Spanish to English translation: magazine articles and interviews
Anoche Tuve un Sueño is a Spanish language magazine focused on humanitarian causes and environmental issues, featuring interviews with inspirational figures in the field. I was part of a group of linguists who translated its first few issues into English. It was a truly collaborative project, with translators reviewing each other’s articles and working as a team to ensure the magazine was consistent and coherent.
The sample is an excerpt from an eight-page interview with Professor Pedro Luis Alonso, who leads the WHO’s Global Malaria Programme and serves as the Director of the Barcelona Centre for International Health Research (CRESIB).
This interview, originally conducted and written in Spanish, was made up of extracts of speech, was informal in parts and contained idiomatic and colloquial expressions, which required a great deal of creativity to translate.
I took an open-minded approach to this translation, changing idioms and analogies and adapting references so that they made sense to an English-speaking audience. I also made structural changes to the text, which reflected the difference between Spanish and English editorial style and allowed me to better meet the English reader’s expectations. This included restructuring paragraphs and creating shorter, snappier sentences.
The first English language issues of Anoche Tuve Un Sueño have now been published in print. The work I carried out with the magazine taught me a great deal about translating different text types, peer-review and learning and working as a team. In addition, the magazine highlighted important social issues and I learnt about incredible groups of people from across the globe working to create a better world.
