New projects are exciting. They almost always lead me to learn about topics I am familiar with in more depth.

What can translators do? Today, we have many options at our fingertips. The web can give us an AI summary on the topic, links to the articles they used for the summary, you name it. There are also books, both electronic and print. We make a conscious decision about what materials we will use as a resource. I happen to love working with parallel documents.

I have always opted for a more traditional approach and rely on my own reading of the source text and well edited background materials. Years ago, I had to submit a competitive translation for the CDC. When I was satisfied with my work, I submitted it, and later I was told our team submitted the best translation.

The CDC focuses on epidemiology, a topic that fascinates me. I picked up a few books on epidemiology published by a South American medical publishing house. This allowed me to develop some intimacy with the writing style in Spanish, some of the terminology, and feel very comfortable with the topic.

I also read a series of documents from the CDC page in English and read some of their translated texts. This gave me an idea how the CDC writes and what they expected in the translations so I could develop my own style guide for the CDC.

After this, I reviewed the text I had to translate and made a list of the issues I had to consider to be consistent. I researched the frequent technical terms, thought about how to deal with the bibliography, and consulted on those with the people who ordered the translation.

At that point I was ready to start. I translated the text, reviewed it the next day, and was satisfied with my work.

Now that we have AI, I still follow the same process, because digging into the context helps me feel the context. With books available on Kindle, I can have these resources at my fingertips very quickly.

As I go through the materials I pick up, I mark interesting terms, style choices, and have a reference. In some sources I check, they introduce new Spanish technical terms along with the English versions of those terms because people may be familiar with the English terms. I am reviewing a book written in Spain that references the English terms in the explanation and then introduces the Spanish term. This helps readers go online and learn more about the topic.

After I have translated and reviewed the text, I send it to a highly qualified colleague so we can discuss how to make the translation even better. She often sees things we can improve and things I missed. Working with a colleague who is also ATA-certified and has partnered with me for a long time, we can support each other extremely well.  We discuss our comments and we make joint decisions on the final outcome. This leads to deeper learning, as we humbly learn together and make things better for our readers.

Then I review her edits, discuss them if needed, and submit them to the client.

I know AI could provide with the terminology, create tables, find definitions. However, that is not the way I learn. I enjoy dedicating whatever time I deem necessary to special projects. I do consult the tools we have available today when I need to consider a fresh perspective, but my work remains based on reading parallel documents, whether they are books or articles on the topic in both languages. After all, my brain is the most important tool I have, and I have to respect my own learning process.

Every time I translate, I learn something new. Translation is fascinating!