I’m getting more and more interested on translations. When I started learning English I always tried to find a Spanish word with the same meaning of the English word I came across. So I was translating ‘on the fly’ what I was reading. When somebody asked me to translate something I could translate-read pretty quickly. But as time, and books, went on, English words started representing images or concepts in my head and no longer Spanish words. Now when someone asks me for a translation it seems to me a lot more difficult than before. There are lots of words that cannot be substituted by a Spanish equivalent. They don’t evoke the same ideas on my mind.
For this reason I find the work of translators fascinating and what I thought before that was a mechanic activity now I think that needs huge amounts of creativity.
I would like reading anecdotes about translations. To begin I’m going to write about a difficult situation solved with creativity and some luck.
A few days ago I watched the Spanish-dubbed version of ‘Four Rooms’, this film starts with a senior bellhop explaining the tricks of the trade to a ‘newbie’. He says -more or less-: ‘We are called bellhops because some schmuck rings the bell and you hop’.
The Spanish word has nothing to do with ‘bellboy’ or ‘bellhop’ we call them ‘botones = buttons’ and it is because their uniforms used to be red and with two files of golden buttons. How this translation can be made?. On a book you can skip the paragraph, but dubbing a film?.
‘We are called ‘buttons’ because some schmuck presses a button and you run’.


Juan Maria.