En castellano
Today I look back and I see myself having
done my first presentation in a conference, very happy for what I had
achieved in the last months of 2010. However, the year didn’t start quite
as expected, especially if we compare it with how 2010 had finished. Do not
worry, I am quite stubborn and I was determined to change it, and so I focused
on getting more clients and a good workflow. Thanks to working hard the year before
for the online betting company, they asked me to go back for a few weeks at the
beginning of the year, and so the timing was perfect, while I was waiting for
the games localisation Spree in summer. Now
you know: Work hard, and make sure you prove you are professional and
reliable, as you never know when you are going to be needed again. In the
middle of this joy, I received an e-mail letting me know that I had been admitted to present a paper to another Conference: el Media4All in London, at the end of
June.
I don’t know if you had the same, but to me, it seemed
as if the “translation” part was taking a bit too long to take off, just
as if, suddenly, translation agencies had disappeared from the map. As I can’t
spend too long without doing something, I seize the low moments to do another
important aspect of the translator’s life: networking. In April, as
Xosé
Castro was doing a Workshop about Word
(in Spanish)
in Valencia (Spain), which was organised by Asetrad
(Spanish Association of Translators, Interpreters and editors), I decided to go
to Valencia to visit my good friend Vanessa,
and see what all the fuss was about. The experience was amazing (I and II,
in Spanish), not only because I introduce my friend Vanessa to the whole
world of conferences, tweeters and bloggers, but also because I was able to
meet more tweeters, as Manuel Saavedra,
Jordi Barcells, Irene Sánchez,
Ana Rubio and, of course, Xosé Castro (a
guru of Audiovisual Translation, very well referred in two of the subjects I
did about Audiovisual Translation at uni), who I really wanted to meet (in
order to see if he was real… and yes, he was!). Also, I met other amazing
people, such as Judit Samblás, Gemma Sanza,
Marta Ortells or Núria Sanmartí.
I went back home with my battery charged. Fully-charged.
But the translation world still seemed to be idle, and so I used the time to
prepare an article about “localisation, testing and QA” to publish. Also,
I had to undertake an operation in my ear (a long story. You can read about it
in Spanish here)
and, not long after, I had very sad news about a friend.
That’s Murphy’s Law: if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. But
the good thing is that, once you have reached bottom, you can only go up.
And so was it. Media4All
was here, another amazing experience I recommend to everybody
(more info here,
and in Spanish here
and here).
There I met (as in, finally meeting them in person) three more gurus of
Audiovisual Translation: Jorge Díaz-Cintas, Miguel Bernal and
Frederic Chaume (and yes, they are also real and you can touch them, and
even they allow you to take a photo of them!). Wow! I felt like a teenager
when Justin Bieber gives her an autograph... but without the screaming.
Of course, Murphy was spying on me all year long,
and during those three days of Conference that I wanted to myself, was the
perfect moment to make the interesting projects to arrive. The first one
was a videogame for several platforms about a Cartoon Network character (when I
can disclose more details, I will do so). Then, it was the time for a MMORPG based in the Medieval Times, a very
interesting project (the biggest I have done so far), which drove me mental
with the research of weapons and punishment tools. I wasn’t even finished with
the project and I had to move flat, then go on “holidays” (you know translators
can never go on holidays), then come back to London to receive my sister and her family at
home... Glorious
summer!
No, no,
no. Don’t go anyway, as summer didn’t finish here. I also
had time to publish my first article,
start new projects, as Revista Traditori, a new magazine made by
professionals from the Translation/Interpreting industry to anyone interested
about translation, interpreting, languages, etc., but mainly focused to future
translators, to whom we explain a bit about the “real world of translation” (if
you can understand Spanish, you can read about it here,
here,
here,
here
and here,
or just ask GoogleTranslator to help you out). I also started a project with
Pablo and Elizabeth, organised by Johanna Angulo, which I hope I will be
able to talk about really soon. What else? Ah, well. In
September, an old colleague called me to ask me to collaborate with them
creating a videogame, and that is how my autumn started.
The localisation projects, the videogames, preparing
my lessons for Johanna’s Project, finish my second article, I barely realise
that November had arrived. But my life wasn’t fun me to invited me to do a presentation about student mobility
in December. A month earlier, many tweeters colleagues (as well as Maya, the
president of the Catalan Association of Translators and Interpreters-APTIC) spent
two weeks trying to convince me to go to Barcelona
to a workshop about blogs
organised by APTIC (in Spanish). I could not say ‘no’. Ah, well,
I hear the words “party”, “translators”, “fun”, “networking” (
Carolina, Aida, Iris, Maya, Clara, Mar, Verónica, José Luis, José Manuel, Laia, Miriam, Manuel y Lidia...)... And I have to go. Another
unmissable event.
The icing of the cake: the year ended with two (indecent?)
proposals. The first of them, Mox’s Blog’s
authos, Alejandro, was asking permission (???) for him to publish a comic
strip in a book that has just been launched, as he had been inspired on an idea that I sent to him a few
months back. Imagine my face... Just like
a manga character, with my mouth wide open hanging to the floor. The second
one (proposal, of course), was to be part of the teachers group of a new course organised by Educación
Digital (in Spanish, though), which will start at the end of January. This
time, apart from leaving my mouth open, I had to rub my eyes a few times,
because I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Of course, I enrolled the ship too.
And last, but not least, when it seemed the year was
going to finish just like that, I was lucky enough being able to start a translation
project with other tweeters: Manuel, Ander and Jennifer, as well as Miguel
Ángel (who I didn’t know before, and I don’t think I follow him on
Twitter). The project was offered by the best Spanish agency I have worked with
so far (Kobalt Languages), under the conduction of two project managers who made the whole
process pretty easy: Ricard and Ana.
Now, my year has started quite well.
I really hope it will be the beginning of an even better year. As you can see,
bad things happen, but also good ones, and we have to take advantage of the bad
ones, when you are at the bottom, to gain momentum and run up the mountain.
Just one more advice: Never give up!
