The Linguist

AUTUMN 2023 The Linguist 11 @CIOL_Linguists FEATURES think the term translates to initially. This often requires extensive research into specific locations, including a detailed study of maps, photos on official websites and even social media and Tripadvisor comments. Not every montaña in Spanish is an actual mountain; it is often better rendered as a 'hill', 'mound' or 'mount'. Similarly, a barranco may not be a full-blown (and potentially off-putting) ravine. It is also important to check whether a pista or camino is a track, trail, path or even a road. In the case of city walks, this visual research proves crucial for clarifying references to the mythological creatures on Ammannati's Fountain of Neptune in Florence, for example, or selecting appropriate adjectives to describe the statue of María Pita, the 'heroine of La Coruña', on this city's main square. Painstaking details As with all travel publications, food occupies an important place in NT and it unashamedly seeks to generate interest in the local gastronomy of Binter's destinations. The focus is often on traditional dishes, all invariably billed as palate-pleasing, mouth- watering and the product of knowledge passed down from generation to generation. Coverage of the gastronomic wonders of a particular location takes the form of longer features (including recipes for the most popular dishes) or shorter sections inserted into more general descriptions of a city. Since many of the destinations are coastal, fish and seafood appear frequently. With lesser-known species, whose local names vary greatly within Spain, detailed investigation can be required to arrive at the correct name in English. A single sentence describing the local seafood on offer in La Coruña's restaurants listed no fewer than 18 different types! Occasionally, the effort causes you to question whether the job is worthwhile, but you pin your hopes on another page with more straightforward content to compensate for this Herculean labour. These hopes were dashed in one recent issue where another of the regular features – an advertorial for a group of private hospitals – focused on breast reduction surgery. Considerable time was spent researching the topic and then remembering that English often uses plainer language than Spanish when describing medical procedures to non- specialist readers. This is not to say that translating such content is not enlightening: I knew little about the benefits of 'zero drop' and 'barefoot' footwear before tackling a piece on correcting gait problems. Similarly, an advertorial for an orthodontist made me more knowledgeable on the benefits of aligners, rather than braces, for straightening children's teeth. Thankfully, some relief is generally at hand in the economy section, which usually contains interesting and, at times, humorous features (my favourite: 'Should you take a lawyer to a job interview?'), along with snippets of relevant business news such as the latest employment figures and post-pandemic tourism growth. Here, the main concerns tend to be stylistic to ensure that the product reflects the expectations of analogous texts in English, which tend to steer clear of the more ornate and hypotactic approach of Spanish. However, it is important that the natural instinct to prune does not result in an excessive shortfall in word count and create a headache for the layout team, for whom the Spanish length is perfectly calculated for a quarter or half page. The word count tends to be less problematical in other pieces given that, while English versions of Spanish texts tend to be slightly shorter, the differences are often negligible because brief explanations of cultural terms and bracketed clarifications of borrowings need to be added. A perfect fit In terms of workload, the process is a perfect fit for a translator with other professional commitments, in my case university-level

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