difference is that the non-linguist specialist processes documents and communications in a single language whereas the translator in fact transforms documents that originated in a given jurisdiction in a foreign language into the equivalent language of the jurisdiction and legal system in which they are based. An example in terms of the UK is taking a court judgment, a contract or personal document issued in a non-UK country and drafted in a language other than English and essentially transferring its original meaning into English and in appropriate terminology for the Scottish or English legal system.

Your feedback is welcome so please leave any comments below.

official-english-translation
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What is ordinary language? My translation story

3/7/2017

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french language specialist
So I’ve been a serious translator for a long, long time. Since 2002 in fact. At the beginning I also took on interpreting work which was the skill I originally trained in and wanted my focus and primary business activity to be just that. I didn’t want to do translation. Nonetheless, as many of us know things don’t always work out as we expect them to.

I soon found that the calls to interpret in courtrooms, police stations and other public services weren’t regular enough to provide a viable income and that translation projects definitely could not be discounted. Having attended courses and events aimed at linguists, and particularly interpreters, I realised that it was a case of location, location, location. And really, it was something that I should have realised sooner but, as with many new ventures and as my first attempt to run a business, even as a freelancer, I started out optimistic and presumed I’d be all over the region, perhaps even all over the country interpreting here, there and everywhere.

Common sense of course says that the need for interpreters in any language pair or pairs will correspond to the volume of non-English speakers who come into contact with some authority or other and who have an insufficient level of the English language to navigate their way through the procedures, sector specific terminology or, and particularly the most difficult even for native English speakers, legal jargon and terms.

It was clear that qualified interpreters who live in or close to a city where many workers, individuals and families tend to settle receive more calls to interpret between the various public services and those citizens who are native speakers of other languages, and had a clear advantage. Living forty minutes away from one large UK city didn’t preclude me altogether from the odd interpreting assignment but a minimum of one hour away from the next closest large city meant I was seen as a last resort if no-one else suitably qualified was available.

As much as I didn’t want to admit it I discovered that being in my home office in front of my laptop wasn’t all that bad. It was nothing like the devastating hell I thought being office bound was going to be. After a while I got faster and was able to turn around translation projects pretty quickly and accurately, confident in my ability. I can even go so far as to say that I have come to view my translation work as a form of art in which I take great pride and from which I derive great satisfaction.

In the early days most of the translation work came from larger agencies. Some became regulars and were in regular contact while others hired me as a one-off or perhaps once a year for some project. The bigger agencies who received a lot of work began not only sending me translation projects but editing ones too. That is, editing and correcting translations performed by another translator.

So, what type of translation work was this? The great thing about translation work, and particularly for a legal document specialist, is that the field of law covers every area of personal, public and business life. With that comes variety and I found that I learnt a lot about sectors that I had never previously given a second thought to. The same applied to my time as an interpreter.

The translation of supply contracts and articles of association became bread and butter projects. Almost all of these with the odd exception contained the same or similar legal terminology but with individual business or sector specific differences. Court judgments (yes, judgments without an “e” for judicial decisions!) became commonplace as did certified translations of personal documents such as marriage certificates. Political texts, newspaper articles and public announcements were also typical.

Now, since the law applies to every industry and every business, and every one of those requires company documents and contracts, very often accompanying documents also required translation. This led to my translating product specifications or supply agreements with a lot of technical vocabulary, often containing as much technical terminology as legal language in some cases.

And this was great because it meant the legal aspect was there and was usually straightforward yet there was something new in there too which required a little research of the industry specific language, products, processes etc. I’d started out with only an interest in legal matters but became unbelievably familiar with the tobacco, telecoms, water processing and mining industries in particular!

Furthermore, a great thing about having working languages that are spoken and/or are the language of business across the globe rather than restricted to one single country is that I discovered new aspects to the languages from which I translated owing to some regional variations. For instance, having studied European Portuguese, there weren’t too many surprises when it came to translating Portuguese documents from African jurisdictions, and the same could be said of French ones. From this I learned a bit about political and commercial attitudes in several African countries.

Brazilian Portuguese documents are surprisingly refreshing to translate as they are “Portuguese” but they keep me on my toes because of the inverted verb-pronoun structure and the very frequent use of the gerundive in contrast to the very frequent use of the a + infinitive structure to indicate “-ing” in European Portuguese. See my post about the differences between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese.

Spanish is the language, however, that I found to have more differences in sector specific or sometimes official terminology between its Latin American and European variants. Having initially learnt European Spanish then subsequently spending time in a region where there were many Latino influences in the pronunciation and language used, I was confident of being a Spanish language specialist who could translate the language from any part of the world.

Very often there were just subtle differences in the meaning of a given term but there could be a lot of regional dialect that required slightly more extensive research. This was particularly the case in political and criminal law related texts from the Americas. Nonetheless it is these differences that make language so special and make the role of the translator so varied.

Having said all of the above, this does not mean that I have been restricted to translating purely legal, business or technical documents. It’s always quite pleasant to receive something a little different to translate and which presents a few challenges. Therefore, and as the reader has no doubt discovered by now, research is a huge part of the translation task.

The biggest challenge I have faced to date in my career must be the translation of several episodes of a French television entertainment programme. Anyone would be forgiven for thinking that this was a relatively simple task for someone who is used to working on complex legal materials since a fair presumption would be that the transcript contains just “ordinary language”.

This is where it gets tricky because what is ordinary language? Jargon, regional, town, city, county specific expressions are often only ordinary in their home location! As part of a televised entertainment show contestants can come from all corners of the country.  Sayings, slang and humour are often part of “ordinary” language too. One section of the show in question even included rhyming. Imagine having to find the English equivalent of all these aspects of speech in a single text!

Needless to say working out what the speakers really meant or what they were implying was a challenge but a thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying one. Perhaps most challenging of all in this project was all the thought I put into finding the expressions in English that meant exactly the same thing as the French counterpart but used completely different analogies. Sometimes they make perfect sense and it is clear that they have the same meaning when you think about them. Other times they range from humorous or odd to bizarre or nonsensical.

So, let’s end this article about my story as a translator with a couple of those expressions.

common french expressions sayings
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