Translating can be great work. It's straightforward, pays well, and people love to see their stuff in English, which gives them an affinity for you.On the other hand, the material is often so tedious it makes my brain seep out of my skull and down my back. Plus, in April I had full days at home, we were one of the few houses in town with a grassy lawn, and I could count on a fork's tines the number of clouds I saw that month.
Nevertheless, in my last month in San José, I'd had my hours cut and taken a trip to the Corn Islands, and so I (happily, I'll add) took the work and so managed to come back both financially solvent and with a decent tan.
For this job, I translated a series of podcast scripts from Spanish to English on the Multiple Intelligences and other recycled mediocre teaching methods that were probably translated from English to Spanish 10 to 15 years ago. (How do I know this? Because they used this Multiple Intelligences schtick on us when I was in 6th grade because we were one of the district's "experimental" classes! And they were trying to be really avant-garde! With a suburban elementary school curriculum! I digress.)
Oh come on, you say. It can't be that bad, can it? Watch and weep:
Yes! Watch the pedagogy and social justice fuse! (I'm sorry, I'm doing the exclamation point injustice here by condemning it strictly to sarcasm. What I really need is this mark. Or this one.)Nos enfrentan a nuevos tipos de texto a nuevas formas de leer, nos hacen aprender de una forma distinta y nos plantean un reto mucho más interesante, y es cómo relacionarnos con los demás en ese proceso educativo. Entre estas tecnologías no cabe el rechazo, la indifrenecia, pero tampoco la aceptación ingenua, tenemos que aprender a usarlas.
Sin embargo otras personas que consideran que estas tecnologías más bien disminuirán dicha brecha. La utilización de las TIC en los centros escolares por aquellos que no tienen acceso a ellas en el ambiente familiar, es un elemento de justicia social.
We are faced with new forms of text and new ways to read. We are required to learn in a distinct way, and this poses a much more interesting challenge for us: how do we relate with others in this educational process? Among these technologies, there is no end of rejection, indifference, but neither of acceptance, ingenuity, and we just learn how to use them.However, others say these technologies will breach this gap. The use of [information and communication technologies] in learning centers for those who do not usually have access to such technologies in their usual routine is an element of social justice.
The problem is that, as I've had it explained to me by professional Ticos and Bolivians alike, is that in Latino government, NGO, and professional writing the idea is somehow that the more you write, the more intelligent you are. And so they reiterate everything. Several times. The same sentence, with its subject, verb and dependent clauses flipped around and rotated a few different times. Those 50-page USAID quarterly reports I used to translate in La Paz? Probably could have been written in ten. And that is not hyperbole. It violated every holy precept of editing and writing I know. (It does not help that I mostly learned writing from those who were of the New England writing persuasion. And New England inevitably is used in the example sentence for what SAT word? Taciturn.)
Usually, I just tried to plow through the gelatinous blather as quickly as possible. But there was one bit that actually presented a challenge that I found amusing, almost fun. Demonstrating the musical intelligence, the student needs to remember a list of elements in a specific order and makes up a mnemonic chant to help himself do so.
I'm looking at the list of elements (line 23) and the rhyme he comes up with (line 27), and I cannot figure out where he's getting "Mango Sin Fe" from "Manganese Zinc and Hierro (Iron)". And then it hits me: They're using the chemical symbols. Of course. But this was fun. Nothin' like being subversive with ridiculous, but structurally correct, parades of elements:
And thus "Magnetizó Al Mango Sin Fé Ni Estaño, Pobre Hidrógeno Cuando Haga Ache Ge Pe Te Au" became "Magnetized All the Mangoes Singing Faith – Nigh, Sin – Public Hydrogen Cures Aging, Hugs Paint Auras".I also gave all the people in the scripts American names from characters in The Wire.
And that is how we do translating.
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