This was the second year I spoke at the Congreso San Jerónimo, hosted by the Feria Internacional del Libro (International Book Fair) in Guadalajara. My session was well received and I enjoyed developing relationships with colleagues and potential clients.

This is also a Book Fair. The second largest in the world. Guadalajara pulls all the stops to make this successful! They have free buses for people from the neighbor towns to come in to Guadalajara to shop at the FIL. I wish we promoted reading that way! I added over 40 books to my collection on this trip. When you are in a book fair like that, it is hard to stop at 40, really.

Why do I use these resources? Why do I keep investing in books year after year, when the Internet is so ubiquitous?

  • Books go through a more thorough editing process than blogs and online resources.
  • It is more relaxing to read a book than material on a screen.
  • At the ACES conference, I heard that our comprehension goes down by at least one grade level when we read on a screen. I want to read print media, especially when I read the Quijote.

When I translate legal and technical texts, or even literary texts, I want an honest point of comparison. I am surrounded by it here in my office. As a matter of fact, when I hit a wall all I have to do is pull a book off the shelf to get unstuck. Once I was reviewing a translation that had a high frequency of mistakes. At one point, I told my husband that the translator seemed to be improving. He looked at me and said, “You know what to do about that, right?” I picked a book off the shelf, read for half an hour, and the translator was back to normal. Or maybe I was sensitive to the translator’s mistakes again, after having read some good Spanish.

Mercedes Guhl, the conference organizer, opened the OMT conference with these words: “La lectura es la base de nuestro oficio”. (Reading is foundational for our work.)

Here is my updated catalog. Gaucha library 2017