Yesterday, my boss asked me to translate a government document from English to Spanish. Sure! No problem. It was pretty cool, because it was an EU document. It made me realize how transnational my experience is becoming, seeing that I'm an American girl in Spain translating documents for the European Union. I mean, it's not a very important document, but they had versions available in English, French, and German, and my boss needed it in Spanish, so I got to help.
Today, she comes to me and tells me that I need to go back through it, and fix the way I worded things and make it make more sense to a Spanish speaker. She was telling me that nobody would understand it unless they also knew English, which would be besides the point, since there's already an English version. She told me we would go back through it, but it seemed as though at one point she was suggesting that I just try it myself, but really, my mind is still deeply rooted in English. I form sentences and make sense of things using English speech patterns, and I don't have quite an extensive vocabulary in Spanish necessary to know the official words, and apparently the ones I got off the website weren't the right ones. How was I supposed to know? She's definitely not mad or disappointed in me at all, she's a great boss in the sense that she definitely knows it's all a learning experience for me. It just kind of blows my mind when I think about how much a language is embedded in your brain and the way you think. And I haven't been able to switch to a Spanish Brain just yet, so therefore I couldn't make the document make complete sense to a Spanish speaker. I doubt that I will achieve a Spanish Brain while I'm here, but at least I have something to strive for.
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