When I first joined the AATIA I served on a committee. All the members were — coincidentally — also Spanish translators. Given that random twist of fate, someone suggested that we write to each other in Spanish to discuss the business at hand. That struck me as a brilliant idea, since it would allow me to communicate informally in Spanish, which would be very helpful as most of my communication is in English. To my surprise, one of the members announced that she felt too intimidated to do that, saying she felt insecure about her command of written Spanish, and dropped out of the committee.

In my youth I was an actor in a theater group. Like the other actors, I’d read from my script during the early stage of rehearsals. But as we got closer to opening night the director would urge us to put down the script and act — really act. We rehearsed in a warehouse, with other group members sitting just a few feet away. I always felt intimidated and hung on to my script like a security blanket, defying the director and saying, “I’ll be fine when we’re actually on stage, with lights and an audience.” It took me a long time to realize that I was wrong, and that I was squandering a wonderful chance to get into my role in front of my peers, who were there to support me and encourage me, not sit in judgment of my performance.

I think that the committee member who didn’t want to write emails in Spanish was making the same mistake. Being involved with a group of translators is a chance to practice speaking and writing one’s “second language.” This is a priceless opportunity, which absolutely should not be squandered.

AATIA’s Spanish Special Interest Group (SpanSIG) will host a workshop on English-Spanish contrastive grammar in Austin on Saturday, April 5, 2008. The day-long workshop will focus on compared grammar structures, discursive elements, phrasing and wording, direct and indirect speech, idioms, false cognates, and the “transcreation” (translation + creation) methodology for identifying these foreign elements and adapting them to the target language.

Although the workshop is aimed mainly at translators of English to Spanish, translators of Spanish to English will benefit from the discussion of contrastive grammar and “transcreation” methodology.

The presenter, Xosé Castro, is an English > Spanish technical translator and localization specialist based in Madrid, Spain, whose work also includes writing, dubbing, and subtitling for television and film. He has taught translation courses and seminars for T&I programs in Spain and has spoken at numerous international workshops and conferences on a variety of translation topics, including software and website localization, movie script translation, writing in neutral Spanish, and proofreading. Among many other distinctions, he is the creator of the online help for the CD-ROM version of the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española (Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary).

The workshop will be held at the International Center of Austin. Participants who are ATA-certified will be eligible to earn six continuing education points. Registration for the workshop will begin in early March.

The Double-Tongued Dictionary offers the following new term: Growing numbers of Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants are marrying and having U.S.-born children, creating mixed Latino families with ties to three countries at once. The mixture has become so common in Phoenix, some community members have even coined a name “Guatemexicoestadounidenses,” or Guatemexiamericans, to describe the families.

A recent post on Language Log pointed to a GI Joe Navajo Code Talker action figure (it speaks seven phrases in Navajo and English) with a link to the Amazon page where it’s sold.