Spanish Translation, Part 3: Deciding Which Spanish Variant to Offer
Posted on Thu, Sep 10, 2009
Teo wraps up his 3-part series today with his thoughts on which Spanish variant to offer translation clients...
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The best approach is always to discuss each particular project with our client and provide honest feedback based on the discussion and our own experience.
Clients requesting US Spanish are becoming more and more common and we should provide them with solid advice. Some of the right questions to ask include:
- Where is the translation going to be geographically distributed?
- What is the education level and acculturation of your audience?
- Who will review our translations? (in some cases the ‘expert' client reviewer is a second- or third-generation Spanish speaker, with oral but not written abilities)
In most cases, the process can be customized to partially standardize the language. For instance, we can translate using a specific Spanish flavor and then have the editor provide changes in a way that produce a universal document while keeping some regional flavor.
Finally, if at all possible, have a Spanish speaker provide feedback about the source document. This will make life easier whether asking a question during the process or discussing the use of a certain term after the translation is performed.
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Thank you for reading Teo's series on Spanish Translation. Did you find it interesting? Helpful? Please leave a Comment and let us know!