By Jaime Andrés Cubillos-Ballesteros, July 2013
The last seven years that I spent in Colombia, I taught English to people of all ages. During that time, I earned a degree in Literature and prepared myself to be a creative writer.
After arriving to New York City in 2005, I started studying translation with the intention of fusing my two fields of knowledge: professional Spanish writing (grammar, syntax, etc.) and the English-Spanish bilingual background. Working as a free-lancer for different translations companies, you are instructed to do your Spanish translations or proofreading jobs lowering the level of language, as if they were aimed towards a 6th grade child; that means that my Spanish translations inside the United States must be written as if a 6th grade child would be the reader of such translation. Now… imagine a 6th grade little girl native from Colombia, living in Colombia, will she ever experience any situation in which she will need to read contracts, bank statements, insurance service information, new medicines brochures, or any of the other kind of legal, medical, economic or merchandizing jobs that are normally translated or proofread? Are such vocabularies able to be lowered in their language registry? Certainly, the 6th grade vocabulary for most of these topics simply does not exist.
Also during my time in New York, I have been working as a Spanish teacher for children, and adults. In this part of my business, I have discovered that there are less academically prepared native Spanish language teachers than you would expect. So I bring up the question, is any American born in the United States prepared to teach English just for the fact of being a native English speaker? You already know that the answer is a clear no. Actually, language instructors must have a wide preparation in the language that they are teaching, in addition to this language being their native one. They must also have full dominion of the language spoken at the country they are teaching in. However, in NYC even in the public education sector there is a false or naïve idea that if you speak Spanish you are able to teach it. Teaching Spanish needs more than language knowledge, it needs cultural knowledge, cultural vocabulary, and an understanding of the rich mix of Spanish speaking countries that share different cultures and contexts that gather together here in New York City.
Many translation companies hire their translators as freelancers. Many of them, about 80%, live in their countries of origin. This is due to the fact that it is cheaper for translation companies to pay them in their local economies and salary rates, than paying translators with the rates from the US. It is obvious outsourcing. What happened with the cultural, economical, contextual knowledge, even religious, politically correct tendencies, and all the rest of the things that affects life? Do you think that a translator located in Buenos Aires will make a better job selling your product to the Spanish community in the United States than an Argentinian one who lives in NYC? Will you, as a provider of goods or services, be open to expanding your opportunities of business to the Spanish community in the Unites States? Or would you like to keep pushing down that bar? Ask yourself… why is Spanish the fastest growing language in the country? Why is it that every day more and more people in this country, and several others, are trying to learn Spanish? The importance of my native language is already clear for the vast majority.
So if you need Spanish translations or Spanish learning, please be eager enough to look for a person or company that will be able to bring you more than just words in another language, but the professional technicalities of the language, the real life cultural experience of both worlds (American and Hispanic-American), and the respect for something as worth and valuable as a language.