MET Meeting 2011 in Barcelona
This week I’ll be attending the Mediterranean Editors and Translators Meeting 2011 (METM11), which is being held in Barcelona from Thursday to Saturday (20/10-22/10). As you can see from the programme,...
View ArticleWhat I did last weekend — METM11
Here’s a quick run-down of my first MET meeting, METM11: Thursday afternoon: “Getting started in financial translation” by Stephen Waller. A practical workshop with some good tips. We looked at typical...
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Truce on bilingual dictionaries
It is often forgotten that dictionaries are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature. (Jorge Luis Borges,...
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Do you section articles or break sections into articles?
One common translation problem when translating Spanish legislation into English is whether to translate artículo literally as “article” or use its legal English functional equivalent, “section”....
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Should translations be literal?
This summer, quite unexpectedly, I got the chance to hear about a direct client’s experience buying translations. A friend of mine and his family were visiting, and while I was driving them back to...
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English Spanish legal glossary with a nice disclaimer
I just came across this glossary on Twitter: Glossary of legal (and related) terms and courthouse signs English/Spanish I have no idea of how useful it may be, but I like the disclaimer in the...
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The confusing and mysterious world of being an imputado
What is an imputado? So many politicians in Spain are imputados that a recently arrived Martian might assume you have to be an imputado to be a politician. Of course, an astute Martian who did a little...
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Book Review: The Civil Law Tradition
The Civil Law Tradition by John Henry Merryman and Rogelio Pérez-Perdomo is excellent background reading for translators in any language combination crossing the civil–common law divide. Aimed at...
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A cognitive slip and something about the translation relationship
The following exchange on Twitter got me thinking about the difference between important and difficult translations and how I might have confused the two on occasions. When Ken Adams, an expert on...
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You gotta do what you gotta do: Classic polispeak from Spain
Here’s a fantastic bit of polispeak from a PP (Partido Popular) party rally in Spain. It’s from a couple of years back, but it’s a classic. The offender is José Ramón Bauzà, president of the Balearic...
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Safe-bet errors: a translation’s worst enemy
An easy way to wreck an otherwise good translation is to include the safe-bet translation of a term or two in it. What’s a safe-bet translation and why is it often an error? A safe-bet translation is...
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Not that effective changes to Spain’s eviction law
As an occasional topic on this blog has been the wave of evictions of mortgage defaulters in Spain brought on by the financial crisis (see here), I wanted to flag this article (in Spanish) by Olatz...
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Aforamiento: making us unequal before the law and wreaking havoc in bilingual...
When the King of Spain Juan Carlos de Borbón decided to call it a day and abdicate, he put everyone into a frenzy, the media especially, but also the Spanish Government, which had to rush about making...
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La casta política and where it came from
Here’s an interesting term that’s become popular in Spain: la casta as in la casta política. Literally, it’s the “political caste”, or the old guard on both sides of the political fence. A catchword of...
View ArticleMET Meeting 2011 in Barcelona
This week I’ll be attending the Mediterranean Editors and Translators Meeting 2011 (METM11), which is being held in Barcelona from Thursday to Saturday (20/10-22/10). As you can see from the programme,...
View ArticleWhat I did last weekend — METM11
Here’s a quick run-down of my first MET meeting, METM11: Thursday afternoon: “Getting started in financial translation” by Stephen Waller. A practical workshop with some good tips. We looked at typical...
View Article