Wish me luck (very big exam).

[lugaru]

Today I've got an exam to become a certified English/Spanish translator. It looks like it will be 3 texts, choose 2 and translate them. I'm better at doing Spanish to English because English is less tricky (no accents) but I'm specializing in English to Spanish because there is more work going in that direction.

And of course if you guy's ever need an e-mail, phrase or blog post translated I'll be glad to do it for my forum friends. I also know a very broad range of cursewords in spanish, they make great, easy to remember passwords if you work in a corporate enviroment. 

-Javier.

[Alaric]

Good Luck!

[BentonGrey]

Good luck Lu!  Don't get confused and start translating cursewords.

[Glitch Girl]

Bon chance Lugaru... oh wait, wrong language. 

Good luck anyway! 

[The Hitman]

Good luck, buddy!

[PreRaphaelite]

Show them all how it's done!

[stumpy]

¡Buena suerte, Lugaru!

BTW, I like the idea of a polyglot Tourette syndrome password scheme. 

[lugaru]

Thanks guys! I'll let you know how it goes.

Good luck Lu!  Don't get confused and start translating cursewords.

Actually we have had to do this a bit for class, or analyze phrases that are racist in one country while common in another. Still the worst are translating simple folk phrases like "early bird catches the worm" or "listen to your gut". As an example let me translate some spanish ones into English

Camaron que se duerme se lo lleva la corriente: if a shrimp falls asleep it is dragged by the currents. Should be translated to "you snooze, you lose".

[Gremlin]

That's interesting. I love how colloquialisms do that. Good luck, Lu!

[Reepicheep]

Good luck!

Modern languages are lots of fun, the kinda talent that never becomes redundant and you can never really stop learning them. I know how hard it can be to engishify texts from german. Best of luck!

[lugaru]

So I haven't updated you guy's but the exam went well... you can use any number of dictionaries so I keep a two book "Royal Academy of the Spanish Language" set with me, I can whip those things out John Woo style and spell-check every word in your exam if you finish quick.

I've gotten an A- on every single test up until now and this felt like every single other test, maybe just longer.

Also I just joined NETA (New England translators association) and I'll go to an all day conference tomorrow. Also I got me some translator memory software (imagine a dictionary you build) and dragon naturally speaking because I'm good at reading an English text out loud in Spanish, which means I could save a step in transcribing and have a very rough draft to start with.

Thanks for the support! If things keep going bad in banking I've now got another thing to jump onto.

[The Phantom Eyebrow]

Nice one Lugaru, its always a nice feeling to head out of an exam happy! 

(I rather think I prefer the Spanish version of 'you snooze, you loose' btw)

[thalaw2]

Way to go!  We should consider using other languages on FR...maybe a talk Spanish day?

[lugaru]

Way to go!  We should consider using other languages on FR...maybe a talk Spanish day?

Or "talk like the Spanish day", where I could incorporate a lisp and a ton of blasphemy into all my posts. The other thing I like about Spain is their insistance to finding a spanish equivalent to every word... for example with the X-Men somebody decided that Rogue is Picara (which means naughty or mishcevous). Now I get Rogue, she steals powers and she lives her life on the fringes. Picara makes it sound like she goes around in undies and beats people up with a pillow.

[Panther_Gunn]

Picara makes it sound like she goes around in undies and beats people up with a pillow.

And this is a bad thing how?   

[lugaru]

Picara makes it sound like she goes around in undies and beats people up with a pillow.

And this is a bad thing how?   

It sets people up for disapointment. 

[GrizzlyBearTalon]

The only colloquialism I remember from taking Spanish was a VERY rough equivalent to "It is raining cats and dogs!" which I can't remember for the life of me the Spanish I just know their phrase translated literally into "It is raining many buckets!"

I also misread the context of a word meaning excited, then for an oral part of an exam told the class with great enthusiasm "Estoy excitado!" No one reacted except for the teacher who burst out laughing. For I had just proclaimed "I am sexually excited!"

He was also once again greatly amused when I asked if I could borrow a "pene" instead of "peine."

[lugaru]

Nice, you gotta love all those pitt traps in language. Have you seen outsourced? It has some jokes involving how in England and India they call erasers "rubbers".

One I love is that my mother is American and she moved to Mexico before I was born, but it took her a while to learn spanish. She likes to tell a story about some mistake she made and trying to say "I'm very embarrassed" she said "Estoy muy embarrasada" which in fact means "I am very pregnant". Everyone was so happy for her until they figured out it was an artifact of spanglish.

[thalaw2]

I also misread the context of a word meaning excited, then for an oral part of an exam told the class with great enthusiasm "Estoy excitado!" No one reacted except for the teacher who burst out laughing. For I had just proclaimed "I am sexually excited!"

Was it really a mistake?   

[Gremlin]

I also misread the context of a word meaning excited, then for an oral part of an exam told the class with great enthusiasm "Estoy excitado!" No one reacted except for the teacher who burst out laughing. For I had just proclaimed "I am sexually excited!"

Was it really a mistake?  

Dirty pun ahoy!

Spoiler

It was an oral exam...